第一篇：名人演讲词
哈佛大学
Advice For Graduates
给大学毕业生的几个忠告——美国能源部部长朱棣文
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As you begin this new stage of your lives, follow your passion.If you don’t have a passion, don’t be satis?ed until you?nd one.Life is too short to go through it without caring deeply about something.当你开始生活的新阶段时，请追随你的爱好。如果你没有爱好，就去找，找不到绝不罢休。生命太短暂，所以不能空手走过，你必须对某样 东西倾注你的深情。
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
失败的额外收益和想象力的重要性——英国作家JK罗琳
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As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.生活 就像故事一样，不在于长短，而在于品质，这才是最重要的。
How to Tackle the World’s Worst Inequities?
如何解决这个世界最严重的不平等？ ——微软创始人比尔·盖茨
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Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries— but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.人类最大的进步并不在于其发现，而在于如 何用这些发现来减少不平等
斯坦福大学
Three Stories from My Life
我人生中的三个故事——苹果公司创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯
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Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.You are already naked.There is no reason not to follow your heart.记住自己随时都会死去，这是我所知道的防止患得患失的最好方法。你已经一无所有了，还有什么理由不听从自己的心声呢。
牛津大学
Heal the Children, Heal the World
拯救儿童，拯救世界——流行音乐之王迈克尔·杰克逊
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In a world?lled with hate, we must still dare to hope.Keep hope alive.In a world?lled with
anger, we must still dare to comfort.In a world?lled with despair, we must still dare to dream.And in a world?lled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.即使世界充满仇恨，我们也要勇于憧憬，让希望永存；即使世界充满愤怒，我们也要敢于安慰；即使世界充满绝望，我们也要勇于梦想；即使世界充满猜疑，我们仍然敢于信任。
耶鲁大学
Cherishing What You Have Now, and Striving for the Future
珍惜现在，把握未来——英国前首相托尼·布莱尔
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Be prepared to fail as well as to succeed, because it is failure not success that de?nes character.不仅要接受成功，也要准备经历失败。因为是失败而非成功塑造了性格。
Dare to Compete, Dare to Care
敢于竞争，勇于关爱——美国国务卿希拉里·克林顿
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Dare to compete.Dare to care.Dare to dream.Dare to love.Practice the art of making possible.And no matter what happens, even if you hear shouts behind, keep going.要敢于竞争，敢于关爱，敢于憧憬，大胆去爱！要努力创造奇迹！无论发生什么，即使有人在你背后大声喊叫，也要勇往直前。
Everyone Can Be a President
人人都能成为总统——美国第43任总统乔治·布什
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To those of you who received honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, well done.And to the
C students—I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.对于那些表现杰出、获得各种奖项和荣誉的同学，我要说，你们真棒！对于那些C等生，我要说，你们将来也可以当美国总统！
杜兰大学
Stay True to Yourself
做真正的自己——美国著名脱口秀主持人艾伦·德詹尼丝
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And really when I look back on it, I wouldn’t change a thing.I mean, it was so important for me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is, is to be true to yourself.And ultimately, that’s what’s gotten me to this place.I don’t live in fear.I’m free.I have no secrets.And I know I’ll always be OK, because no matter what, I know who I am.当我回首这些往事的时候，我一点也不会改变。因为我发现，即使失去一切，最重要的是做真正的自己。最终，我来到了这里。我不再恐惧，我感觉很自在，也不再有秘密，而且我知
道一切都会好的，因为无论如何，我知道我是谁。
杜克大学
(>>查看此篇演讲视频)
Follow Your Gut, and You Will Be a Huge Success
追随自己的心声，你们一定会成功——美国“脱口秀”女王奥普拉·温弗瑞
Trust your gut to help you stand proudly in your own shoes, as you help others stand in theirs, and I know you will be a huge success.相信自己的心声，你才能自豪地穿上自 己的鞋子走自己的路，如果你也能帮别人走他们自己的路，那你们一定会大有作为
威斯康辛大学
How to Make Your Dream Come True
如何实现你的梦想——著名导演、电影制片人杰里·朱克
But it doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping.So get out there and go for it, but don’t be caught waiting.It’s great to plan for your future.Just don’t live there, because really nothing ever happens in the future.Whatever happens happens now, so live your life where the action is—now.如果你一生都在睡觉，你的梦想是否实现就无关紧要了。所以，不要等待，要走出去，去实现你的梦想。规划未来是一件好事，但不要只活在未来，因为未来的事情实际上还没有发 生。不管发生什么事情，都只是发生在现在，所以要活在现在。
清华大学
Keep Your Dreams
执着于你的梦想——明星州长阿诺德·施瓦辛格
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Some of your families maybe don’t believe in your dreams.But let me tell you something, my young friends.Keep your dreams.No matter what, keep your dreams.Don’t give up on them, even when you are temporarily defeated or denied.Keep your dreams.你们的家人也许不相信你们的梦想，但是，朋友们，让我告诉你们，执着于你的梦想！无论如何，坚持你们的梦想。即使你们遭遇暂时的失败或被否定，也不要放弃你们的梦想。执着于你的梦想。
Everything Is Possible
一切皆有可能——雅芳首席执行官钟彬娴
Anything you choose to do is within your reach.How far you go will depend on how high you set your dreams and how hard you work to achieve them.无论你们想 做什么样的事业，你们都可以做得很出色。你们的梦想有多大，你们就能走多远；你们为梦想付出得越多，你们就会越成功。
北京大学
Challenge of the 21st Century
21世纪的挑战——美国第42任总统克林顿
In the 21st century, your generation must make it your mission to ensure that today’s progress does not come at tomorrow’s expense.在21世纪，你们年轻一代 的使命是必须保证今天的进步发展不以明天为代价
亚利桑那州立大学
To Make the World a Better Place: Go Beyond the Boundary of Material Comfort跨越物质的藩篱，让世界今非昔比——美国总统奥巴马
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Each of them, at one point in their life, didn’t have any title or much status to speak of.But they had passion, a commitment to following that passion wherever it would lead, and to working hard every step along the way.And that’s not just how you'll ensure that your own life is well-lived.It’s how you’ll make a difference in the life of our nation.他们中的每一个人，在生命中的某一时刻，都没有响亮的头衔和显赫的地位值得炫耀。但他们有激情，他们追随着这种激情，并在整个过程中努力走好每一步。不仅努力过好自己的生活，更重要的是，努力让自己的国家今非昔比。
加利福尼亚大学
Service—the True Measure of Success
服务——衡量成功的真正标准——美国第一夫人米歇尔·奥巴马
Service is the rent we pay for living...it is the true measure, the only measure of our success.服务是我们为生活而支付的租金……它是真正的标准，是衡量我们成功的唯一标准。
第二篇：69篇世界名人英语演讲词
Dare to Compete, Dare to Care
Dare to compete.Dare to care.Dare to dream.Dare to love.Practice the art of making possible.And no matter what happens, even if you hear shouts behind, keep going.It is such an honor and pleasure for me to be back at Yale, especially on the occasion of the 300th anniversary.I have had so many memories of my time here, and as Nick was speaking I thought about how I ended up at Yale Law School.And it tells a little bit about how much progress we‘ve made.What I think most about when I think of Yale is not just the politically charged atmosphere and not even just the superb legal education that I received.It was at Yale that I began work that has been at the core of what I have cared about ever since.I began working with New Haven legal services representing children.And I studied child development, abuse and neglect at the Yale New Haven Hospital and the Child Study Center.I was lucky enough to receive a civil rights internship with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children‘s Defense Fund, where I went to work after I graduated.Those experiences fueled in me a passion to work for the benefit of children, particularly the most vulnerable.Now, looking back, there is no way that I could have predicted what path my life would have taken.I didn‘t sit around the law school, saying, well, you know, I think I‘ll graduate and then I‘ll go to work at the Children‘s Defense Fund, and then the impeachment inquiry, and Nixon retired or resigns, I‘ll go to Arkansas.I didn‘t think like that.I was taking each day at a time.But, I‘ve been very fortunate because I‘ve always had an idea in my mind about what I thought was important and what gave my life meaning and purpose.A set of values and beliefs that have helped me navigate the shoals, the sometimes very treacherous sea, to illuminate my own true desires, despite that others say about what l should care about and believe in.A passion to succeed at what l thought was important and children have always provided that lone star, that guiding light.Because l have that absolute conviction that every child, especially in this, the most blessed of nations that has ever existed on the face of earth, that every child deserves the opportunity to live up to his or her God-given potential.But you know that belief and conviction-it may make for a personal mission statement, but standing alone, not translated into action, it means very little to anyone else, particularly to those for whom you have those concerns.When I was thinking about running for the United States Senate-which was such an enormous decision to make, one I never could have dreamed that I would have been making when I was here on campus-I visited a school in New York City and I met a young woman, who was a star athlete.I was there because of Billy Jean King promoting an HBO special about women in sports called ―Dare to compete.‖ It was about Title IX and how we finally, thanks to government action, provided opportunities to girls and women in sports.And although I played not very well at intramural sports, I have always been a strong supporter of women in sports.And I was introduced by this young woman, and as I went to shake her hand she obviously had been reading the newspapers about people saying I should or shouldn‘t run for the
Senate.And I was congratulating her on the speech she had just made and she held onto my hand and she said, ―Dare to compete, Mrs.Clinton.Dare to compete.‖
I took that to heart because it is hard to compete sometimes, especially in public ways, when your failures are there for everyone to see and you don‘t know what is going to happen from one day to the next.And yet so much of life, whether we like to accept it or not, is competing with ourselves to be the best we can be, being involved in classes or professions or just life, where we know we are competing with others.I took her advice and I did compete because I chose to do so.And the biggest choices that you‘ll face in your life will be yours alone to make.I‘m sure you‘ll receive good advice.You‘re got a great education to go back and reflect about what is right for you, but you eventually will have to choose and I hope that you will dare to compete.And by that I don‘t mean the kind of cutthroat competition that is too often characterized by what is driving America today.I mean the small voice inside you that says to you, you can do it, you can take this risk, you can take this next step.And it doesn‘t mean that once having made that choice you will always succeed.In fact, you won‘t.There are setbacks and you will experience difficult disappointments.You will be slowed down and sometimes the breath will just be knocked out of you.But if you carry with you the values and beliefs that you can make a difference in your own life, first and foremost, and then in the lives of others.You can get back up, you can keep going.But it is also important, as I have found, not to take yourself too seriously, because after all, every one of us here today, none of us is deserving of full credit.I think every day of the blessings my birth gave me without any doing of my own.I chose neither my family nor my country, but they as much as anything I‘ve ever done, determined my course.You compare my or your circumstances with those of the majority of people who‘ve ever lived or who are living right now, they too often are born knowing too well what their futures will be.They lack the freedom to choose their life‘s path.They‘re imprisoned by circumstances of poverty and ignorance, bigotry, disease, hunger, oppression and war.So, dare to compete, yes, but maybe even more difficult, dare to care.Dare to care about people who need our help to succeed and fulfill their own lives.There are so many out there and sometimes all it takes is the simplest of gestures or helping hands and many of you understand that already.I know that the numbers of graduates in the last 20 years have worked in community organizations, have tutored, have committed themselves to religious activities.You have been there trying to serve because you have believed both that it was the right thing to do and because it gave something back to you.You have dared to care.Well, dare to care to fight for equal justice for all, for equal pay for women, against hate crimes and bigotry.Dare to care about public schools without qualified teachers or adequate resources.Dare to care about protecting our environment.Dare to care about the 10 million children in our country who lack health insurance.Dare to care about the one and a half million children who have a parent in jail.The seven million people who suffer from HIV/AIDS.And thank you for caring enough to demand
that our nation do more to help those that are suffering throughout this world with HIV/AIDS, to prevent this pandemic from spreading even further.And I‘ll also add, dare enough to care about our political process.You know, as I go and speak with students I‘m impressed so much, not only in formal settings, on campuses, but with my daughter and her friends, about how much you care, about how willing you are to volunteer and serve.You may have missed the last wave of the dot.com revolution, but you‘ve understood that the dot.community revolution is there for you every single day.And you‘ve been willing to be part of remarking lives in our community.And yet, there is a real resistance, a turning away from the political process.I hope that some of you will be public servants and will even run for office yourself, not to win a position to make and impression on your friends at your 20th reunion, but because you understand how important it is for each of us as citizens to make a commitment to our democracy.Your generation, the first one born after the social upheavals of the 60‘s and 70‘s, in the midst of the technological advances of the 80‘s and 90‘s, are inheriting an economy, a society and a government that has yet to understand fully, or even come to grips with, our rapidly changing world.And so bring your values and experiences and insights into politics.Dare to help make, not just a difference in politics, but create a different politics.Some have called you the generation of choice.You‘ve been raised with multiple choice tests, multiple channels, multiple websites and multiple lifestyles.You‘ve grown up choosing among alternatives that were either not imagined, created or available to people in prior generations.You‘ve been invested with far more personal power to customize your life, to make more free choices about how to live than was ever thought possible.And I think as I look at all the surveys and research that is done, your choices reflect not only freedom, but personal responsibility.The social indicators, not the headlines, the social indicators tell a positive story: drug use and cheating and arrests being down, been pregnancy and suicides, drunk driving deaths being down.Community service and religious involvement being up.But if you look at the area of voting among 18 to 29 year olds, the numbers tell a far more troubling tale.Many of you I know believe that service and community volunteerism is a better way of solving the issues facing our country than political engagement, because you believe-choose one of the following multiples or choose them all-government either can‘t understand or won‘t make the right choices because of political pressures, inefficiency, incompetence or big money influence.Well, I admit there is enough truth in that critique to justify feeling disconnected and alienated.But at bottom, that‘s a personal cop-out and a national peril.Political conditions maximize the conditions for individual opportunity and responsibility as well as community.Americorps and the Peace Corps exist because of political decisions.Our air, water, land and food will be clean and safe because of political choices.Our ability to cure disease or log onto the Internet have been advanced because of politically determined investments.Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo ended because of political leadership.Your parents and grandparents traveled here by means of government built and subsidized transportation systems.Many used GI Bills or government loans, as I did, to attend college.
Now, I could, as you might guess, go on and on, but the point is to remind us all that government is us and each generation has to stake its claim.And, as stakeholders, you will have to decide whether or not to make the choice to participate.It is hard and it is, bringing change in a democracy, particularly now.There‘s so much about our modern times that conspire to lower our sights, to weaken our vision-as individuals and communities and even nations.It is not the vast conspiracy you may have heard about;rather it‘s a silent conspiracy of cynicism and indifference and alienation that we see every day, in our popular culture and in our prodigious consumerism.But as many have said before and as Vaclav Havel has said to memorably, ―It cannot suffice just to invent new machines, new regulations and new institutions.It is necessary to understand differently and more perfectly the true purpose of our existence on this Earth and of our deeds.‖ And I think we are called on to reject, in this time of blessings that we enjoy, those who will tear us apart and tear us down and instead to liberate our God-given spirit, by being willing to dare to dream of a better world.During my campaign, when times were tough and days were long I used to think about the example of Harriet Tubman, a heroic New Yorker, a 19th century Moses, who risked her life to bring hundreds of slaves to freedom.She would say to those who she gathered up in the South where she kept going back year after year from the safety of Auburn, New York, that no matter what happens, they had to keep going.If they heard shouts behind them, they had to keep going.If they heard gunfire or dogs, they had to keep going to freedom.Well, those aren‘t the risks we face.It is more the silence and apathy and indifference that dogs our heels.Thirty-two years ago, I spoke at my own graduation from Wellesley, where I did call on my fellow classmates to reject the notion of limitations on our ability to effect change and instead to embrace the idea that the goal of education should be human liberation and the freedom to practice with all the skill of our being the art of making possible.For after all, our fate is to be free.To choose competition over apathy, caring over indifference, vision over myopia, and love over hate.Just as this is a special time in your lives, it is for me as well because my daughter will be graduating in four weeks, graduating also from a wonderful place with a great education and beginning a new life.And as I think about all the parents and grandparents who are out there, I have a sense of what their feeling.Their hearts are leaping with joy, but it‘s hard to keep tears in check because the presence of our children at a time and place such as this is really a fulfillment of our own American dreams.Well, I applaud you and all of your love, commitment and hard work, just as I applaud your daughters and sons for theirs.And I leave these graduates with the same message I hope to leave with my graduate.Dare to compete.Dare to care.Dare to dream.Dare to love.Practice the art of making possible.And no matter what happens, even if you hear shouts behind, keep going.Thank you and God bless you all.
一、Martin Luther King, Jr.“I Have a Dream” I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.And they have come to realize that their
freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.We cannot walk alone.And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.We cannot turn back.There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.*We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: “For Whites Only.”* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells.And some of you have come from areas where your quest--quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.You have been the veterans of creative suffering.Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.I have a dream today!I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification”--one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.I have a dream today!I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight;“and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”²
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.And this will be the day--this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new
meaning: My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.From every mountainside, let freedom ring.And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last!Free at last!Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!³
二、John F.Kennedy Inaugural Address Vice President Johnson, Mr.Speaker, Mr.Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens: We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom--symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning--signifying renewal, as well as change.For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.The world is very different now.For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.This much we pledge--and more.To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends.United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures.Divided there is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of
colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny.We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view.But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty.But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers.Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas.And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support--to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.We dare not tempt them with weakness.For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course--both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah--to “undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free.”¹
And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor--not a new balance of power, but a new world of law--where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days;nor in the life of this Administration;nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.But let us begin.In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the
globe.Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are--but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope;patient in tribulation,”² a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it.I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you;ask what you can do for your country.My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.三、Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First Inaugural Address President Hoover, Mr.Chief Justice, my friends:
This is a day of national consecration.And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels.This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.This great Nation will endure, as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties.They concern, thank God, only material things.Values have shrunk to fantastic levels;taxes have risen;our ability to pay has fallen;government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income;the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade;the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side;farmers find no markets for their produce;and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return.Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance.We are stricken by no plague of locusts.Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own
stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated.Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.True, they have tried.But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition.Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money.Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers.They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money;it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.The joy, the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves, to our fellow men.Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit;and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance;without them it cannot live.Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone.This Nation is asking for action, and action now.Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great--greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities.It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms.It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced.It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal.It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character.There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it.We must act.We must act quickly.And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order.There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments.There must be an end to speculation with other people's money.And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
These, my friends, are the lines of attack.I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo.Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time, and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.I favor, as a practical policy, the putting of first things first.I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment;but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not nationally--narrowly nationalistic.It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States of America--a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer.It is the way to recovery.It is the immediate way.It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor: the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others;the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other;that we can not merely take, but we must give as well;that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective.We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good.This, I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors.Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form.That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen.It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly equal, wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us.But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.But, in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me.I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time.I can do no less.We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity;with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values;with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike.We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.We do not distrust the--the future of essential democracy.The people of the United States have not failed.In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action.They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership.They have made me the present instrument of their wishes.In the spirit of the gift I take it.In this dedication--In this dedication of a Nation, we humbly ask the blessing of God.May He protect each and every one of us.May He guide me in the days to come.四、Barbara Charline Jordan 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address Thank you ladies and gentlemen for a very warm reception.It was one hundred and forty-four years ago that members of the Democratic Party first met in convention to select a Presidential candidate.Since that time, Democrats have continued to convene once every four years and draft a party platform and nominate a Presidential candidate.And our meeting this week is a continuation of that tradition.But there is something different about tonight.There is something special about tonight.What is different? What is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker.When--A lot of years passed since 1832, and during that time it would have been most unusual for any national political party to ask a Barbara Jordan to deliver a keynote address.But tonight, here I am.And I feel--I feel that notwithstanding the past that my presence here is one additional bit of evidence that the American Dream need not forever be deferred.Now--Now that I have this grand distinction, what in the world am I supposed to say? I could easily spend this time praising the accomplishments of this party and attacking the Republicans--but I don't choose to do that.I could list the many problems which Americans have.I could list the problems which cause people to feel cynical, angry, frustrated: problems which include lack of integrity in government;the feeling that the individual no longer counts;the reality of material and spiritual poverty;the feeling that the grand American experiment is failing or has failed.I could recite these problems, and then I could sit down and offer no solutions.But I don't choose to do that either.The citizens of America expect more.They deserve and they want more than a recital of problems.We are a people in a quandary about the present.We are a people in search of our future.We are a people in search of a national community.We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America.We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.Throughout--Throughout our history, when people have looked for new ways to solve their problems and to uphold the principles of this nation, many times they have turned to political parties.They have often turned to the Democratic Party.What is it? What is it about the Democratic Party that makes it the instrument the people use when they search for ways to shape their future? Well I believe the answer to that question lies in our concept of governing.Our concept of governing is derived from our
view of people.It is a concept deeply rooted in a set of beliefs firmly etched in the national conscience of all of us.Now what are these beliefs? First, we believe in equality for all and privileges for none.This is a belief--This is a belief that each American, regardless of background, has equal standing in the public forum--all of us.Because--Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive rather than an exclusive party.Let everybody come.I think it no accident that most of those immigrating to America in the 19th century identified with the Democratic Party.We are a heterogeneous party made up of Americans of diverse backgrounds.We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power;that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.This--This can be accomplished only by providing each citizen with every opportunity to participate in the management of the government.They must have that, we believe.We believe that the government which represents the authority of all the people, not just one interest group, but all the people, has an obligation to actively--underscore actively--seek to remove those obstacles which would block individual achievement--obstacles emanating from race, sex, economic condition.The government must remove them, seek to remove them.We.We are a party--We are a party of innovation.We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must.We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed.We believe that.This, my friends is the bedrock of our concept of governing.This is a part of the reason why Americans have turned to the Democratic Party.These are the foundations upon which a national community can be built.Let all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains.They represent what this country is all about.They are indigenous to the American idea.And these are principles which are not negotiable.In other times--In other times, I could stand here and give this kind of exposition on the beliefs of the Democratic Party and that would be enough.But today that is not enough.People want more.That is not sufficient reason for the majority of the people of this country to decide to vote Democratic.We have made mistakes.We realize that.We admit our mistakes.In our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions.And when the people raised their voices, we didn't hear.But our deafness was only a temporary condition, and not an irreversible condition.Even as I stand here and admit that we have made mistakes, I still believe that as the people of America sit in judgment on each party, they will recognize that our mistakes were mistakes of the heart.They'll recognize that.And now--now we must look to the future.Let us heed the voice of the people and recognize their common sense.If we do not, we not only blaspheme our political heritage, we ignore the common ties that bind all Americans.Many fear the future.Many are distrustful of their leaders, and believe that their voices are never heard.Many seek only to satisfy their private work--wants;to satisfy their private interests.But this is the great danger America faces--that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual;each seeking to satisfy private wants.If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good? This is the question which must be answered in 1976: Are we to be one people bound together by common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor;or will we become a divided nation? For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.We must not become the “New Puritans” and reject our society.We must address and master the future together.It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a
sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor.It can be done.There is no executive order;there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community.This we must do as individuals, and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.As a first step--As a first step, we must restore our belief in ourselves.We are a generous people, so why can't we be generous with each other? We need to take to heart the words spoken by Thomas Jefferson: Let us restore the social intercourse--“Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and that affection without which liberty and even life are but dreary things.” A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.A government is invigorated when each one of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.In this election year, we must define the “common good” and begin again to shape a common future.Let each person do his or her part.If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer.For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.And now, what are those of us who are elected public officials supposed to do? We call ourselves “public servants” but I'll tell you this: We as public servants must set an example for the rest of the nation.It is hypocritical for the public official to admonish and exhort the people to uphold the common good if we are derelict in upholding the common good.More is required--More is required of public officials than slogans and handshakes and press releases.More is required.We must hold ourselves strictly accountable.We must provide the people with a vision of the future.If we promise as public officials, we must deliver.If--If we as public officials propose, we must produce.If we say to the American people, “It is time for you to be sacrificial”--sacrifice.If the public official says that, we [public officials] must be the first to give.We must be.And again, if we make mistakes, we must be willing to admit them.We have to do that.What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing.Strike a balance.Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community.It's tough, difficult, not easy.But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny;if each of us remembers, when self-interest and bitterness seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.I have confidence that we can form this kind of national community.I have confidence that the Democratic Party can lead the way.I have that confidence.We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic.There is no way to improve upon that.But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny.Now I began this speech by commenting to you on the uniqueness of a Barbara Jordan making a keynote address.Well I am going to close my speech by quoting a Republican President and I ask you that as you listen to these words of Abraham Lincoln, relate them to the concept of a national community in which every last one of us participates: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” This--This--“This expresses my idea of Democracy.Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no Democracy.” Thank you.
五、Richard M.Nixon
“Checkers” My Fellow Americans，I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned.Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details.I believe we've had enough of that in the United States, particularly with the present Administration in Washington, D.C.To me the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States is a great office, and I feel that the people have got to have confidence in the integrity of the men who run for that office and who might obtain it.I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth.And that's why I'm here tonight.I want to tell you my side of the case.I'm sure that you have read the charge, and you've heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took 18,000 dollars from a group of my supporters.Now, was that wrong? And let me say that it was wrong.I'm saying, incidentally, that it was wrong, not just illegal, because it isn't a question of whether it was legal or illegal, that isn't enough.The question is, was it morally wrong? I say that it was morally wrong--if any of that 18,000 dollars went to Senator Nixon, for my personal use.I say that it was morally wrong if it was secretly given and secretly handled.And I say that it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions that they made.And now to answer those questions let me say this: Not one cent of the 18,000 dollars or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use.Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.It was not a secret fund.As a matter of fact, when I was on “Meet the Press”--some of you may have seen it last Sunday--Peter Edson came up to me after the program, and he said, “Dick, what about this ”fund“ we hear about?” And I said, “Well, there's no secret about it.Go out and see Dana Smith who was the administrator of the fund.” And I gave him [Edson] his [Smith's] address.And I said you will find that the purpose of the fund simply was to defray political expenses that I did not feel should be charged to the Government.And third, let me point out--and I want to make this particularly clear--that no contributor to this fund, no contributor to any of my campaigns, has ever received any consideration that he would not have received as an ordinary constituent.I just don't believe in that, and I can say that never, while I have been in the Senate of the United States, as far as the people that contributed to this fund are concerned, have I made a telephone call for them to an agency, or have I gone down to an agency in their behalf.And the records will show that, the records which are in the hands of the administration.Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, “Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator?” “Why did you have to have it?” Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates.First of all, a Senator gets 15,000 dollars a year in salary.He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year--a round trip, that is--for himself and his family between his home and Washington, D.C.And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail.And the allowance for my State of California is enough to hire 13 people.And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator.It's paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his pay roll.But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business;business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy--items of that type, for example.But there are other expenses which
are not covered by the Government.And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other Senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is.It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no.The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.Well, then the question arises, you say, “Well, how do you pay for these and how can you do it legally?” And there are several ways that it can be done, incidentally, and that it is done legally in the United States Senate and in the Congress.The first way is to be a rich man.I don't happen to be a rich man, so I couldn't use that one.Another way that is used is to put your wife on the pay roll.Let me say, incidentally, that my opponent, my opposite number for the Vice Presidency on the Democratic ticket, does have his wife on the pay roll and has had it--her on his pay roll for the ten years--for the past ten years.Now just let me say this: That's his business, and I'm not critical of him for doing that.You will have to pass judgment on that particular point.But I have never done that for this reason: I have found that there are so many deserving stenographers and secretaries in Washington that needed the work that I just didn't feel it was right to put my wife on the pay roll.My wife's sitting over here.She's a wonderful stenographer.She used to teach stenography and she used to teach shorthand in high school.That was when I met her.And I can tell you folks that she's worked many hours at night and many hours on Saturdays and Sundays in my office, and she's done a fine job, and I am proud to say tonight that in the six years I've been in the House and the Senate of the United States, Pat Nixon has never been on the Government pay roll.What are other ways that these finances can be taken care of? Some who are lawyers, and I happen to be a lawyer, continue to practice law, but I haven't been able to do that.I'm so far away from California that I've been so busy with my senatorial work that I have not engaged in any legal practice.And, also, as far as law practice is concerned, it seemed to me that the relationship between an attorney and the client was so personal that you couldn't possibly represent a man as an attorney and then have an unbiased view when he presented his case to you in the event that he had one before Government.And so I felt that the best way to handle these necessary political expenses of getting my message to the American people and the speeches I made--the speeches that I had printed for the most part concerned this one message of exposing this Administration, the Communism in it, the corruption in it--the only way that I could do that was to accept the aid which people in my home State of California, who contributed to my campaign and who continued to make these contributions after I was elected, were glad to make.And let me say I'm proud of the fact that not one of them has ever asked me for a special favor.I'm proud of the fact that not one of them has ever asked me to vote on a bill other than of my own conscience would dictate.And I am proud of the fact that the taxpayers, by subterfuge or otherwise, have never paid one dime for expenses which I thought were political and shouldn't be charged to the taxpayers.Let me say, incidentally, that some of you may say, “Well, that's all right, Senator, that's your
explanation, but have you got any proof?” And I'd like to tell you this evening that just an hour ago we received an independent audit of this entire fund.I suggested to Governor Sherman Adams, who is the Chief of Staff of the Dwight Eisenhower campaign, that an independent audit and legal report be obtained, and I have that audit here in my hands.It's an audit made by the Price Waterhouse & Company firm, and the legal opinion by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, lawyers in Los Angeles, the biggest law firm, and incidentally, one of the best ones in Los Angeles.I am proud to be able to report to you tonight that this audit and this legal opinion is being forwarded to General Eisenhower.And I'd like to read to you the opinion that was prepared by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, and based on all the pertinent laws and statutes, together with the audit report prepared by the certified public accountants.Quote: It is our conclusion that Senator Nixon did not obtain any financial gain from the collection and disbursement of the fund by Dana Smith;that Senator Nixon did not violate any federal or state law by reason of the operation of the fund;and that neither the portion of the fund paid by Dana Smith directly to third persons, nor the portion paid to Senator Nixon, to reimburse him for designated office expenses, constituted income to the Senator which was either reportable or taxable as income under applicable tax laws.Now that, my friends, is not Nixon speaking, but that's an independent audit which was requested, because I want the American people to know all the facts, and I am not afraid of having independent people go in and check the facts, and that is exactly what they did.But then I realized that there are still some who may say, and rightfully so--and let me say that I recognize that some will continue to smear regardless of what the truth may be--but that there has been, understandably, some honest misunderstanding on this matter, and there are some that will say, “Well, maybe you were able, Senator, to fake this thing.How can we believe what you say? After all, is there a possibility that maybe you got some sums in cash? Is there a possibility that you may have feathered your own nest?” And so now, what I am going to do--and incidentally this is unprecedented in the history of American politics--I am going at this time to give to this television and radio audio--audience, a complete financial history, everything I've earned, everything I've spent, everything I own.And I want you to know the facts.I'll have to start early.I was born in 1913.Our family was one of modest circumstances, and most of my early life was spent in a store out in East Whittier.It was a grocery store, one of those family enterprises.The only reason we were able to make it go was because my mother and dad had five boys, and we all worked in the store.I worked my way through college, and, to a great extent, through law school.And then in 1940, probably the best thing that ever happened to me happened.I married Pat who's sitting over here.We had a rather difficult time after we were married, like so many of the young couples who may be listening to us.I practiced law.She continued to teach school.Then, in 1942, I went into the service.Let me say that my service record was not a particularly unusual one.I went to the South Pacific.I guess I'm entitled to a couple of battle stars.I got a couple of letters of commendation.But I was just there when the bombs were falling.And then I returned--returned to the United States, and in 1946, I ran for the Congress.When we came out of the war--Pat and I--Pat during the war had worked as a stenographer, and in a bank, and as an economist for a Government agency--and when we came out, the total of our savings, from both my law practice, her teaching and all the time that I was in the war, the total for that entire period was just a little less than 10,000 dollars.Every cent of that, incidentally, was in Government bonds.Well that's where we start, when I go into politics.Now, what have I earned since I went into politics? Well, here it is.I've jotted it down.Let me read the notes.First of all, I've had my salary as a Congressman and as a Senator.Second, I have received a total in this past six years of 1600 dollars from estates which were in my law firm at the time that I
severed my connection with it.And, incidentally, as I said before, I have not engaged in any legal practice and have not accepted any fees from business that came into the firm after I went into politics.I have made an average of approximately 1500 dollars a year from nonpolitical speaking engagements and lectures.And then, fortunately, we've inherited a little money.Pat sold her interest in her father's estate for 3,000 dollars, and I inherited 1500 dollars from my grandfather.We lived rather modestly.For four years we lived in an apartment in Parkfairfax, in Alexandria, Virginia.The rent was 80 dollars a month.And we saved for the time that we could buy a house.Now, that was what we took in.What did we do with this money? What do we have today to show for it? This will surprise you because it is so little, I suppose, as standards generally go of people in public life.First of all, we've got a house in Washington, which cost 41,000 dollars and on which we owe 20,000 dollars.We have a house in Whittier, California which cost 13,000 dollars and on which we owe 3000 dollars.My folks are living there at the present time.I have just 4000 dollars in life insurance, plus my GI policy which I've never been able to convert, and which will run out in two years.I have no life insurance whatever on Pat.I have no life insurance on our two youngsters, Tricia and Julie.I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car.We have our furniture.We have no stocks and bonds of any type.We have no interest of any kind, direct or indirect, in any business.Now, that's what we have.What do we owe? Well in addition to the mortgage, the 20,000 dollar mortgage on the house in Washington, the 10,000 dollar one on the house in Whittier, I owe 4500 dollars to the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., with interest 4 and 1/2 percent.I owe 3500 dollars to my parents, and the interest on that loan, which I pay regularly, because it's the part of the savings they made through the years they were working so hard--I pay regularly 4 percent interest.And then I have a 500 dollar loan, which I have on my life insurance.Well, that's about it.That's what we have.And that's what we owe.It isn't very much.But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours.I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat.But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she'd look good in anything.One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they'll probably be saying this about me, too.We did get something, a gift, after the election.A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog.And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us.We went down to get it.You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted.And our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it “Checkers.” And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.It isn't easy to come before a nationwide audience and bare your life, as I've done.But I want to say some things before I conclude that I think most of you will agree on.Mr.Mitchell, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made this statement--that if a man couldn't afford to be in the United States Senate, he shouldn't run for the Senate.And I just want to make my position clear.I don't agree with Mr.Mitchell when he says that only a rich man should serve his Government in the United States Senate or in the Congress.I don't believe that represents the thinking of the Democratic Party, and I know that it doesn't represent the thinking of the Republican Party.I believe that it's fine that a man like Governor Stevenson, who inherited a fortune from his father, can run for President.But I also feel that it's essential in this country of ours that a man of modest means can also run for President, because, you know, remember Abraham Lincoln, you remember what he said: “God must have loved the common people--he made so many of them.” And now I'm going to suggest some courses of conduct.First of all, you have read in the papers about
other funds, now.Mr.Stevenson apparently had a couple--one of them in which a group of business people paid and helped to supplement the salaries of State employees.Here is where the money went directly into their pockets, and I think that what Mr.Stevenson should do should be to come before the American people, as I have, give the names of the people that contributed to that fund, give the names of the people who put this money into their pockets at the same time that they were receiving money from their State government and see what favors, if any, they gave out for that.I don't condemn Mr.Stevenson for what he did, but until the facts are in there is a doubt that will be raised.And as far as Mr.Sparkman is concerned, I would suggest the same thing.He's had his wife on the payroll.I don't condemn him for that, but I think that he should come before the American people and indicate what outside sources of income he has had.I would suggest that under the circumstances both Mr.Sparkman and Mr.Stevenson should come before the American people, as I have, and make a complete financial statement as to their financial history, and if they don't it will be an admission that they have something to hide.And I think you will agree with me--because, folks, remember, a man that's to be President of the United States, a man that's to be Vice President of the United States, must have the confidence of all the people.And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing.And that's why I suggest that Mr.Stevenson and Mr.Sparkman, since they are under attack, should do what they're doing.Now let me say this: I know that this is not the last of the smears.In spite of my explanation tonight, other smears will be made.Others have been made in the past.And the purpose of the smears, I know, is this: to silence me;to make me let up.Well, they just don't know who they're dealing with.I'm going to tell you this: I remember in the dark days of the Hiss case some of the same columnists, some of the same radio commentators who are attacking me now and misrepresenting my position, were violently opposing me at the time I was after Alger Hiss.But I continued to fight because I knew I was right, and I can say to this great television and radio audience that I have no apologies to the American people for my part in putting Alger Hiss where he is today.And as far as this is concerned, I intend to continue to fight.Why do I feel so deeply? Why do I feel that in spite of the smears, the misunderstanding, the necessity for a man to come up here and bare his soul as I have--why is it necessary for me to continue this fight? And I want to tell you why.Because, you see, I love my country.And I think my country is in danger.And I think the only man that can save America at this time is the man that's running for President, on my ticket--Dwight Eisenhower.You say, “Why do I think it is in danger?” And I say, look at the record.Seven years of the Truman-Acheson Administration, and what's happened? Six hundred million people lost to the Communists.And a war in Korea in which we have lost 117,000 American casualties, and I say to all of you that a policy that results in the loss of 600 million people to the Communists, and a war which cost us 117,000 American casualties isn't good enough for America.And I say that those in the State Department that made the mistakes which caused that war and which resulted in those losses should be kicked out of the State Department just as fast as we get them out of there.And let me say that I know Mr.Stevenson won't do that because he defends the Truman policy, and I know that Dwight Eisenhower will do that, and that he will give America the leadership that it needs.Take the problem of corruption.You've read about the mess in Washington.Mr.Stevenson can't clean it up because he was picked by the man, Truman, under whose Administration the mess was made.You wouldn't trust the man who made the mess to clean it up.That's Truman.And by the same token you can't trust the man who was picked by the man that made the mess to clean it up--and that's Stevenson.And so I say, Eisenhower, who owed nothing to Truman, nothing to the big city bosses--he is the man
that can clean up the mess in Washington.Take Communism.I say that as far as that subject is concerned the danger is great to America.In the Hiss case they got the secrets which enabled them to break the American secret State Department code.They got secrets in the atomic bomb case which enabled them to get the secret of the atomic bomb five years before they would have gotten it by their own devices.And I say that any man who called the Alger Hiss case a red herring isn't fit to be President of the United States.I say that a man who, like Mr.Stevenson, has pooh-poohed and ridiculed the Communist threat in the United States--he said that they are phantoms among ourselves.He has accused us that have attempted to expose the Communists, of looking for Communists in the Bureau of Fisheries and Wildlife.I say that a man who says that isn't qualified to be President of the United States.And I say that the only man who can lead us in this fight to rid the Government of both those who are Communists and those who have corrupted this Government is Eisenhower, because Eisenhower, you can be sure, recognizes the problem, and he knows how to deal with it.Now let me that finally, this evening, I want to read to you, just briefly, excerpts from a letter which I received, a letter which after all this is over no one can take away from us.It reads as follows: Dear Senator Nixon，Since I am only 19 years of age, I can't vote in this presidential election, but believe me if I could you and General Eisenhower would certainly get my vote.My husband is in the Fleet Marines in Korea.He' a corpsman on the front lines and we have a two month old son he's never seen.And I feel confident that with great Americans like you and General Eisenhower in the White House, lonely Americans like myself will be united with their loved ones now in Korea.I only pray to God that you won't be too late.Enclosed is a small check to help you in your campaign.Living on $85 a month, it is all I can afford at present, but let me know what else I can do.Folks, it's a check for 10 dollars, and it's one that I will never cash.And just let me say this: We hear a lot about prosperity these days, but I say why can't we have prosperity built on peace, rather than prosperity built on war? Why can't we have prosperity and an honest Government in Washington, D.C., at the same time? Believe me, we can.And Eisenhower is the man that can lead this crusade to bring us that kind of prosperity.And now, finally, I know that you wonder whether or not I am going to stay on the Republican ticket or resign.Let me say this: I don't believe that I ought to quit, because I am not a quitter.And, incidentally, Pat's not a quitter.After all, her name was Patricia Ryan and she was born on St.Patrick's day, and you know the Irish never quit.But the decision, my friends, is not mine.I would do nothing that would harm the possibilities of Dwight Eisenhower to become President of the United States.And for that reason I am submitting to the Republican National Committee tonight through this television broadcast the decision which it is theirs to make.Let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt.And I am going to ask you to help them decide.Wire and write the Republican National Committee whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off.And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.But just let me say this last word: Regardless of what happens, I'm going to continue this fight.I'm going to campaign up and down in America until we drive the crooks and the Communists and those that defend them out of Washington.And remember folks, Eisenhower is a great man, believe me.He's a great man.And a vote for Eisenhower is a vote for what's good for America.And what's good for America....[interrupted by broadcaster]
六、Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation Mr.Vice President, Mr.Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message.And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago.During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces.I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area.The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves.The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.Hostilities exist.There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph--so help us God.I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.七、Malcolm X
The Ballot or the Bullet Mr.Moderator, Reverend Cleage, Brother Lomax, brothers and sisters, and friends--and I see some enemies.In fact, I think we‘d be fooling ourselves if we had an audience this large and didn‘t realize that there were some enemies present.
This afternoon we want to talk about “The ballot or the bullet.” The ballot or the bullet explains itself.But before we get into it, since this is the year of the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify some things that refer to me personally--concerning my own personal position.I'm still a Muslim.That is, my religion is still Islam.My religion is still Islam.I still credit Mr.Mohammed for what I know and what I am.He's the one who opened my eyes.At present, I'm the Minister of the newly founded Muslim Mosque, Incorporated, which has its offices in the Teresa Hotel, right in the heart of Harlem--that‘s the black belt in New York city.And when we realize that Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister, he‘s the--he heads Abyssinian Baptist Church, but at the same time, he‘s more famous for his political struggling.And Dr.King is a Christian Minister, in Atlanta--from Atlanta Georgia--or in Atlanta, Georgia, but he‘s become more famous for being involved in the civil rights struggle.There‘s another in New York, Reverend Galamison--I don‘t know if you‘ve heard of him out here--he‘s a Christian Minister from Brooklyn, but has become famous for his fight against a segregated school system in Brooklyn.Reverend Cleage, right here, is a Christian Minister, here in Detroit.He‘s the head of the “Freedom Now Party.” All of these are Christian Ministers--All of these are Christian Ministers, but they don‘t come to us as Christian Ministers.They come to us as fighters in some other category.I‘m a Muslim minister.The same as they are Christian Ministers, I‘m a Muslim minister.And I don‘t believe in fighting today in any one front, but on all fronts.In fact, I‘m a “Black Nationalist Freedom Fighter.” Islam is my religion, but I believe my religion is my personal business.It governs my personal life, my personal morals.And my religious philosophy is personal between me and the God in whom I believe;just as the religious philosophy of these others is between them and the God in whom they believe.And this is best this way.Were we to come out here discussing religion, we‘d have too many differences from the outstart and we could never get together.So today, though Islam is my religious philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism.You and I--As I say, if we bring up religion we‘ll have differences;we‘ll have arguments;and we‘ll never be able to get together.But if we keep our religion at home, keep our religion in the closet, keep our religion between ourselves and our God, but when we come out here, we have a fight that‘s common to all of us against a [sic] enemy who is common to all of us.The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community.The--The time--The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone.By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another negro into the community and get you and me to support him so he can use him to lead us astray--those days are long gone too.The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that if you and I are going to live in a Black community--and that‘s where we‘re going to live, 'cause as soon as you move into one of their--soon as you move out of the Black community into their community, it‘s mixed for a period of time, but they‘re gone and you‘re right there all by yourself again.We must--We must understand the politics of our community and we must know what politics is supposed to produce.We must know what part politics play in our lives.And until we become politically mature we will always be mislead, lead astray, or deceived or maneuvered into supporting someone politically who doesn‘t have the good of our community at heart.So the political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we will have to carry on a program, a political program, of re-education to open our people's eyes, make us become more politically conscious, politically mature, and then we will--whenever we get ready to cast our ballot, that ballot will be--will be cast for a man of the community who has the good of the
community of heart.The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community.You would never--You can‘t open up a black store in a white community.White men won‘t even patronize you.And he‘s not wrong.He‘s got sense enough to look out for himself.You the one who don‘t have sense enough to look out for yourself.The white man--The white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of his community.But you will let anybody come in and take control of the economy of your community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs, control the businesses, under the pretext that you want to integrate.No, you're out of your mind.The political--The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of reeducation to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer;the community out which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer.And because these negroes, who have been mislead, misguided, are breaking their necks to take their money and spend it with The Man, The Man is becoming richer and richer, and you‘re becoming poorer and poorer.And then what happens? The community in which you live becomes a slum.It becomes a ghetto.The conditions become run down.And then you have the audacity to--to complain about poor housing in a run-down community.Why you run it down yourself when you take your dollar out.And you and I are in a double-track, because not only do we lose by taking our money someplace else and spending it, when we try and spend it in our own community we‘re trapped because we haven‘t had sense enough to set up stores and control the businesses of our community.The man who‘s controlling the stores in our community is a man who doesn‘t look like we do.He‘s a man who doesn‘t even live in the community.So you and I, even when we try and spend our money in the block where we live or the area where we live, we‘re spending it with a man who, when the sun goes down, takes that basket full of money in another part of the town.So we‘re trapped, trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped.Anywhere we go we find that we‘re trapped.And every kind of solution that someone comes up with is just another trap.But the political and economic philosophy of Black Nationalism--the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism shows our people the importance of setting up these little stores and developing them and expanding them into larger operations.Woolworth didn‘t start out big like they are today.They started out with a dime store and expanded and expanded and then expanded until today, they‘re are all over the country and all over the world, and they get to some of everybody‘s money.Now this is what you and I--General Motors [is] the same way.They didn‘t start out like it is.It started out just a little rat race type operation.And it expanded and it expanded until today it's where it is right now.And you and I have to make a start and the best place to start is right in the community where we live.So our people not only have to be reeducated to the importance of supporting black business, but the black man himself has to be made aware of the importance of going into business.And once you and I go into business, we own and operate at least the businesses in our community.What we will be doing is developing a situation wherein we will actually be able to create employment for the people in the community.And once you can create some--some employment in the community where you live it will eliminate the necessity of you and me having to act ignorantly and disgracefully, boycotting and picketing some “cracker” some place else trying to beg him for a job.Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job, you‘re in bad shape.When you have--He is your enemy.Let me tell you, you wouldn‘t be in this country if some enemy hadn‘t kidnapped you and brought you here.On the other hand, some of you think you came here on the Mayflower.
So as you can see brothers and sisters, today--this afternoon, it's not our intention to discuss religion.We‘re going to forget religion.If we bring up religion, we‘ll be in an argument, and the best way to keep away from arguments and differences, as I said earlier, put your religion at home--in the closet.Keep it between you and your God.Because if it hasn‘t done anything more for you than it has, you need to forget it anyway.Whether you are--Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Nationalist, we all have the same problem.They don‘t hang you because you‘re a Baptist;they hang you 'cause you‘re black.They don‘t attack me because I‘m a Muslim;they attack me 'cause I‘m black.They attack all of us for the same reason;all of us catch hell from the same enemy.We‘re all in the same bag, in the same boat.We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation--all of them from the same enemy.The government has failed us;you can‘t deny that.Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you walkin' around here singing ―We Shall Overcome,‖ the government has failed us.This is part of what‘s wrong with you--you do too much singing.Today it‘s time to stop singing and start swinging.You can‘t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom.Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn‘t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world;swinging helped him become the heavyweight champion.This government has failed us;the government itself has failed us, and the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us.And once we see that all these other sources to which we‘ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves.We need a self help program, a do-it--a-do-it-yourself philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy, a it‘s-already-too-late philosophy.This is what you and I need to get with, and the only time--the only way we're going to solve our problem is with a self-help program.Before we can get a self-help program started we have to have a self-help philosophy.Black Nationalism is a self-help philosophy.What's so good about it? You can stay right in the church where you are and still take Black Nationalism as your philosophy.You can stay in any kind of civic organization that you belong to and still take black nationalism as your philosophy.You can be an atheist and still take black nationalism as your philosophy.This is a philosophy that eliminates the necessity for division and argument.'Cause if you're black you should be thinking black, and if you are black and you not thinking black at this late date, well I‘m sorry for you.Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern.Once you change your thought pattern, you change your--your attitude.Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action.As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you‘ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you‘ll be in some kind of sit-down action.They‘ll have you sitting in everywhere.It‘s not so good to refer to what you‘re going to do as a “sit-in.” That right there castrates you.Right there it brings you down.What--What goes with it? What--Think of the image of a someone sitting.An old woman can sit.An old man can sit.A chump can sit.A coward can sit.Anything can sit.Well you and I been sitting long enough, and it‘s time today for us to start doing some standing, and some fighting to back that up.When we look like--at other parts of this earth upon which we live, we find that black, brown, red, and yellow people in Africa and Asia are getting their independence.They‘re not getting it by singing ―We Shall Overcome.‖ No, they‘re getting it through nationalism.It is nationalism that brought about the independence of the people in Asia.Every nation in Asia gained its independence through the philosophy of nationalism.Every nation on the African continent that has gotten its independence brought it about through the philosophy of nationalism.And it will take black nationalism--that to bring about the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country where we have suffered colonialism for the past 400 years.America is just as much a colonial power as England ever was.America is just as much a colonial
power as France ever was.In fact, America is more so a colonial power than they because she‘s a hypocritical colonial power behind it.What is 20th--What do you call second class citizenship? Why, that‘s colonization.Second class citizenship is nothing but 20th century slavery.How you gonna tell me you‘re a second class citizen? They don‘t have second class citizenship in any other government on this earth.They just have slaves and people who are free.Well this country is a hypocrite.They try and make you think they set you free by calling you a second class citizen.No, you‘re nothing but a 20th century slave.Just as it took nationalism to move--to remove colonialism from Asia and Africa, it‘ll take black nationalism today to remove colonialism from the backs and the minds of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country.And 1964 looks like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet.Why does it look like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet? Because Negroes have listened to the trickery, and the lies, and the false promises of the white man now for too long.And they‘re fed up.They‘ve become disenchanted.They‘ve become disillusioned.They‘ve become dissatisfied, and all of this has built up frustrations in the black community that makes the black community throughout America today more explosive than all of the atomic bombs the Russians can ever invent.Whenever you got a racial powder keg sitting in your lap, you‘re in more trouble than if you had an atomic powder keg sitting in your lap.When a racial powder keg goes off, it doesn‘t care who it knocks out the way.Understand this, it‘s dangerous.And in 1964 this seems to be the year, because what can the white man use now to fool us after he put down that march on Washington? And you see all through that now.He tricked you, had you marching down to Washington.Yes, had you marching back and forth between the feet of a dead man named Lincoln and another dead man named George Washington singing ―We Shall Overcome.‖ He made a chump out of you.He made a fool out of you.He made you think you were going somewhere and you end up going nowhere but between Lincoln and Washington.So today, our people are disillusioned.They‘ve become disenchanted.They‘ve become dissatisfied, and in their frustrations they want action.And in 1964 you‘ll see this young black man, this new generation asking for the ballot or the bullet.That old Uncle Tom action is outdated.The young generation don‘t want to hear anything about the odds are against us.What do we care about odds? When this country here was first being founded there were 13 colonies.The--The whites were colonized.They were fed up with this taxation without representation, so some of them stood up and said ―liberty or death.‖ Though I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan, the white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books.He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot, and George Washington, wasn‘t nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.Liberty or death was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English.They didn‘t care about the odds.Why they faced the wrath of the entire British Empire.And in those days they used to say that the British Empire was so vast and so powerful when the sun--the sun would never set on it.This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire ―liberty or death.‖
And here you have 22 million Afro-American black people today catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw.And I‘m--I‘m here to tell you in case you don‘t know it--that you got a new--you got a new generation of black people in this country who don‘t care anything whatsoever about odds.They don‘t want to hear you old Uncle Tom handkerchief heads talking about the odds.No.This is a
new generation.If they‘re gonna draft these young black men and send them over to Korea or South Vietnam to face 800 million Chinese--if you‘re not afraid of those odds, you shouldn‘t be afraid of these odds.Why is--Why does this loom to be such an explosive political year? Because this is the year of politics.This is the year when all of the white politicians are going to come into the Negro community.You never see them until election time.You can‘t find them until election time.They‘re going to come in with false promises, and as they make these false promises they're gonna feed our frustrations and this will only serve to make matters worse.I‘m no politician.I‘m not even a student of politics.I‘m not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it.I‘m one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats, one of the 22 million black victims of the Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism.And when I speak, I don‘t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, *nor an American.* I speak as a victim of America‘s so-called democracy.You and I have never seen democracy;all we‘ve seen is hypocrisy.When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who have--who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism.We don‘t see any American dream;we‘ve experienced only the American nightmare.We haven‘t benefited from America‘s democracy;we‘ve only suffered from America‘s hypocrisy.And the generation that‘s coming up now can see it and are not afraid to say it.If you--If you go to jail, so what? If you black, you were born in jail.If you black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South.Stop talking about the South.Long as you south of the--Long as you south of the Canadian border, you‘re south.Don‘t call Governor Wallace a Dixie governor;Romney is a Dixie governor.Twenty-two million black victims of Americanism are waking up and they‘re gaining a new political consciousness, becoming politically mature.And as they become--develop this political maturity, they‘re able to see the recent trends in these political elections.They see that the whites are so evenly divided that every time they vote the race is so close they have to go back and count the votes all over again.And that...which means that any block, any minority that has a block of votes that stick together is in a strategic position.Either way you go, that‘s who gets it.You‘re--You're in a position to determine who will go to the White House and who will stay in the dog house.You‘re the one who has that power.You can keep Johnson in Washington D.C., or you can send him back to his Texas cotton patch.You‘re the one who sent Kennedy to Washington.You‘re the one who put the present Democratic Administration in Washington D.C.The whites were evenly divided.It was the fact that you threw 80 percent of your votes behind the Democrats that put the Democrats in the White House.When you see this, you can see that the Negro vote is the key factor.And despite the fact that you are in a position to--to be the determining factor, what do you get out of it? The Democrats have been in Washington D.C.only because of the Negro vote.They‘ve been down there four years, and they're--all other legislation they wanted to bring up they brought it up and gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up you.And now, they bring up you.You put them first, and they put you last, 'cause you‘re a chump, a political chump.In Washington D.C., in the House of Representatives, there are 257 who are Democrats;only 177 are Republican.In the Senate there are 67 Democrats;only 33 are Republicans.The Party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and still they can‘t keep their promise to you, 'cause you‘re a chump.Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that Party can‘t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you‘re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that Party，
you‘re not only a chump, but you‘re a traitor to your race.And what kind of alibi do they come up with? They try and pass the buck to the Dixiecrats.Now back during the days when you were blind, deaf, and dumb, ignorant, politically immature, naturally you went along with that.But today as your eyes come open, and you develop political maturity, you‘re able to see and think for yourself, and you can see that a Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.You look at the structure of the government that controls this country;it‘s controlled by 16 senatorial committees and 20 congressional committees.Of the 16 senatorial committees that run the government, 10 of them are in the hands of Southern segregationists.Of the 20 congressional committees that run the government, 12 of them in the--are in the hands of Southern segregationists.And they're going to tell you and me that the South lost the war.You, today, have--are in the hands of a government of segregationists, racists, white supremacists who belong to the Democratic party, but disguise themselves as Dixiecrats.A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat.Whoever runs the Democrats is also the father of the Dixiecrats, and the father of all of them is sitting in the White House.I say and I say it again: You got a President who‘s nothing but a Southern segregationist from the state of Texas.They‘ll lynch you in Texas as quick as they‘ll lynch you in Mississippi.Only in--in Texas they lynch you with a Texas accent;in Mississippi they lynch you with a Mississippi accent.And the first thing the cracker does when he comes in power, he takes all the Negro leaders and invites them for coffee to show that he‘s alright.And those Uncle Toms can‘t pass up the coffee.They come away from the coffee table telling you and me that this man is alright 'cause he‘s from the South, and since he‘s from the South he can deal with the South.Look at the logic that they‘re using.What about Eastland? He‘s from the South.Make him the President.He can--If Johnson is a good man 'cause he‘s from Texas, and being from Texas will enable him to deal with the South, Eastland can deal with the South better than Johnson.Oh, I say you been mislead.You been had.You been took.I was in Washington a couple weeks ago while the Senators were filibustering, and I noticed in the back of the Senate a huge map, and on this map it showed the distribution of Negroes in America, and surprisingly the same Senators that were involved in the filibuster were from the states where there were the most Negroes.Why were they filibustering the civil rights legislation? Because the civil rights legislation is supposed to guarantee voting rights to Negroes in those states, and those senators from those states know that if the Negroes in those states can vote, those senators are down the drain.The Representatives of those states go down the drain.And in the Constitution of this country it has a stipulation wherein whenever the rights, the voting rights, of people in a certain district are violated, then the Representative who--who‘s from that particular district, according to the Constitution, is supposed to be expelled from the Congress.Now, if this particular aspect of the Constitution was enforced, why you wouldn‘t have a cracker in Washington D.C.But what would happen when you expel the Dixiecrat, you‘re expelling the Democrat.When you destroy the power of the Dixiecrat, you‘re destroying the power--power of the Democratic Party.So how in the world can the Democratic Party in the South actually side with you in sincerity, when all of its power is based in the--in the South? These Northern Democrats are in cahoots with the Southern Democrats.They‘re playing a giant con game, a political con game.You know how it goes.One of them--One of them comes to you and makes believe he's for you, and he‘s in cahoots with the other one that‘s not for you.Why? Because neither one of them is for you, but they got to make you go with one of them or the other.So this is a con game.And this is what they‘ve been doing with you and me all these years.First thing Johnson got off the plane when he become President, he asked ―Where‘s Dicky?‖ You
know who ―Dicky‖ is? Dicky is old Southern cracker Richard--Richard Russell.Look here, yes.Lyndon B.Johnson‘s best friend is the one who is the head, who‘s heading the forces that are filibustering civil rights legislation.You tell me how in the hell is he going to be Johnson‘s best friend? How can Johnson be his friend and your friend too? No, that man is too tricky.Especially if his friend is still old Dicky.Whenever the Negroes keep the Democrats in power, they‘re keeping the Dixiecrats in power.Is this true? A vote for a Democrat is nothing but a vote for a Dixiecrat.I know you don‘t like me saying that, but I...I‘m not the kind of person who come here to say what you like.I‘m going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not.Up here, in the North you have the same thing.The Democratic Party don‘t--don't do it--they don‘t do it that way.They got a thing that they call gerrymandering.They--They maneuver you out of power.Even though you can vote, they fix it so you‘re voting for nobody;they got you going and coming.In the South, they‘re outright political wolves.In the North, they‘re political foxes.A fox and a wolf are both canine, both belong to the dog family.Now you take your choice.You going to choose a Northern dog or a Southern dog? Because either dog you choose I guarantee you you‘ll still be in the dog house.This is why I say it‘s the ballot or the bullet.It‘s liberty or it‘s death.It‘s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.America today finds herself in a unique situation.Historically, revolutions are bloody.Oh, yes, they are.They haven‘t never had a blood-less revolution, or a non-violent revolution.That don‘t happen even in Hollywood.You don‘t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don‘t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it.Revolutions overturn systems.Revolutions destroy systems.A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position.She‘s the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a blood-less revolution.The--The Russian revolution was bloody;Chinese revolution was bloody;French revolution was bloody;Cuban revolution was bloody;and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution.But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won‘t take bloodshed.All she‘s got to do is give the black man in this country everything that‘s due him--everything.I hope that the white man can see this, 'cause if he don‘t see it you‘re finished.If you don‘t see it you‘re going to be coming--you‘re going to become involved in some action in which you don‘t have a chance.And we don‘t care anything about your atomic bomb;it's--it‘s useless because other countries have atomic bombs.When two or three different countries have atomic bombs, nobody can use them, so it means that the white man today is without a weapon.If you‘re gonna--If you want some action, you gotta come on down to Earth.And there's more black people on Earth than there are white people on Earth.I only got a couple more minutes.The white man can never win another war on the ground.His days of war, victory, his great--his days of that ground victory are over.Can I prove it? Yes.Take all the action that‘s going on on this earth right now that he‘s involved in.Tell me where he‘s winning.Nowhere.Why some rice farmers--some rice farmers--some rice eaters ran him out of Korea.Yes, they ran him out of Korea.Rice eaters with nothing but gym shoes and a rifle and a bowl of rice took him and his tanks and his napalm and all that other action he‘s supposed to have and ran him across the Yalu.Why? 'Cause the day that he can win on the ground has passed.Up in French Indo-China those little peasants, rice growers, took on the might of the French army and ran all the Frenchmen--you remember Dien Bien Phu.No.The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa.They didn‘t have anything but a rifle.The French had
all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerilla action on, and a--and a--and a white man can‘t fight a guerilla warfare.Guerilla action takes heart, takes nerve, and he doesn‘t have that.He‘s brave when he‘s got tanks.He‘s brave when he‘s got planes.He‘s brave when he‘s got bombs.He‘s brave when he got a whole lot of company along with him, but you take that little man from Africa and Asia, turn him loose in the woods with a blade, with a blade--that‘s all he needs, all he needs is a blade –-and when the sun comes down--goes down and it‘s dark, it‘s even-steven.So it‘s the--it's the ballot or the bullet.Today our people can see that we‘re faced with a government conspiracy.This government has failed us.The senators who are filibustering concerning your and my rights, that's the government.Don‘t say it‘s Southern senators.This is the government;this is a government filibuster.It‘s not a segregationist filibuster.It‘s a government filibuster.Any kind of activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, that's the government.Any kind of dilly-dallying, that‘s the government.Any kind of pussy-footing, that‘s the government.Any kind of act that‘s designed to delay or deprive you and me right now of getting full rights, that‘s the government that's responsible.And any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress.Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.So those of us whose political, and economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism have become involved in the civil rights struggle.We have injected ourselves into the civil rights struggle, and we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights.As long as you're--As long as you're fighting on the level of civil rights, you‘re under Uncle Sam‘s jurisdiction.You‘re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem.He created the problem.He‘s the criminal.You don‘t take your case to the criminal;you take your criminal to court.When the government of South Africa began to trample upon the human rights of the people of South Africa, they were taken to the U.N.When the government of Portugal began to trample upon the--the rights of our brothers and sisters in Angola, it was taken before the U.N.Why even the white man took the Hungarian question to the U.N.And just this week Chief Justice Goldberg was crying over 3 million Jews in Russia about their human rights, charging Russia with violating the U.N.charter because of its mistreatment of the human rights of Jews in Russia.Now you tell me how can the plight of everybody on this earth reach the halls of the United Nations, and you have 22 million Afro-Americans whose churches are being bombed, whose little girls are being murdered, whose--whose leaders are being shot down in broad daylight.Now you tell me why the leaders of this struggle have never taken it before the United Nations.So our next move is to take the entire civil rights struggle problem into the United Nations and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans....[short audio gap...content uncertain] [Uncle Sam...] and still has the audacity or the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world.Not only is he a crook, he‘s a hypocrite.There he is standing up in front of other people, Uncle Sam, with the blood of your and mine mothers and fathers on his hands, with the blood dripping down his jaws like a bloody-jawed wolf, and still got the nerve to point his finger at other countries.You can‘t even get civil rights legislation.And this man has got the nerve to stand up and talk about South Africa, or talk about Nazi Germany, or talk about [unclear].Nah, no more days like those.So, I say in my conclusion the only way we're going to solve it--we gotta unite in unity and harmony, and Black Nationalism is the key.How we gonna overcome the tendency to be at each other's throats that always exists in our neighborhoods? And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy of the white
man has always been divide and conquer.He keeps us divided in order to conquer us.He tells you I‘m for separation and you're for integration to keep us fighting with each other.No, I‘m not for separation and you‘re not for integration.What you and I is for is freedom.Only you think that integration will get you freedom, I think separation will get me freedom.We both got the same objective.We just got different ways of getting at it.So I...studied this man, Billy Graham, who preaches White Nationalism.That‘s what he preaches.I say that‘s what he preaches.The whole church structure in this country is White Nationalism.You go inside a white church--that‘s what they preaching: White Nationalism.They got Jesus white, Mary white, God white, everybody white--that‘s White Nationalism.So what he does--the way he--the way he--the way he circumvents the--the jealousy and envy that he ordinarily would incur among the heads of the church, wherever he go into an area where the church already is you going into trouble, 'cause they got that thing--what you call it--syndicated, they got a syndicate just like the Racketeers have.I‘m going to say what‘s on my mind 'cause the churches are, the preachers already proved to you that they got a syndicate.And when you're out in the rackets, whenever you're getting in another man‘s territory, you know, they gang up on you.And that‘s the same way with you--you ran into the same thing.So how Billy Graham gets around that, instead of going into somebody else‘s territory, like he going to start up a new church, he don't--he doesn‘t try to start a church.He just goes in preaching Christ.And he says everybody who believe in Him, you go wherever--you go wherever you find him.So this helps all the churches and so since it helps all the churches they don‘t fight him.Well, we gonna do the same thing, only our gospel is Black Nationalism.His gospel is White Nationalism;our gospel is Black Nationalism.And the gospel of Black Nationalism, as I told you, means you should control your own--the politics of your community, the economy of your community, and all of the society in which you live should be under your control.And...once you...feel that this philosophy will solve your problem, go join any church where that‘s preached.Don‘t join a church where White Nationalism is preached.Now you can go to a negro church and be exposed to White Nationalism, 'cause you are--when you walk in a negro church and a white Mary and some white angels--that Negro church is preaching White Nationalism.But when you go to a church and you see the pastor of that church with a philosophy and a program that‘s designed to bring black people together and elevate black people--join that church.Join that church.If you see where the NAACP is preaching and practicing that which is designed to make Black Nationalism materialize--join the NAACP.Join any kind of organization--civic, religious, fraternal, political, or otherwise that‘s based on lifting the black man up and making him master of his own community.It‘ll be--It‘ll be the--the ballot or it‘ll be the bullet.It‘ll be liberty or it‘ll be death.And if you‘re not ready to pay that price don‘t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.One more thing: I was on a program in Illinois recently with Senator Paul Douglas, a so-called liberal, so-called Democrat, so-called white man, at...which time he told me that our African brothers were not interested in us in Africa.He said the Africans are not interested in the American Negro.I knew he was lying, but during the next two or three weeks it‘s my intention and plan to make a tour of our African homeland.And I hope that when I come back, I‘ll be able to come back and let you know how our African brothers and sisters feel toward us.And I know before I go there that they love us.We‘re one;we‘re the same;the same man who has colonized them all these years, colonized you and me too all these years.And all we have to do now is wake up and work in unity and harmony and the battle will be over.I want to thank the Freedom Now Party and the [unclear].I want to thank Milton and Richard Henley
for inviting me here this afternoon, and also Reverend Cleage.And I want them to know that anything that I can ever do, at any time, to work with anybody in any kind of program that is sincerely designed to eliminate the political, the economic, and the social evils that confront all of our people, in Detroit and elsewhere, all they got to do is give me a telephone call and I‘ll be on the next jet right on into the city.八、Ronald Reagan The Space Shuttle “Challenger” Tragedy Address Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans.Today is a day for mourning and remembering.Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger.We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country.This is truly a national loss.Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground.But we've never lost an astronaut in flight.We've never had a tragedy like this.And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle.But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly.We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe.We mourn their loss as a nation together.For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy.But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much.Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, “Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy.” They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths.They wished to serve, and they did.They served all of us.We've grown used to wonders in this century.It's hard to dazzle us.But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that.We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun.We're still pioneers.They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off.I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen.It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery.It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons.The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted;it belongs to the brave.The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program.And what happened today does nothing to diminish it.We don't hide our space program.We don't keep secrets and cover things up.We do it all up front and in public.That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.We'll continue our quest in space.There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space.Nothing ends here;our hopes and our journeys continue.I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: “Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades.And we know of your anguish.We share it.” There's a coincidence today.On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama.In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.” Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” Thank you.九、Lyndon Baines Johnson
Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Voting Legislation
“We Shall Overcome” Mr.Speaker, Mr.President, Members of the Congress: I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom.So it was at Lexington and Concord.So it was a century ago at Appomattox.So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans.Many were brutally assaulted.One good man, a man of God, was killed.There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma.There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans.But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight.For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth.Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.In our time we have come to live with the moments of great crisis.Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues--issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression.But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself.Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values, and the purposes, and the meaning of our beloved nation.The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue.And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” There is no Negro problem.There is no Southern problem.There is no Northern problem.There is only an American problem.And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans.We are met here as Americans to solve that problem.This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose.The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: “All men are created equal,” “government by consent of the governed,” “give me liberty or give me death.” Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives.Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man.This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions;it cannot be found in his power, or in his position.It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others.It says that he shall share in
freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.To apply any other test--to deny a man his hopes because of his color, or race, or his religion, or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy.The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders.The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people.Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult.But about this there can and should be no argument.Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right.There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right.The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent.And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application.And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test.The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test.He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law.And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write.For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin.Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination.No law that we now have on the books--and I have helped to put three of them there--can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it.In such a case our duty must be clear to all of us.The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color.We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution.We must now act in obedience to that oath.Wednesday, I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote.The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow.After they have reviewed it, it will come here formally as a bill.I am grateful for this opportunity to come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my friends, to give them my views, and to visit with my former colleagues.I've had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow, but which I will submit to the clerks tonight.But I want to really discuss with you now, briefly, the main proposals of this legislation.This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections--Federal, State, and local--which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution.It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government, if the State officials refuse to register them.It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote.Finally, this legislation will ensure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting.I will welcome the suggestions from all of the Members of Congress--I have no doubt that I will get some--on ways and means to strengthen this law and to make it effective.But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out the command of the Constitution.To those who seek to avoid action by their National Government in their own communities, who want
to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple: open your polling places to all your people.Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin.Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land.There is no constitutional issue here.The command of the Constitution is plain.There is no moral issue.It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.There is no issue of States' rights or national rights.There is only the struggle for human rights.I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer.But the last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the Congress, it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections.That civil rights bill was passed after eight long months of debate.And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for my signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated.This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, or no hesitation, or no compromise with our purpose.We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in.And we ought not, and we cannot, and we must not wait another eight months before we get a bill.We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone.So I ask you to join me in working long hours--nights and weekends, if necessary--to pass this bill.And I don't make that request lightly.For from the window where I sit with the problems of our country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over.What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America.It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.Their cause must be our cause too.Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.And we shall overcome.As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are.I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society.But a century has passed, more than a hundred years since the Negro was freed.And he is not fully free tonight.It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation;but emancipation is a proclamation, and not a fact.A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised.And yet the Negro is not equal.A century has passed since the day of promise.And the promise is un-kept.The time of justice has now come.I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back.It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come.And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.For Negroes are not the only victims.How many white children have gone uneducated? How many white families have lived in stark poverty? How many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we've wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror? And so I say to all of you here, and to all in the nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future.This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all, all black and white, all North and South, sharecropper and city dweller.These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease.They're our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor.And these enemies too--poverty, disease, and ignorance: we shall overcome.
Now let none of us in any section look with prideful righteousness on the troubles in another section, or the problems of our neighbors.There's really no part of America where the promise of equality has been fully kept.In Buffalo as well as in Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as Selma, Americans are struggling for the fruits of freedom.This is one nation.What happens in Selma or in Cincinnati is a matter of legitimate concern to every American.But let each of us look within our own hearts and our own communities, and let each of us put our shoulder to the wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists.As we meet here in this peaceful, historic chamber tonight, men from the South, some of whom were at Iwo Jima, men from the North who have carried Old Glory to far corners of the world and brought it back without a stain on it, men from the East and from the West, are all fighting together without regard to religion, or color, or region, in Vietnam.Men from every region fought for us across the world twenty years ago.And now in these common dangers and these common sacrifices, the South made its contribution of honor and gallantry no less than any other region in the Great Republic--and in some instances, a great many of them, more.And I have not the slightest doubt that good men from everywhere in this country, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Golden Gate to the harbors along the Atlantic, will rally now together in this cause to vindicate the freedom of all Americans.For all of us owe this duty;and I believe that all of us will respond to it.Your President makes that request of every American.The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro.His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation.His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change, designed to stir reform.He has called upon us to make good the promise of America.And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy.For at the real heart of battle for equality is a deep seated belief in the democratic process.Equality depends not on the force of arms or tear gas but depends upon the force of moral right;not on recourse to violence but on respect for law and order.And there have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others as the days come and go.But I pledge you tonight that we intend to fight this battle where it should be fought--in the courts, and in the Congress, and in the hearts of men.We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly.But the right of free speech does not carry with it, as has been said, the right to holler fire in a crowded theater.We must preserve the right to free assembly.But free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic.We do have a right to protest, and a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the constitutional rights of our neighbors.And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office.We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek: progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values.In Selma, as elsewhere, we seek and pray for peace.We seek order.We seek unity.But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest.For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.In Selma tonight--and we had a good day there--as in every city, we are working for a just and peaceful settlement And we must all remember that after this speech I am making tonight, after the
police and the FBI and the Marshals have all gone, and after you have promptly passed this bill, the people of Selma and the other cities of the Nation must still live and work together.And when the attention of the nation has gone elsewhere, they must try to heal the wounds and to build a new community.This cannot be easily done on a battleground of violence, as the history of the South itself shows.It is in recognition of this that men of both races have shown such an outstandingly impressive responsibility in recent days--last Tuesday, again today.The bill that I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill.But, in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program.Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races.Because all Americans just must have the right to vote.And we are going to give them that right.All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship--regardless of race.And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship--regardless of race.But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right.It requires a trained mind and a healthy body.It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.Of course, people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check.So we want to open the gates to opportunity.But we're also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school.Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish.My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry.And they knew, even in their youth, the pain of prejudice.They never seemed to know why people disliked them.But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes.I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do.But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965.It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.But now I do have that chance--and I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it.And I hope that you will use it with me.This is the richest and the most powerful country which ever occupied this globe.The might of past empires is little compared to ours.But I do not want to be the President who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion.I want to be the President who educated young children to the wonders of their world.I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be tax-payers instead of tax-eaters.I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election.I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men, and who promoted love among the people of all races and all regions and all parties.I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth.And so, at the request of your beloved Speaker, and the Senator from Montana, the majority leader, the Senator from Illinois, the minority leader, Mr.McCulloch, and other Members of both parties, I came
here tonight--not as President Roosevelt came down one time, in person, to veto a bonus bill, not as President Truman came down one time to urge the passage of a railroad bill--but I came down here to ask you to share this task with me, and to share it with the people that we both work for.I want this to be the Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, which did all these things for all these people.Beyond this great chamber, out yonder in fifty States, are the people that we serve.Who can tell what deep and unspoken hopes are in their hearts tonight as they sit there and listen.We all can guess, from our own lives, how difficult they often find their own pursuit of happiness, how many problems each little family has.They look most of all to themselves for their futures.But I think that they also look to each of us.Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says in Latin: “God has favored our undertaking.” God will not favor everything that we do.It is rather our duty to divine His will.But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.十、Mario Matthew Cuomo
1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address Thank you very much.On behalf of the great Empire State and the whole family of New York, let me thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention.Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric.Let me instead use this valuable opportunity to deal immediately with the questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital to the American people.Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures.The President said that he didn't understand that fear.He said, “Why, this country is a shining city on a hill.” And the President is right.In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory.A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well.But there's another city;there's another part to the shining the city;the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one;where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it.Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there.And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show.There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day.There is despair, Mr.President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.In fact, Mr.President, this is a nation--Mr.President you ought to know that this nation is more a “Tale of Two Cities” than it is just a “Shining City on a Hill.” Maybe, maybe, Mr.President, if you visited some more places;maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds;maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel.Maybe--Maybe, Mr.President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there;maybe, Mr.President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you
needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.Maybe--Maybe, Mr.President.But I'm afraid not.Because the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be.President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism.Survival of the fittest.“Government can't do everything,” we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest.Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.You know, the Republicans called it “trickle-down” when Hoover tried it.Now they call it “supply side.” But it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods.But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers.It's an old story.It's as old as our history.The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence.The Republicans--The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail.“The strong”--“The strong,” they tell us, “will inherit the land.” We Democrats believe in something else.We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once.Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees--wagon train after wagon train--to new frontiers of education, housing, peace;the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family;lifting them up into the wagon on the way;blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans--all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence.And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence.And it would be wrong to forget that.So, here we are at this convention to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the future for ourselves and for our children.Today our great Democratic Party, which has saved this nation from depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption, is called upon to do it again--this time to save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of eventual fiscal disaster, and most of all from the fear of a nuclear holocaust.That's not going to be easy.Mo Udall is exactly right--it won't be easy.And in order to succeed, we must answer our opponent's polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling reasonableness and rationality.We must win this case on the merits.We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship to the reality, the hard substance of things.And we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound;not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses.We must make--We must make the American people hear our “Tale of Two Cities.” We must convince them that we don't have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.Now, we will have no chance to do that if what comes out of this convention is a babel of arguing voices.If that's what's heard throughout the campaign, dissident sounds from all sides, we will have no chance to tell our message.To succeed we will have to surrender some small parts of our individual interests, to build a platform that we can all stand on, at once, and comfortably--proudly singing out.We need--We need a platform we can all agree to so that we can sing out the truth for the nation to hear, in chorus, its logic so clear and commanding that no slick Madison Avenue commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to muffle the sound of the truth.
And we Democrats must unite.We Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite, because surely the Republicans won't bring this country together.Their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble.The Republicans are willing to treat that division as victory.They would cut this nation in half, into those temporarily better off and those worse off than before, and they would call that division recovery.Now, we should not--we should not be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of unifying is difficult, even wrenching at times.Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class.In our family are gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New York, to the enlightened affluent of the gold coasts at both ends of the nation.And in between is the heart of our constituency--the middle class, the people not rich enough to be worry-free, but not poor enough to be on welfare;the middle class--those people who work for a living because they have to, not because some psychiatrist told them it was a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity.White collar and blue collar.Young professionals.Men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contracts that they need to prove their worth.We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream.We speak for ethnics who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America.We speak--We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule “thou shalt not sin against equality,” a rule so simple--
I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will.It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A.We speak--We speak for young people demanding an education and a future.We speak for senior citizens.We speak for senior citizens who are terrorized by the idea that their only security, their Social Security, is being threatened.We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to preserve our environment from greed and from stupidity.And we speak for reasonable people who are fighting to preserve our very existence from a macho intransigence that refuses to make intelligent attempts to discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy.They refuse.They refuse, because they believe we can pile missiles so high that they will pierce the clouds and the sight of them will frighten our enemies into submission.Now we're proud of this diversity as Democrats.We're grateful for it.We don't have to manufacture it the way the Republicans will next month in Dallas, by propping up mannequin delegates on the convention floor.But we, while we're proud of this diversity, we pay a price for it.The different people that we represent have different points of view.And sometimes they compete and even debate, and even argue.That's what our primaries were all about.But now the primaries are over and it is time, when we pick our candidates and our platform here, to lock arms and move into this campaign together.If you need any more inspiration to put some small part of your own difference aside to create this consensus, then all you need to do is to reflect on what the Republican policy of divide and cajole has done to this land since 1980.Now the President has asked the American people to judge him on whether or not he's fulfilled the promises he made four years ago.I believe, as Democrats, we ought to accept that challenge.And just for a moment let us consider what he has said and what he's done.Inflation--Inflation is down since 1980, but not because of the supply-side miracle promised to us by the President.Inflation was reduced the old-fashioned way: with a recession, the worst since 1932.Now how did we--We could have brought inflation down that way.How did he do it? 55,000 bankruptcies;two years of massive unemployment;200,000 farmers and ranchers forced off the land;more homeless--more homeless than at any time since the Great Depression in 1932;more hungry, in
this world of enormous affluence, the United States of America, more hungry;more poor, most of them women.And--And he paid one other thing, a nearly 200 billion dollar deficit threatening our future.Now, we must make the American people understand this deficit because they don't.The President's deficit is a direct and dramatic repudiation of his promise in 1980 to balance the budget by 1983.How large is it? The deficit is the largest in the history of the universe.It--President Carter's last budget had a deficit less than one-third of this deficit.It is a deficit that, according to the President's own fiscal adviser, may grow to as much 300 billion dollars a year for “as far as the eye can see.” And, ladies and gentlemen, it is a debt so large--that is almost one-half of the money we collect from the personal income tax each year goes just to pay the interest.It is a mortgage on our children's future that can be paid only in pain and that could bring this nation to its knees.Now don't take my word for it--I'm a Democrat.Ask the Republican investment bankers on Wall Street what they think the chances of this recovery being permanent are.You see, if they're not too embarrassed to tell you the truth, they'll say that they're appalled and frightened by the President's deficit.Ask them what they think of our economy, now that it's been driven by the distorted value of the dollar back to its colonial condition.Now we're exporting agricultural products and importing manufactured ones.Ask those Republican investment bankers what they expect the rate of interest to be a year from now.And ask them--if they dare tell you the truth--you'll learn from them, what they predict for the inflation rate a year from now, because of the deficit.Now, how important is this question of the deficit.Think about it practically: What chance would the Republican candidate have had in 1980 if he had told the American people that he intended to pay for his so-called economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment, more homeless, more hungry, and the largest government debt known to humankind? If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not!That was an election won under false pretenses.It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions.And that's the kind of recovery we have now as well.But what about foreign policy? They said that they would make us and the whole world safer.They say they have.By creating the largest defense budget in history, one that even they now admit is excessive--by escalating to a frenzy the nuclear arms race;by incendiary rhetoric;by refusing to discuss peace with our enemies;by the loss of 279 young Americans in Lebanon in pursuit of a plan and a policy that no one can find or describe.We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it.We have been less than zealous in support of our only real friend--it seems to me, in the Middle East--the one democracy there, our flesh and blood ally, the state of Israel.Our--Our policy--Our foreign policy drifts with no real direction, other than an hysterical commitment to an arms race that leads nowhere--if we're lucky.And if we're not, it could lead us into bankruptcy or war.Of course we must have a strong defense!Of course Democrats are for a strong defense.Of course Democrats believe that there are times that we must stand and fight.And we have.Thousands of us have paid for freedom with our lives.But always--when this country has been at its best--our purposes were clear.Now they're not.Now our allies are as confused as our enemies.Now we have no real commitment to our friends or to our ideals--not to human rights, not to the refuseniks, not to Sakharov, not to Bishop Tutu and the others struggling for freedom in South Africa.We--We have in the last few years spent more than we can afford.We have pounded our chests and made bold speeches.But we lost 279 young Americans in Lebanon and we live behind sand bags in Washington.How can anyone say that we are safer, stronger, or better? That--That is the Republican record.That its disastrous quality is not more fully understood by the
American people I can only attribute to the President's amiability and the failure by some to separate the salesman from the product.And, now--now--now it's up to us.Now it's up to you and to me to make the case to America.And to remind Americans that if they are not happy with all that the President has done so far, they should consider how much worse it will be if he is left to his radical proclivities for another four years unrestrained.Unrestrained.Now, if--if July--if July brings back Ann Gorsuch Burford--what can we expect of December? Where would--Where would another four years take us? Where would four years more take us? How much larger will the deficit be? How much deeper the cuts in programs for the struggling middle class and the poor to limit that deficit? How high will the interest rates be? How much more acid rain killing our forests and fouling our lakes? And, ladies and gentlemen, please think of this--the nation must think of this: What kind of Supreme Court will we have? Please.[beckons audience to settle down] We--We must ask ourselves what kind of court and country will be fashioned by the man who believes in having government mandate people's religion and morality;the man who believes that trees pollute the environment;the man that believes that--that the laws against discrimination against people go too far;a man who threatens Social Security and Medicaid and help for the disabled.How high will we pile the missiles? How much deeper will the gulf be between us and our enemies? And, ladies and gentlemen, will four years more make meaner the spirit of the American people? This election will measure the record of the past four years.But more than that, it will answer the question of what kind of people we want to be.We Democrats still have a dream.We still believe in this nation's future.And this is our answer to the question.This is our credo: We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do.We believe in a government strong enough to use words like “love” and “compassion” and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.We--Our--Our government--Our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand.We would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the “world's most sincere Democrat,” St.Francis of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.We believe--We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute.And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.We believe in firm--We believe in firm but fair law and order.We believe proudly in the union movement.We believe in a--We believe--We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights.
We believe in a single--We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings--reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems;that the future of the child--that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future;that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle;that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger;that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.Now for 50 years--for 50 years we Democrats created a better future for our children, using traditional Democratic principles as a fixed beacon, giving us direction and purpose, but constantly innovating, adapting to new realities: Roosevelt's alphabet programs;Truman's NATO and the GI Bill of Rights;Kennedy's intelligent tax incentives and the Alliance for Progress;Johnson's civil rights;Carter's human rights and the nearly miraculous Camp David Peace Accord.Democrats did it--Democrats did it and Democrats can do it again.We can build a future that deals with our deficit.Remember this, that 50 years of progress under our principles never cost us what the last four years of stagnation have.And we can deal with the deficit intelligently, by shared sacrifice, with all parts of the nation's family contributing, building partnerships with the private sector, providing a sound defense without depriving ourselves of what we need to feed our children and care for our people.We can have a future that provides for all the young of the present, by marrying common sense and compassion.We know we can, because we did it for nearly 50 years before 1980.And we can do it again, if we do not forget--if we do not forget that this entire nation has profited by these progressive principles;that they helped lift up generations to the middle class and higher;that they gave us a chance to work, to go to college, to raise a family, to own a house, to be secure in our old age and, before that, to reach heights that our own parents would not have dared dream of.That struggle to live with dignity is the real story of the shining city.And it's a story, ladies and gentlemen, that I didn't read in a book, or learn in a classroom.I saw it and lived it, like many of you.I watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day.I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.I learned about our kind of democracy from my father.And I learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother.They asked only for a chance to work and to make the world better for their children, and they--they asked to be protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves.This nation and this nation's government did that for them.And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go from behind their little grocery store in South Jamaica on the other side of the tracks where he was born, to occupy the highest seat, in the greatest State, in the greatest nation, in the only world we would know, is an ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process.And--And ladies and gentlemen, on January 20, 1985, it will happen again--only on a much, much grander scale.We will have a new President of the United States, a Democrat born not to the blood of kings but to the blood of pioneers and immigrants.And we will have America's first woman Vice President, the child of immigrants, and she--she--she will open with one magnificent stroke, a whole new frontier for the United States.
Now, it will happen.It will happen if we make it happen;if you and I make it happen.And I ask you now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love of this great nation, for the family of America, for the love of God: Please, make this nation remember how futures are built.Thank you and God bless you.十一、Barbara Charline Jordan
Statement on the Articles of Impeachment Thank you, Mr.Chairman.Mr.Chairman, I join my colleague Mr.Rangel in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry.Mr.Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible.Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “We, the people.” It's a very eloquent beginning.But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in “We, the people.” Today I am an inquisitor.An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now.My faith in the Constitution is whole;it is complete;it is total.And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.“Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?” “The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men.”¹ And that's what we're talking about.In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or violation of some public trust.It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office.The Constitution doesn't say that.The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute.They did not make the accusers and the judgers--and the judges the same person.We know the nature of impeachment.We've been talking about it awhile now.It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account.It is designed to “bridle” the executive if he engages in excesses.“It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.”² The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim.The Federal Convention of 1787 said that.It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term “maladministration.” “It is to be used only for great misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention.And in the Virginia
ratification convention: “We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch.We need one branch to check the other.” “No one need be afraid”--the North Carolina ratification convention--“No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.” “Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,” said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65.“We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.”³ I do not mean political parties in that sense.The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment;but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term “high crime[s] and misdemeanors.” Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that “Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness.Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction;but nothing else can.” Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons.Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation.Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems.So today we are not being petty.We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin.We're told that that evidence is insufficient.What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.The President did know that it was Republican money, that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June the 17th.What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the prior activities of E.Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.We were further cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming from the President of the United States.There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional materials from the President.The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here.The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.At this point, I would like to juxtapose a few of the impeachment criteria with some of the actions the President has engaged in.Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification convention.“If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, he may be impeached.” We have heard time and time again that the evidence reflects the payment to defendants money.The President had knowledge that these funds were being paid and these were funds collected for the 1972 presidential campaign.We know that the President met with Mr.Henry Petersen 27 times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and immediately thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the information Mr.Petersen was receiving.The words are: “If the President is connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached.” Justice Story: “Impeachment” is attended--“is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where
a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations.” We know about the Huston plan.We know about the break-in of the psychiatrist's office.We know that there was absolute complete direction on September 3rd when the President indicated that a surreptitious entry had been made in Dr.Fielding's office, after having met with Mr.Ehrlichman and Mr.Young.“Protect their rights.” “Rescue their liberties from violation.” The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable “who behave amiss or betray their public trust.”4 Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors.Moreover, the President has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will show he knew to be false.These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who misbehave.Those who “behave amiss or betray the public trust.” James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.” The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice.“A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.” If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder.Has the President committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That's the question.We know that.We know the question.We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question.It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.*I yield back the balance of my time, Mr.Chairman.*
十二、General Douglas MacArthur
Farewell Address to Congress Mr.President, Mr.Speaker, and Distinguished Members of the Congress: I stand on this rostrum with a sense of deep humility and great pride--humility in the wake of those great American architects of our history who have stood here before me;pride in the reflection that this forum of legislative debate represents human liberty in the purest form yet devised.Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race.I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration.They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected.I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American.I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country.The issues are global and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector, oblivious to those of another, is but to court disaster for the whole.While Asia is commonly referred to as the Gateway to Europe, it is no less true that Europe is the Gateway to Asia, and the broad influence of the one cannot fail to have its impact upon the other.There are those who claim our strength is inadequate to protect on both fronts, that we cannot divide our effort.I can think
of no greater expression of defeatism.If a potential enemy can divide his strength on two fronts, it is for us to counter his effort.The Communist threat is a global one.Its successful advance in one sector threatens the destruction of every other sector.You can not appease or otherwise surrender to communism in Asia without simultaneously undermining our efforts to halt its advance in Europe.Beyond pointing out these general truisms, I shall confine my discussion to the general areas of Asia.Before one may objectively assess the situation now existing there, he must comprehend something of Asia's past and the revolutionary changes which have marked her course up to the present.Long exploited by the so-called colonial powers, with little opportunity to achieve any degree of social justice, individual dignity, or a higher standard of life such as guided our own noble administration in the Philippines, the peoples of Asia found their opportunity in the war just past to throw off the shackles of colonialism and now see the dawn of new opportunity, a heretofore unfelt dignity, and the self-respect of political freedom.Mustering half of the earth's population, and 60 percent of its natural resources these peoples are rapidly consolidating a new force, both moral and material, with which to raise the living standard and erect adaptations of the design of modern progress to their own distinct cultural environments.Whether one adheres to the concept of colonization or not, this is the direction of Asian progress and it may not be stopped.It is a corollary to the shift of the world economic frontiers as the whole epicenter of world affairs rotates back toward the area whence it started.In this situation, it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own free destiny.What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support--not imperious direction--the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation.Their pre-war standard of life, pitifully low, is infinitely lower now in the devastation left in war's wake.World ideologies play little part in Asian thinking and are little understood.What the peoples strive for is the opportunity for a little more food in their stomachs, a little better clothing on their backs, a little firmer roof over their heads, and the realization of the normal nationalist urge for political freedom.These political-social conditions have but an indirect bearing upon our own national security, but do form a backdrop to contemporary planning which must be thoughtfully considered if we are to avoid the pitfalls of unrealism.Of more direct and immediately bearing upon our national security are the changes wrought in the strategic potential of the Pacific Ocean in the course of the past war.Prior thereto the western strategic frontier of the United States lay on the littoral line of the Americas, with an exposed island salient extending out through Hawaii, Midway, and Guam to the Philippines.That salient proved not an outpost of strength but an avenue of weakness along which the enemy could and did attack.The Pacific was a potential area of advance for any predatory force intent upon striking at the bordering land areas.All this was changed by our Pacific victory.Our strategic frontier then shifted to embrace the entire Pacific Ocean, which became a vast moat to protect us as long as we held it.Indeed, it acts as a protective shield for all of the Americas and all free lands of the Pacific Ocean area.We control it to the shores of Asia by a chain of islands extending in an arc from the Aleutians to the Mariannas held by us and our free allies.From this island chain we can dominate with sea and air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore--with sea and air power every port, as I said, from Vladivostok to Singapore--and prevent any hostile movement into the Pacific.*Any predatory attack from Asia must be an amphibious effort.* No amphibious force can be successful without control of the sea lanes and the air over those lanes in its avenue of advance.With naval and air supremacy and modest ground elements to defend bases, any major attack from continental Asia toward us or our friends in the Pacific would be doomed to failure.
Under such conditions, the Pacific no longer represents menacing avenues of approach for a prospective invader.It assumes, instead, the friendly aspect of a peaceful lake.Our line of defense is a natural one and can be maintained with a minimum of military effort and expense.It envisions no attack against anyone, nor does it provide the bastions essential for offensive operations, but properly maintained, would be an invincible defense against aggression.The holding of this littoral defense line in the western Pacific is entirely dependent upon holding all segments thereof;for any major breach of that line by an unfriendly power would render vulnerable to determined attack every other major segment.This is a military estimate as to which I have yet to find a military leader who will take exception.For that reason, I have strongly recommended in the past, as a matter of military urgency, that under no circumstances must Formosa fall under Communist control.Such an eventuality would at once threaten the freedom of the Philippines and the loss of Japan and might well force our western frontier back to the coast of California, Oregon and Washington.To understand the changes which now appear upon the Chinese mainland, one must understand the changes in Chinese character and culture over the past 50 years.China, up to 50 years ago, was completely non-homogenous, being compartmented into groups divided against each other.The war-making tendency was almost non-existent, as they still followed the tenets of the Confucian ideal of pacifist culture.At the turn of the century, under the regime of Chang Tso Lin, efforts toward greater homogeneity produced the start of a nationalist urge.This was further and more successfully developed under the leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek, but has been brought to its greatest fruition under the present regime to the point that it has now taken on the character of a united nationalism of increasingly dominant, aggressive tendencies.Through these past 50 years the Chinese people have thus become militarized in their concepts and in their ideals.They now constitute excellent soldiers, with competent staffs and commanders.This has produced a new and dominant power in Asia, which, for its own purposes, is allied with Soviet Russia but which in its own concepts and methods has become aggressively imperialistic, with a lust for expansion and increased power normal to this type of imperialism.There is little of the ideological concept either one way or another in the Chinese make-up.The standard of living is so low and the capital accumulation has been so thoroughly dissipated by war that the masses are desperate and eager to follow any leadership which seems to promise the alleviation of local stringencies.I have from the beginning believed that the Chinese Communists' support of the North Koreans was the dominant one.Their interests are, at present, parallel with those of the Soviet.But I believe that the aggressiveness recently displayed not only in Korea but also in Indo-China and Tibet and pointing potentially toward the South reflects predominantly the same lust for the expansion of power which has animated every would-be conqueror since the beginning of time.The Japanese people, since the war, have undergone the greatest reformation recorded in modern history.With a commendable will, eagerness to learn, and marked capacity to understand, they have, from the ashes left in war's wake, erected in Japan an edifice dedicated to the supremacy of individual liberty and personal dignity;and in the ensuing process there has been created a truly representative government committed to the advance of political morality, freedom of economic enterprise, and social justice.Politically, economically, and socially Japan is now abreast of many free nations of the earth and will not again fail the universal trust.That it may be counted upon to wield a profoundly beneficial influence over the course of events in Asia is attested by the magnificent manner in which the Japanese people have met the recent challenge of war, unrest, and confusion surrounding them from the outside
and checked communism within their own frontiers without the slightest slackening in their forward progress.I sent all four of our occupation divisions to the Korean battlefront without the slightest qualms as to the effect of the resulting power vacuum upon Japan.The results fully justified my faith.I know of no nation more serene, orderly, and industrious, nor in which higher hopes can be entertained for future constructive service in the advance of the human race.Of our former ward, the Philippines, we can look forward in confidence that the existing unrest will be corrected and a strong and healthy nation will grow in the longer aftermath of war's terrible destructiveness.We must be patient and understanding and never fail them--as in our hour of need, they did not fail us.A Christian nation, the Philippines stand as a mighty bulwark of Christianity in the Far East, and its capacity for high moral leadership in Asia is unlimited.On Formosa, the government of the Republic of China has had the opportunity to refute by action much of the malicious gossip which so undermined the strength of its leadership on the Chinese mainland.The Formosan people are receiving a just and enlightened administration with majority representation on the organs of government, and politically, economically, and socially they appear to be advancing along sound and constructive lines.With this brief insight into the surrounding areas, I now turn to the Korean conflict.While I was not consulted prior to the President's decision to intervene in support of the Republic of Korea, that decision from a military standpoint, proved a sound one, as we hurled back the invader and decimated his forces.Our victory was complete, and our objectives within reach, when Red China intervened with numerically superior ground forces.This created a new war and an entirely new situation, a situation not contemplated when our forces were committed against the North Korean invaders;a situation which called for new decisions in the diplomatic sphere to permit the realistic adjustment of military strategy.Such decisions have not been forthcoming.While no man in his right mind would advocate sending our ground forces into continental China, and such was never given a thought, the new situation did urgently demand a drastic revision of strategic planning if our political aim was to defeat this new enemy as we had defeated the old.Apart from the military need, as I saw It, to neutralize the sanctuary protection given the enemy north of the Yalu, I felt that military necessity in the conduct of the war made necessary: first the intensification of our economic blockade against China;two the imposition of a naval blockade against the China coast;three removal of restrictions on air reconnaissance of China's coastal areas and of Manchuria;four removal of restrictions on the forces of the Republic of China on Formosa, with logistical support to contribute to their effective operations against the common enemy.For entertaining these views, all professionally designed to support our forces committed to Korea and bring hostilities to an end with the least possible delay and at a saving of countless American and allied lives, I have been severely criticized in lay circles, principally abroad, despite my understanding that from a military standpoint the above views have been fully shared in the past by practically every military leader concerned with the Korean campaign, including our own Joint Chiefs of Staff.I called for reinforcements but was informed that reinforcements were not available.I made clear that if not permitted to destroy the enemy built-up bases north of the Yalu, if not permitted to utilize the friendly Chinese Force of some 600,000 men on Formosa, if not permitted to blockade the China coast to prevent the Chinese Reds from getting succor from without, and if there were to be no hope of major reinforcements, the position of the command from the military standpoint forbade victory.We could hold in Korea by constant maneuver and in an approximate area where our supply line advantages were in balance with the supply line disadvantages of the enemy, but we could hope at best for only an indecisive campaign with its terrible and constant attrition upon our forces if the enemy
utilized its full military potential.I have constantly called for the new political decisions essential to a solution.Efforts have been made to distort my position.It has been said, in effect, that I was a warmonger.Nothing could be further from the truth.I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting.I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.Indeed, on the second day of September, nineteen hundred and forty-five, just following the surrender of the Japanese nation on the Battleship Missouri, I formally cautioned as follows: Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.Various methods through the ages have been attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations.From the very start workable methods were found in so far as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful.Military alliances, balances of power, Leagues of Nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war.The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out this alternative.We have had our last chance.If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past 2000 years.It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.In war there is no substitute for victory.There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China.They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war.It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace.Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.“Why,” my soldiers asked of me, “surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field?” I could not answer.Some may say: to avoid spread of the conflict into an all-out war with China;others, to avoid Soviet intervention.Neither explanation seems valid, for China is already engaging with the maximum power it can commit, and the Soviet will not necessarily mesh its actions with our moves.Like a cobra, any new enemy will more likely strike whenever it feels that the relativity in military or other potential is in its favor on a world-wide basis.The tragedy of Korea is further heightened by the fact that its military action is confined to its territorial limits.It condemns that nation, which it is our purpose to save, to suffer the devastating impact of full naval and air bombardment while the enemy's sanctuaries are fully protected from such attack and devastation.Of the nations of the world, Korea alone, up to now, is the sole one which has risked its all against communism.The magnificence of the courage and fortitude of the Korean people defies description.They have chosen to risk death rather than slavery.Their last words to me were: “Don't scuttle the Pacific!” I have just left your fighting sons in Korea.They have met all tests there, and I can report to you without reservation that they are splendid in every way.It was my constant effort to preserve them and end this savage conflict honorably and with the least
loss of time and a minimum sacrifice of life.Its growing bloodshed has caused me the deepest anguish and anxiety.Those gallant men will remain often in my thoughts and in my prayers always.I am closing my 52 years of military service.When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams.The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that “old soldiers never die;they just fade away.” And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.Good Bye.十三、Jesse Jackson
1984 Democratic National Convention Address Thank you very much.Tonight we come together bound by our faith in a mighty God, with genuine respect and love for our country, and inheriting the legacy of a great Party, the Democratic Party, which is the best hope for redirecting our nation on a more humane, just, and peaceful course.This is not a perfect party.We are not a perfect people.Yet, we are called to a perfect mission.Our mission: to feed the hungry;to clothe the naked;to house the homeless;to teach the illiterate;to provide jobs for the jobless;and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.We are gathered here this week to nominate a candidate and adopt a platform which will expand, unify, direct, and inspire our Party and the nation to fulfill this mission.My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised.They are restless and seek relief.They have voted in record numbers.They have invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us.The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care.I pledge my best not to let them down.There is the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity.Leadership must heed the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity, for they are the key to achieving our mission.Time is neutral and does not change things.With courage and initiative, leaders change things.No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace, and justice.Only leadership--that intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration--can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves.Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation.Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land.Leadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom.I have had the rare opportunity to watch seven men, and then two, pour out their souls, offer their service, and heal and heed the call of duty to direct the course of our nation.There is a proper season for everything.There is a time to sow and a time to reap.There's a time to compete and a time to cooperate.I ask for your vote on the first ballot as a vote for a new direction for this Party and this nation--a vote of conviction, a vote of conscience.But I will be proud to support the nominee of this convention for the Presidency of the United States of America.Thank you.I have watched the leadership of our party develop and grow.My respect for both Mr.Mondale and Mr.Hart is great.I have watched them struggle with the crosswinds and crossfires of being public servants, and I believe they will both continue to try to serve us faithfully.
第三篇：名人的闲情逸致_演讲词的各种类型
1.祝贺乔迁词
现在在企业、事业单位中有很多机会、很多场合来发表演讲，面对着如此众多、如此熟悉的人，这绝对是个展现自我魅力和处世方式的良好时机。通过你的言谈举止和手势眼神能够让平时熟知你的人感受到你的另一风格，让大家在气氛祥和中把公务性质的事情和私人的为人处世紧密结合起来，更有利于你的人生积淀。祝贺乔迁的贺词，这是在公众场合中的重头戏，一般是要把企业的历程和成果有机地结合起来，这样一来，演说词既为企业增添了形象，也给领导总结了成绩，同时给职工一定的鼓舞，传递了奋发和进取的不懈精神。下面是一篇供各位参考的小文章。
各位尊敬的领导、同事：
今天是一个特殊的日子，在蓝天高远金秋收获的九月里，我们相聚一起，携手欢庆，迎来了瞩目已久的大喜事——办公楼乔迁庆贺典礼。首先，我谨代表全体干部职工，向百忙之中抽空前来庆贺的省市领导以及到会的所有兄弟单位的领导同志们致以诚挚的谢意和美好的祝福。
近年来随着社会保障体制改革的完善，服务对象的增多，原来的工作环境简陋、工作手段落后已与承担的工作任务和职责不适应，不相称。搞好基础设施建设，改善服务环境，改善办公环境，既创造良好的工作条件，提高工作质量和效率，也是为广大群众创造良好服务环境。为了让办公环境和工作条件有一个更大的改善，我们在财力十分紧张的情况下，以举办文化节为契机，争取当地政府的重视，积极筹措资金，通过努力将办公楼装饰一新，大大提高了现代化的办公条件和水平。
回顾过去，令人欢欣鼓舞；瞻望未来，更是信心满怀。过去已成为历史，从今天开始我们将翻开新的一页，迈出新的一步。全体干部职工一定要用高度的使命感和责任感，切实担负起各阶层人民赋予我们的重要责任，在具体工作中进一步奋力拼搏，扎实苦干，真正干出让人看得见、摸得着的实绩，用一流素质，树一流形象，创一流业绩，赢得人民的信任与支持，用真诚与奉献为职工编织晚年生活的安全网，谱写社会保障新的篇章。面对机遇，面临挑战，面向未来，我们已经开始了新的生命里程。各位来宾，让我们相约，在新里程肩靠得更近，手挽得更紧，心相连，情相系，昂首阔步，高歌猛进，走向辉煌的久远。
最后祝福大家身心健康，工作顺利，事业有成！
谢谢！
2.受奖礼仪的答谢词
在现代社会中，各色名目的机会和大奖赛使我们有很多机会向世人展示自己的才华和能力，同时这也要求我们能够在受奖时能够得体应对得奖后的答谢致辞。自己的外在言行可以反映你的应变能力和思辨能力。这时在受奖场合致的答谢词，一般也结合自身的经历和获奖感受来一一展开，同时，关键要表露出自己的感激和感谢，这方面的感言是面对方方面面的，要注意用词的严谨和切合身份。而后要适时的表达一下自己今后的打算和决心等方面的言辞。
3.老师在学生毕业聚会上的讲话
老师在学生毕业的聚餐会上，主要是表达对学生在校期间刻苦学习，尊师重教、帮助同学的肯定，以及对学生毕业后生活、学习、工作的美好祝愿，也可以表达自己对学生的热爱之情，或对学生提出希望。
各位同学、各位朋友：
天地悠悠、岁月长长，从毕业到现在已经快十年了，在这漫长的岁月里，我们共同度过了不平凡的日子，几多欢乐，几多忧愁，几番拼搏，有的事业发达，有的取得成果，有的饱经风霜，甚至有的伤痕累累。但是我们都走过来了。今天大家在这里相聚，作为过去的老师，过去的班主任，我的心情无比激动，我在这里向你们问一声：“同学们好！”
十年前的今天，你们还是一名稚嫩的学生。在那里，留下了你们的足迹和声音，在那里留下了你们的欢乐和梦想，更留下了我们师生友谊和感情。曾记否：为一件小事我们争得面红耳赤，为了你的成功我们为你喝彩，教室里你的座位，还有你那初恋的情感。三年的中师生活，铸造了你更磨炼了我，也许你有抱怨，也许你有遗憾，但那毕竟是一份真实的生活，是让你走向职业的第一步，是你青春最美好的年华。大家在那里相聚三年，评点江山，笑谈人生，从此在我的记忆之中，就多了一个你，在你的记忆里，就多了一个我。请别忘了，我们过去的日子，请珍惜，那是一段美好的时光。
“子在川上日，逝者如斯夫”，时间过得真快，转眼十年过去了，十年我们都在变，我变老了，朝去暮来，又送走了几届毕业生，“夕阳无限好，只是近黄昏”，人生已无所追求，今天在这里聚会，我忽然感觉年轻了十岁，“沉舟侧畔千帆过，病树前头万木春”，我看到你们这样有朝气，精神倍增，教师的生命在学生身上延续，你们比我强，你们比我有作为，是我的最大快乐。
“你在他乡还好吗”，我真诚的祝福你，愿你们在各自的岗位上，事业有成，家庭幸福，子女成才，更祝各位身体健康，早日发财！如果有什么需要我的地方，告知一声，欢迎到母校再度欢乐，共叙朋友情，师生情。
4.证婚人在婚礼上的祝词
祝词，指在各种喜庆场合中对人对事表示祝贺的言辞或文章。祝词和贺词在某种场合可以互用，但它们所包含的含义并不相同。祝词一般的对象是事情未果，表示祝愿、希望的意思；而贺词一般对象是事情已果，表示庆贺、送喜的意思。现实中多有事业祝词、寿诞祝词、祝酒词等。要注意的是语言要求充满热情、喜悦、鼓励、希望、褒扬之意，以便使对方感到温暖和愉快，受到激励与鼓舞；祝词不应使用辩论、谴责、批评等词句和语气；颂扬与祝贺要恰如其分，过分的赞美之词会使对方感到不安，自己也难免谄媚之嫌。现在就以婚礼祝词为例。这类祝词一般都是赞扬新婚夫妇郎才女貌，感情专
一、忠贞不渝，或感情经过波折最终开花结果，制造欢乐祥和的气氛，表达美好的希望与祝福，一般情况下应短小精悍。
5.同学会上的祝词
同学聚会一般是对过去美好的光景、纯真友谊的回忆，追忆相互之间的深厚感情，对分手后各自经历的叙述，以及对大家美好未来的憧憬、对友谊地久天长的赞美等，以烘托欢快、友好的气氛。例如下面的例子。
敬爱的老师、亲爱的同学们：
你们好！
也许是人到中年，也许是心灵的召唤，也许疲惫之余的种种感念，也许是母校80华诞这一契机，也许是太多，也许„„但注定我们还要走到一起来，因为那太多的离情别意，因为没有什么能替代那段纯真无邪的岁月，因为今天的一切在那时还只是一种孕育着的希冀，因为没有大小高低„„只有琅琅的书声，只有你追我赶携手共进的脚步，只有很多很多的童言无忌„„
曾几何时，我们离开了母校，又到了许多许多的“学校”，渐渐地我们成长起来了，渐渐地我们成熟起来了，岁月地流淌使我们已人到中年，我们有了自己的爱人，有了自己的家，有了自己的儿女，也有了自己的事业和应该属于我们的尊重、地位及其他种种„„然而我们心中好像缺了些什么。好像20年前的一切时时会像梦一般浮现在我们的眼前„„
我们虽称不上共和国的栋梁，但是至少我们这一代也是社会的中流砥柱，在各行各业我们中的许多人都已肩挑大梁，奋斗的时候我们辛辛苦苦，成功的时候我们兢兢业业，我们有的是辛苦，有的是疲惫，但我们更需要温馨，更需要理解，更需要帮助„„因为我们经历了许多人没有的经历。千言万语只恨少，话到嘴边只点头。今天我们欢聚一堂，言不尽的是离情别意，说不完的您好他好大家好。忆过去胜似过去，望将来再聚将来！正如有一首歌唱的“人生的路上我们都可能出错„„”但是多一份关爱，多一份真情，多一份热心，多一份理解，世界就会变得温暖，充满了爱。
同学之间许多变化都不知晓了，聚一聚加深了解，畅叙友谊是很必要的，过去的岁月，大家真的很忙碌，到了今天，我们在各方面看来，不论是时间以及其他等等，都为同学会作好了充分的准备，这也是我们这个同学会能顺利举办的契机，希望大家能常聚、常谈、常乐。
6.在自己生日晚宴上的演讲
在为自己举办的生日晚会上，一般是向大家表达自己的心情、感受，回忆在过去一年里取得的成绩、不足，以及与大家结下的深厚友谊，憧憬一下自己的美好未来，还可以表达一下对大家参加晚会的感谢，请大家不要拘束，祝大家晚会愉快。如果是他人为自己举办的生日晚会，应当表示感谢。下面举一个例子供大家参考。
尊敬的各位来宾：
大家好！今天，是我人生中又一个值得纪念的日子。在幸福、欢乐的气氛中，我迎来了自己的60岁生日。此时此刻承蒙各位从百忙中抽空，光临我的生日便宴，并为我带来了许多真诚的祝愿，给这个生日宴会增添了无限喜庆的气氛。值此，我谨代表我全家对各位高亲贵友的到来表示最热烈的欢迎和衷心的感谢。在幸福、欢乐的乐曲声中，我吹灭了象征着自己人生历程的烛光，默默地许下几个心愿，那就是：祝各位嘉宾天天有个好心情，笑口常开；月月有个好收入，四季发财；年年有个好身体，青春常在；终生有个好家庭，夫妻恩爱。
60岁正好是退休的年龄，面对高亲贵友，本人无限感既。多年来，是大家的帮助、支持、关怀使我工作不断进步，家庭日益幸福。俗话说：“同过渡船三世修”，我能有你们的友情，是我人生的宝贵财富，我将永远珍惜，并用真情去悉心浇灌我们的友谊之树，让它永远枝繁叶茂。
最后，让我们共同举杯，为了各位的健康，为了我们的友谊，干杯！
第四篇：演讲词
中国人缺少什么——在北京大学的演讲（周国平）2010年11月02日 12:06:51
一，对百年文化反省的一个反省：什么逃脱了反省反而成了反省的前提？
今天我讲的题目是从尼采的一篇文章套用来的，那篇文章的题目是《德国人缺少什么》。遗憾的是，尼采讲这样的题目用不着做譬如说德国与东方或者德国与英国之类的比较，他只是把德国的现状与他心目中的标准做一个比较，然后直截了当说出他的批评意见来。而一个中国人讲《中国人缺少什么》这样的题目，似乎就理所当然地成了一个所谓中西文化比较的题目。事实上，中国人也的确是在西方的冲击下才开始反省自己的弱点的。我们本来是一个没有反省习惯的民族，从来以世界的中央自居，不把夷狄放在眼里。如果不是鸦片战争以来不断挨打，我们到今天也不会想到要反省。不过，挨打之后，我们也真着急了，反省得特别用力，以至于以中西比较为背景的文化反省成了20世纪中国思想界说得最多的话题。该说的话好像都说过了，再说就不免老调重弹，所以我从来不参加这类讨论。
也许由于我始终与这个话题保持着一个距离，因此，当我现在来面对它的时候，我就获得了一个与身在其中的人不同的角度。我在想：百年来的文化反省本身是否也是一个需要反省的对象呢？我发现情况确实如此。我已经说过，我们是因为挨打而开始反省的，反省是为了寻找挨打的原因，改变挨打的状态。之所以挨打，明摆着的原因是中国贫弱，西方国家富强。所以，必须使中国富强起来。于是，富强成了20世纪中国的主题。为了富强，中国的先进分子便向西方去寻求真理。所谓寻求真理，就是寻求西方国家富强的秘诀，寻求使中国富强起来的法宝。这种秘诀和法宝，在洋务派看来是先进的技术和武器，所谓“西洋奇器”和“坚船利炮”，在维新派和革命派看来是西方的政治制度，即君主立宪或共和，在新文化运动看来是科学和民主。当然，你可以说认识是在一步步深入，但是，基本的出发点未变，就是把所要寻求的真理仅仅看做实现国家富强之目标的工具，与此相应，反省也只局限在那些会妨碍我们富强的弱点上。我不能说这样的出发点完全不对，不妨说是形势逼人，不得不然。可是，在这样的寻求真理和这样的反省中，中国文化传统中的一个严重弱点不但逃脱了反省，而且成了不可动摇的前提，这个弱点就是重实用价值而轻精神价值。
二，以严复为例：用实用眼光向西方寻求真理
我以严复为例来说明我的看法。严复是一个适当的例子，他是百年来中国人向西方寻求真理的先行者和杰出代表，其影响覆盖了世纪初整整一代中国知识分子。他的高明之处在于，他首先认识到西方的政治制度不是凭空建立的，而有其哲学上的根据，应该把这些哲学也引进来。但是，即使是他，或者说，特别是他，亦是用实用眼光去寻求真理的。大家知道，在上世纪末本世纪初，严复翻译了8部西方名著。关于他的翻译，我想提示
两点。第一，他引进的主要是英国的社会哲学，之所以引进，除了他在英国留学这个经历上的原因外，最主要的是因为他有强烈的社会关切，在他看来，斯宾塞的进化论社会哲学是警醒国人起来求富强的合适的思想武器。第二，他翻译的方式是意译和节译，通过这个方式，他舍弃乃至歪曲了他理解不了的或不符合他的需要的内容，更加鲜明地贯彻了求富强这个意图。
举一个例子。在他的译著中，有约翰“穆勒的《论自由》，他译做《群己权界论》。这部著作的主旨是要确定社会对于个人的合法权力的限度，为个人自由辩护。在书中，穆勒反复强调的一个论点是：个人自由本身就是好的，就是目的，是人类幸福不可缺少的因素，它使得人类的生活丰富多样，生气勃勃。书中有一句话准确表达了他的出发点：“一个人自己规划其存在的方式总是最好的，不是因为这方式本身算最好，而是因为这是他自己的方式。”
事实上，肯定个人本身就是价值，个人价值的实现本身就是目的，这个论点是西方自由主义思想的核心。无论是洛克、约翰”穆勒以及严复最信服的斯宾塞等人的古典自由主义，还是以罗尔斯、哈耶克为代表的当代自由主义，都是把个人自由看做独立的善。罗尔斯正义论的第一原则就是自由优先，他认为较大的经济利益和社会利益不能构成接受较小的自由的充足理由。他还强调，自尊即个人对自己价值的肯定是最重要的基本善。哈耶克则反复阐明，个人自由是原始意义上的自由，不能用诸如政治自由、内在自由、作为能力的自由等具体的自由权利来混淆它的含义。
可是，在严复的译著里，这个核心不见了。在他所转述的英国自由主义理论（见约翰"穆勒《群己权界论》和斯宾塞《群学肄言》）中，个人自由成了一种手段，其价值仅仅在于，通过个人能力的自由发展和竞争，可以使进化过程得以实现，从而导致国家富强。与德国哲学相比，英国哲学本来就偏于功利性，而严复在引进的时候，又把本来也具有的精神性割除了，结果只剩下了功利性。只要把真理仅仅当作求富强的工具，而不同时和首先也当作目的本身，这种情况的发生就是不可避免的。因为这样一来，一方面，必定会对人家理论中与求富强的目的无关的那些内容视而不见，另一方面，即使看见了，也会硬把它们塞进求富强这个套路中去。
这个例子十分典型，很能说明当时中国思想界的主流倾向。究其原因，只能从我们重实用的文化传统和国民性中去找。由于重实用，所以一接触西方哲学，就急于从里面找思想武器，而不是首先把人家的理论弄清楚。中国人是很少有纯粹的理论兴趣的，对于任何理论，都是看它能否尽快派上用场而决定取舍。在世纪初的这班人里，严复算是好的，他毕竟读了一些西方原著，其他人如康有为、梁启超、谭嗣同、章太炎辈基本上是道听途说（只看日本人的第二手材料），然后信口开河（将听来的个别词句随意发挥，与佛学、中国哲学、西方其他哲学片断熔于一炉），为我所用。也由于重实用，所以对于西方哲学中最核心的部分，即涉及形而上学和精神关切的内容，就读不懂也接受不了。在中国人的心目中，一般没有精神价值的地位。无论什么精神价值，包括自由、公正、知识、科学、宗教、真、善、美、爱情等等，非要找出它们的实用价值，非要把它们归结为实用价值不可，否则就不承认它们是价值。
我不否认，中国有一些思想家对于人的精神问题也相当重视，例如严复提出要增进“民德”，梁启超鼓吹要培育“新民”，鲁迅更是孜孜不倦地呼吁要改造“国民性”。但是，第一，在他们那里，个人不是被看做个人，而是被看做“国民”，个人精神素质之受到重视只因为它是造成民族和国家素质的材料。第二，他们对于精神层面的重视往往集中于甚至局限于道德，而关注道德的出发点仍是社会的改造。因此，在我看来，其基本思路仍不脱社会功利，个人精神的独立价值始终落在视野外面。
三，王国维：重视精神价值的一个例外
那么，有没有例外呢？有的，而且可以说几乎是唯一的一个例外。正因为此，他不是一个幸运的例外，而是一个不幸的例外，不是一个成功的例外，而是一个失败的例外。在世纪初的学者中，只有这一个人为精神本身的神圣和独立价值辩护，并立足于此而尖锐批评了中国文化和中华民族精神的实用品格。但是，在当时举国求富强的呐喊声中，他的声音被完全淹没了。
我想从一件与北大多少有点关系的往事说起。两年前，北大热闹非凡地庆祝了它的百年大典。当时，纯种的北大人或者与北大沾亲带故的不纯种的北大人纷纷著书立说，登台演讲，慷慨陈词，为北大传统正名。一时间，蔡元培、梁启超、胡适、李大钊、蒋梦麟等人的名字如雷贯耳，人们从他们身上发现了正宗的北大传统。可是，北大历史上的这件在我看来也很重要的往事却好像没有人提起，我相信这肯定不是偶然的。
北大的历史从1898年京师大学堂成立算起。1903年，清政府批准了由张之洞拟定的《奏定学堂章程》，这个章程就成了办学的指导方针。章程刚出台，就有一个小人物对它提出了尖锐的挑战。这个小人物名叫王国维，现在我们倒是把他封做了国学大师，但那时侯他只是上海一家小刊物《教育世界》杂志的一个青年编辑，而且搞的不是国学，而是德国哲学。当时，他在自己编辑的这份杂志上发表了一系列文章，批评张之洞拟定的章程虽然大致取法日本，却惟独于大学文科中削除了哲学一科。青年王国维旗帜鲜明地主张，大学文科必须设立哲学专科和哲学公共课。他所说的哲学是指西方哲学，在他看来，西方哲学才是纯粹的哲学，而中国最缺少、因此最需要从西方引进的正是纯粹的哲学。王国维是通过钻研德国哲学获得关于纯粹的哲学的概念的。在本世纪初，整个中国思想界都热中于严复引进的英国哲学，唯有他一人醉心于德国哲学。英国哲学重功利、重经验知识，德国哲学重思辩、重形而上学，这里面已显示了他的与众不同的精神取向。他对德国哲学经典原著真正下了苦功，把康德、叔本华的主要著作都读了。《辨证理性批判》
那么难懂的书，他花几年时间读了四遍，终于读懂了。在我看来，他研究德国哲学最重要的成就不在某些枝节问题上，诸如把叔本华美学思想应用于《红楼梦》研究之类，许多评论者把眼光集中于此，实在是舍本求末。最重要的是，通过对德国哲学的研究，他真正进入了西方哲学的问题之思路，领悟了原本意义上的哲学即他所说的纯粹的哲学应该是什么样子的。
王国维所认为的纯粹的哲学是什么样子的呢？简单地说，哲学就是形而上学，即对宇宙人生做出解释，以解除我们灵魂中的困惑。他由哲学的这个性质得出了两个极重要的推论。其一，既然哲学寻求的是“天下万世之真理，非一时之真理”，那么，它的价值必定是非实用的，不可能符合“当世之用”。但这不说明它没有价值，相反，它具有最神圣、最尊贵的精神价值。“无用之用”胜于有用之用，精神价值远高于实用价值，因为它满足的是人的灵魂的需要，其作用也要久远得多。其二，也正因此，坚持哲学的独立品格便是哲学家的天职，决不可把哲学当作政治和道德的手段。推而广之，一切学术都如此，唯以求真为使命，不可用做任何其他事情的手段，如此才可能有“学术之发达”。用这个标准衡量，中国没有纯粹的哲学，只有政治哲学、道德哲学，从孔孟起，到汉之贾、董，宋之张、程、朱、陆，明之罗、王，都是一些政治家或想当而没有当成的人。不但哲学家如此，诗人也如此。所谓“诗外尚有事在”，“一命为文人，便无足观”，是中国人的金科玉律。中国出不了大哲学家、大诗人，原因就在这里。
尤使王国维感到愤恨的是，当时的新学主流派不但不通过引进西方的精神文明来扭转中国文化的实用传统，反而把引进西学也当成了实现政治目的或实利目的的工具，使得中国在这方面发生改变的转机也丧失了。他沉痛地指出：政治家、教育家们混混然输入泰西的物质文明，而实际上，中国在精神文明上与西方的差距更大。中国无纯粹的哲学，无固有之宗教，无足以代表全国民之精神的大文学家，如希腊之荷马、英之莎士比亚、德之歌德者。精神文明的建设无比困难：“夫物质的文明，取诸他国，不数十年而具矣，独至精神上之趣味，非千百年之培养，与一二天才之出，不及此。”精神文明原本就弱，培养起来又难，现在只顾引进西洋物质文明，精神文明的前景就更加堪忧了。
四，中西比较：对精神价值的态度
这么看来，对于“中国人缺少什么”这个问题，在本世纪初已经有两种相反的答案。一种是王国维的答案，认为最缺的是精神文明。另一种是除王国维以外几乎所有人的答案，认为最缺的是物质文明，即富强，以及为实现富强所必需的政治制度和思想武器。至于精神文明，他们或者还来不及去想，或者干脆认为中国已经充分具备。事实上，他们中的大多数人或早或晚都得出了一个共同的结论，说西方是物质文明发达，中国是精神文明发达，甚至是全世界最发达的。直到今天，还有人宣布，中国的精神文明全世界第一，并且承担着拯救世界的伟大使命，21世纪将是中国世纪云云。
当然，在这两种不同答案中，对于精神文明的理解是完全不同的。在王国维看来，精神文明的核心是对精神价值的尊敬，承认精神有物质不可比拟的神圣价值和不可用物质尺度来衡量的独立价值，一个民族精神文明的成就体现为它在哲学、宗教、文学、艺术上所达到的高度。而其他人所说的精神文明，基本上是指儒家的那一套道德学说，其成就体现为社会的稳定。
你们一定已经想到，我是赞成王国维的答案的。在我看来，中国人缺少对精神价值的尊敬，从而也缺少对守护和创造了精神价值的人的尊敬，这是明显的事实。我暂时先提一下这方面最直观的一个表现。在欧洲国家，任何一个城镇的居民最引以自豪的事情是，曾经有某某著名的哲学家、艺术家、学者在那里生活过，或者居住过一些日子，他们必会精心保存其故居，挂上牌子注明某某何时在此居住。我在海德堡看到，这个仅几万人口的小城，这样精心保存的故居就有数十处。在巴黎先贤祠正厅里只安放了两座精美的墓，分别葬着伏尔泰和卢梭。如果不算建祠时葬在这里的法国大革命时期的一些政治家和军人，进入先贤祠的必是大哲学家、大文学家、大科学家，总统之类是没有资格的。想一想即使在首都北京保存了几处文化名人故居，想一想什么人有资格进入八宝山的主体部分，我们就可知道其间差别了。
五，从头脑方面看中国人缺少精神性
说我们不重视精神本身的价值，这是一个婉转的说法。换一个直截了当的说法，我要说中国人、中国文化缺少精神性，或者说精神性相当弱。所谓精神性，包括理性和超越性两个层次。理性属于头脑，超越性属于灵魂。所以，精神性之强弱，可以从头脑和灵魂两个层次来看。
精神性的一个层次是理性。通俗地说，有理性即有自己的头脑。所谓有自己的头脑，就是在知识的问题上认真，一种道理是否真理，一种认识是否真知，一定要追问其根据。从总体上看，西方人在知识的根据问题上非常认真，而我们则比较马虎。
熟悉西方哲学史的人一定知道，西方哲学家们极关注知识的可靠性问题，尤其是近代以来，这方面的讨论成了西方哲学的主题。如果要对人类知识的根据追根究底，就会发现其可靠性面临着两大难题：第一，如果说与对象符合的认识才是真知，可是对象本身又永远不能在我们意识中出现，一旦出现就成了我们的认识，那么，我们如何可能将二者比较而判断其是否符合？第二，我们承认经验是知识的唯一来源，同时我们又相信在人类的知识中有一种必然的普遍的知识，它们不可能来自有限的经验，那么，它们从何而来？康德以来的许多西方哲学家之所以孜孜于要解决这两个难题，就是想把人类的知识建立在一个完全可靠的基础上，否则就放心不下。相反，中国的哲学家对这类问题不甚
关心，在中国哲学史上，从总体上怀疑知识之可靠性的只有庄子，但基本上没有后继者。知识论是中国传统哲学最薄弱的环节之一，即使讨论也偏于知行关系问题。宋明时期算是最重视知识论的，可是所讨论的知识也偏于道德认识，即所谓“德行之知”。程朱的格物致知的“知”，陆王的尽心穷理的“理”，皆如此，分歧只在悟道的途径。
在哲学之外的情况也是这样。在西方，具有纯粹的思想兴趣、学术兴趣、科学研究兴趣的人比较多，他们在从事研究时只以真知为目的而不问效用，正是在他们中产生了大思想家、大学者、大科学家。中国则少这样的人。以效用为目的的研究是很难深入下去的，一旦觉得够用，就会停下来。同时，唯有层层深入地追问根据，才能使理论思维趋于严密，而由于中国人不喜追根究底，满足于模棱两可，大而化之，所以理论思维不发达。此外，本来意义上的热爱真理也源于在知识问题上的认真，因为认真，所以对于自己所求得的真知必须坚持，不肯向任何外来的压力（政府，教会，学术权威，舆论，时尚）屈服。中国曾经有过许多为某种社会理想献身的革命烈士，但不容易出像苏格拉底这样为一个人生真理牺牲的哲学烈士，或像布鲁诺这样为一个宇宙真理牺牲的科学烈士。
六，从灵魂方面看中国人缺少精神性
精神性的另一个层次是超越性。通俗地说，有超越性即有自己的灵魂。所谓有自己的灵魂，就是在人生的问题上认真，人为何活着，怎样的活法好，一定要追问其根据，自己来为自己的生命寻求一种意义，自己来确定在世间安身立命的原则和方式，决不肯把只有一次的生命糊涂地度过。而一个人如果对人生的根据追根究底，就不可避免地会面临诸如死亡与不朽、世俗与神圣之类根本性的问题，会要求以某种方式超越有限的肉体生命而达于更高的精神存在。从总体上看，我们在生命的根据问题上也远不如西方人认真。有人说，人生哲学是中国哲学的最大成就，中国哲学在这个方面非常丰富和深刻，为世界之最。从比重看，人生哲学的确是中国哲学的主体部分，而在西方哲学中则好像没有这么重要的地位。若论人生思考的丰富和深刻，我仍觉得中国不及西方。我想着重指出一点：中西人生思考的核心问题是不同的。西方人的人生思考的核心问题是：为什么活？或者说，活着有什么根据，什么意义？这是一个人面对宇宙大全时向自己提出的问题，它要追问的是生命的终极根据和意义。所以，西方的人生哲学本质上是灵魂哲学，是宗教。中国人的人生思考的核心问题是：怎么活？或者说，怎样处世做人，应当用什么态度与别人相处？这是一个人面对他人时向自己提出的问题，它要寻求的是妥善处理人际关系的准则。所以，中国的人生哲学本质上是道德哲学，是伦理。
为什么会有这样的差异呢？我推测，很可能是因为对死抱着不同的态度。对于西方人来说，死是一个头等重要的人生问题，因为在他们看来，死使人生一切价值面临毁灭的威胁，不解决这个问题，人生其余问题便无从讨论起。苏格拉底和柏拉图把哲学看做预习
死的一种活动。自古希腊开始，西方哲学具有悠久的形而上学传统，即致力于寻求和建构某种绝对的精神性的宇宙本体，潜在的动机就是为了使个人灵魂达于某种意义上的不死。至于在基督教那里，所谓上帝无非是灵魂不死的保证罢了。中国人却往往回避死的问题，认为既然死不可逃避，就不必讨论，讨论了也没有用处。在这个问题上，哲学家的态度和老百姓一样朴素，所以孔子说：“未知生，焉知死。”庄子“以死生为一条”，抱的也是回避的态度。从死不可避免来说，对死的思考的确没有用处，但不等于没有意义，相反具有深刻的精神意义。事实上，对死的思考不但不关闭、反而敞开了人生思考，把它从人生内部事务的安排引向超越的精神追求，促使人为生命寻找一种高于生命本身的根据和意义。相反，排除了死，人生思考就只能局限于人生内部事务的安排了。中国之缺少形而上学和宗教，原因在此。儒家哲学中的宇宙论远不具备形而上学的品格，仅是其道德学说的延伸，然后又回过头来用做其道德学说的论证。所谓“天人合一”，无非是说支配着宇宙和人伦的是同一种道德秩序罢了。
由于同样的原因，我们中国人缺少真正的宗教感情。当一个人的灵魂在茫茫宇宙中发现自己孤独无助、没有根据之时，便会在绝望中向更高的存在呼唤，渴望世界有一种精神本质并且与之建立牢固的联系。这就是本来意义的宗教感情，在圣奥古斯丁、帕斯卡尔、克尔凯郭尔、托尔斯泰身上可以看见其典型的表现。我们对这样的感情是陌生的。我们也很少有真正意义上的灵魂生活，很少为纯粹精神性的问题而不安和痛苦，很少执著于乃至献身于某种超越性的信念。因此，我们中很难产生精神圣徒，我们的理想人格是能够恰当处理人际关系的君子。也因此，我们缺少各种各样的人生试验者和精神探险家，我们在精神上容易安于现状，我们的人生模式容易趋于雷同。
总起来说，我们缺少头脑的认真和灵魂的认真，或者说，缺少广义的科学精神和广义的宗教精神。
七，其他弱点可追溯到精神性的缺少
我们在其他方面的缺点往往可以在精神性之缺乏中找到根源，或至少找到根源之一。例如，为什么我们不把个人自由本身看做价值和目的，而仅仅看做手段呢？道理很简单，如果一个人不觉得有必要用自己的头脑思考问题，思想自由对他就确实不重要；如果他不觉得有必要让自己的灵魂来给自己的人生做主，信仰自由对他就确实不重要。关于这一点，梁淑溟说得很传神：中国人“对于西方人的要求自由，总怀两种态度：一种是淡漠的很，不懂得要这个作什么，一种是吃惊得很，以为这岂不乱天下！”另一面呢，“西方人来看中国人这般的不想要权利，这般的不把自由当回事，也大诧怪的”。因为他们一定会觉得，一个人如果在对世界的看法和对人生的态度上都不能自己做主，活着还有什么意思。哈耶克确实告诉我们：自由之所以重要，正是因为人人生而不同，每个人的独特性是每个人的生命的独特意义之所在；而强制之所以可恶，正是因为它把人看成了没有
自己的思想和自己的灵魂的东西。奇怪的是，在当前的哈耶克热中，人们对他的这种价值立场很少关注，往往把他的理论归结成了经济自由主义。
又例如，梁启超曾经提出一种很有代表性的意见，认为中国人在精神的层面上最缺少的是公德，即对社会的责任心。在我看来，其原因也可追溯到中国人缺少真正的灵魂生活和广义的宗教精神，因此而没有敬畏之心，没有绝对命令意义上的自律。我们不但不信神，而且不信神圣，即某种决不可侵犯的东西，一旦侵犯，人就不再是人，人的生命就丧失了最高限度和最低限度的意义。灵魂的严肃和丰富是一切美德之源，一个对自己生命的意义麻木不仁的人是不可能对他人有真正的同情之感、对社会有真正的责任心的。我想再对中国知识分子问题说几句话。我常常听说，中国知识分子的弱点是缺乏社会承担和独立品格。据我看，表面上的社会承担并不缺，真正缺的是独立品格，而之所以没有独立品格，正是因为表面上的社会承担太多了，内在的精神关切太少了。我并不反对知识分子有社会责任心，但这种责任心若没有精神关切为底蕴，就只能是一种功利心。我们不妨把中国知识分子与俄国知识分子做一个比较。俄国知识分子在社会承担方面决不亚于我们，他们中的许多人为此而被流放，服苦役，但是，他们同时又极关注灵魂问题，这使得他们能够真正作为思想家来面对社会问题。只要想一想赫尔岑、车尔尼雪夫斯基、陀斯妥耶夫斯基、舍斯托夫等人，你们就会同意我的说法。一个人自己的灵魂不曾有过深刻的经历，则任何外部的经历都不可能使他深刻起来。譬如说，中国知识分子在“文革”中所遭受的苦难也许不亚于俄国知识分子在沙皇专制下或斯大林专制下所遭受的，可是，直到今天，我们没有写出一部以“文革”为题材的优秀作品，哪怕能够勉强与陀斯妥耶夫斯基的《死屋手记》、帕斯捷尔纳克的《日瓦戈医生》、索尔仁尼琴的《古拉格群岛》相比，这恐怕不是偶然的。
八，原因和出路
最后我想提出一个问题。应该说，人性在其基本方面是共通的。人是理性的动物，在此意义上，人人都有一个头脑，都有理性的认识能力。人是形而上学的动物，在此意义上，人人都有一个灵魂，都不但要活而且要活得有意义。这本来都属于共同的人性。事实上，无论西方还是中国，都有人对于知识的根据问题和人生的根据问题持认真态度，而特别认真的也都是少数。那么，为什么在西方，人性中这些因素会进入民族性之核心，并成为一种文化传统，而在中国却不能呢？我承认，对这个问题，我尚未找到一个满意的答案。我相信，造成这种差别的原因必是复杂的。不管怎样，作为综合的结果，中国文化已经形成了其实用品格。值得注意的是，一旦形成之后，这种文化便具有了一种淘汰机制，其发生作用的方式是：对实用性予以鼓励，纳入主流和传统之中，对精神性则加以排斥，使之只能成为主流和传统之外的孤立现象。
王国维的遭遇便是一个典型例证。在他的个性中，有两点鲜明的特质。一是灵魂的认真，早已思考人生的意义问题并产生了困惑。二是头脑的认真，凡事不肯苟且马虎，必欲寻得可靠的根据。这两点特质结合起来，为灵魂的问题寻求理性的答案的倾向，表明他原本就是一个具备哲学素质的人。因此，他与德国哲学一拍即合就完全不是偶然的了。可是，他对哲学的这种具有强烈精神性的关注和研究在当时几乎无人理睬，与严复的实用性的译介之家喻户晓适成鲜明对照。他后来彻底钻进故纸堆，从此闭口不谈西方哲学乃至一切哲学，我认为应该从这里来找原因。在他的沉默和回避中，我们应能感觉到一种难言的沉痛和悲哀。可以说，淘汰机制的作用迫使他从较强的精神性退回到了较弱的精神性上来。
这里有一个恶性循环：精神性越被淘汰，实用品格就越牢固；实用品格越牢固，精神性就越被淘汰。出路何在？依我看，惟有不要怕被淘汰！本来，怕被淘汰就是一种实用的计算。如果你真的有纯粹精神性追求的渴望，你就应该坚持。我希望中国有更多立志从事纯哲学、纯文学、纯艺术、纯学术的人，即以精神价值为目的本身的人。由于我们缺乏这方面的整体素质和传统资源，肯定在很长时间里不能取得伟大成就，出不了海德格尔、卡夫卡、毕加索，这没有关系。而且，如果你是为了成为海德格尔、卡夫卡、毕加索才去从事这些，你就太不把精神价值当做目的而是当做手段了，你的确最好趁早去做那些有实用价值的事。我相信，坚持纯粹精神性追求的人多了，也许在几代人之后，我们民族的精神素质会有所改观，也许那时候我们中会产生出世界级的大哲学家和大诗人了。
在马克思墓前的讲话--恩格斯2010年05月31日 12:34:09
3月14日下午两点三刻，当代最伟大的思想家停止思想了。让他一个人留在房间里不过两分钟，等我们再进去的时候，便发现他在安乐椅上安静地睡着了---但已经是永远地睡着了。
这个人的逝世，对于欧美战斗着的无产阶级，对于历史科学，都是不可估量的损失。这位巨人逝世以后所形成的空白，不久就会使人感觉到。
正像达尔文发现有机界的发展规律一样，马克思发现了人类历史的发展规律，即历来为纷繁芜杂的意识形态所掩盖着的一个简单事实：人们首先必须吃、喝、住、穿，然后才能从事政治、科学、艺术、宗教等等。所以，直接的物质的生活资料的生产，从而一个民族或一个时代的一定的经济发展阶段，便构成基础；人们的国家制度，法的观点，艺术以至宗教观念，就是从这个基础上发展起来的。因而，也必须由这个基础来解释，而不是像过去那样做得相反。
不仅如此。马克思还发现了现代资本主义生产方式和它所产生的资产阶级社会的特殊的运动规律。由于剩余价值的发现，而先前无论资产阶级经济学家或社会主义批评家所做的一切都只是在黑暗中摸索。
一生中能有这样两个发现，该是很够了，即使只要能作出一个这样的发现，也已经是幸福的了。但马克思在他所研究的每一个领域（甚至在数学领域）都有独到的发现，这样的领域是很多的，而且其中任何一个领域他都不是肤浅地研究的。
他作为科学家就是这样。但是这在他身上远不是主要的。在马克思看来，科学是一种在历史上起推动作用的、革命的力量。任何一门理论科学中的每一个新发现，即使它的实际应用也许还无法预见——都使马克思感到衷心喜悦。但是当有了立即会对工业、对一般历史发展产生革命影响的发现的时候，他的喜悦就完全不同了。例如，他曾经密切地注意电学方面各种发现的发展情况，不久以前，他还注意了马赛尔·德普勒的发现。
因为马克思首先是一个革命家。他毕生的真正使命,就是以这种或那种方式参加推翻资本主义社会及其所建立的国家设施的事业，参加现代无产阶级的解放事业,正是他第一次使现代无产阶级意识到自身的地位和需要,意识到自身解放的条件，---这实际上就是他毕生的使命。斗争是他的生命要素。很少有人像他那样满腔热情、坚韧不拔和卓有成效地进行斗争。最早的《莱因报》（1842年），巴黎的《前进报》（1844年），《德意志－布鲁塞尔报》（1847年），《新莱茵报》（1848－1849年），《纽约每日论坛报》（1852－1861年），以及许多富有战斗性的小册子，在巴黎、布鲁塞尔和伦敦各组织中的工作，最后，作为全部活动的顶峰，创立伟大的国际工人协会，－－老实说，协会的这位创始人即使别的什么也没有做，也可以为这一结果自豪。
正因为这样，所以马克思是当代最遭嫉恨和最受诬蔑的人。各国政府---无论专制或共和政府---都驱逐他；资产者--无论保守派或极端民主派---都竞相诽谤他，诅咒他。他对这一切毫不在意，把它们当作蛛丝一样轻轻抹去，只是在万分必要时才给予答复。现在他逝世了，在整个欧洲和美洲，从西伯利亚矿井到加利福尼亚，千百万革命战友无不对他表示尊敬、爱戴和悼念。而我敢大胆地说:他可能有过许多敌人，但未必有一个私敌。他的英名和事业将永垂不朽！恩格斯写于1883年
第五篇：演讲词
尊敬的各位嘉宾、各位领导、亲爱的老师们、同学们： 大家好！
值此冬阳送暖、叶舞花香、橙橘飘香的大好时节，我们在这里隆重举行爱心人士捐赠仪式。首先，我谨代表此次活动甘棠小学对出席捐赠仪式的爱心人士陈如富谭雪丽夫妇，吕佩夫妇，曾小亮，陈美艳，周福琴，商崇芸，张国黔，陈娟，刘湘，周建华，孙德丽；各位领导，表示最热烈的欢迎和最诚挚的感谢！
同时也感谢社会上爱心人士多年来对我校给予了物质上和精神上的帮助和支持。今天，她们更是带着深情厚谊给黄泥镇甘棠小学捐赠的。这是对我校老师的肯定以及对学生的支持，是共产党员先进性的真实体现，他们是扎扎实实践行“三个代表”的良好典范！
首先我们以最热烈的掌声再次欢迎镇教中心领导的到来、、以及各位爱心人士的到来（掌声欢迎）
下面请学生代表给出席仪式的领导、嘉宾佩戴红领巾 接下来：请我们甘棠小学校长杨登荣致欢迎词。（掌声欢迎
接下来：有请镇教中心领导为我们讲话、（掌声欢迎 接下来：我们用热烈的掌声请爱心人士代表陈如富先生给我们讲话。（掌声欢迎））
接下来：举行捐赠仪式，请爱心人士向学生代表代表捐
赠文具。
最后：请接受捐赠 的学生代表致感谢辞。
..............（捐赠过程）
衷心感谢爱心人士对甘棠小学学生的关爱和学生支持！
同志们，今天举行的爱心捐赠仪式得到了爱心人士各位领导的关心和重视，得到了大家的全力支持。在此，我代表甘棠
小学的老师及学生再次表示衷心的感谢！个人的力量是有限的，而大家的力量是无穷的，我们真诚地期待有更多的有识
之士、商界名流怀着一颗热爱家乡，建设家乡贫困小学的心，拥有一片博爱、热忱的情，更多更好地关怀我们的父老乡亲，更多更好地关爱为我们的社会做出过巨大贡献的爱心人士
为构建和谐校园＊＊贡献自己的力量。
现在我宣布本次爱心捐赠仪式到此结束！祝大家身体健康，事业发达！谢谢大家！
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