Great Speeches of the 20th Century

By Dover Publications

A great speech can stir the soul — and move a nation. This compact and affordable anthology gathers complete speeches and selected excerpts from some of the twentieth century's most memorable addresses. Writers and speakers in search of memorable quotations will appreciate this collection, as will any reader seeking historical wisdom and inspiration.
Featured speakers include Winston Churchill, rousing the British to defend their lives and homes against the Nazis; Mohandas Gandhi, advocating non-violent resistance to deplorable living conditions; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, calming the nation's fears during the Great Depression. Additional orations include those of Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, César Chávez, and many others. Includes three selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: Address to Parliament on May 13th, 1940," "I Have a Dream," and "Remarks to the Senate in Support of a Declaration of Conscience."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Aug 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780486315560

Book preview

Century

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The Natural Wonder of the Grand Canyon

(Leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it.)

Grand Canyon, Arizona Territory

May 6, 1903

As president of the United States (1901–1909), Theodore Roosevelt, a lifelong bird-lover and big-game hunter, created parkland in the United States the size of Western Europe. In the following speech, in the midst of his awe and appreciation of the Grand Canyon, the rough-riding hero of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War of 1898, greets some of his former soldiers who hailed from the area. In 1908, Roosevelt put into law the designation of the Grand Canyon as a National Monument. As noted in the speech, irrigation of the arid southwest was one of his other goals. No American president ever accomplished more for the environment.

Mr. Governor, and you, my fellow citizens:

I am glad to be in Arizona today. From Arizona many gallant men came into the regiment which I had the honor to command. Arizona sent men who won glory on fought fields, and men to whom came a glorious and an honorable death fighting for the flag of their country. As long as I live it will be to me an inspiration to have served with Bucky O’Neill. I have met so many comrades whom I prize, for whom I feel respect and admiration and affection, that I shall not particularize among them except to say that there is none for whom I feel all of respect and admiration and affection more than for your Governor.

I have never been in Arizona before. It is one of the regions from which I expect most development through the wise action of the National Congress in passing the irrigation act. The first and biggest experiment now in view under that act is the one that we are trying in Arizona. I look forward to the effects of irrigation partly as applied by and through the government, still more as applied by individuals, and especially by associations of individuals, profiting by the example of the government, and possibly by help from it—I look forward to the effects of irrigation as being of greater consequence to all this region of country in the next fifty years than any other material movement whatsoever.

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is, in kind, absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it, in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I was delighted to learn of the wisdom of the Santa Fe railroad people in deciding not to build their hotel on the brink of the canyon. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see. We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children’s children will get the benefit of it. If you deal with irrigation, apply it under circumstances that will make it of benefit, not to the speculator who hopes to get profit out of it for two or three years, but handle it so that it will be of use to the home-maker, to the man who comes to live here, and to have his children stay after him. Keep the forests in the same way. Preserve the forests by use; preserve them for the ranchman and the stockman, for the people of the Territory, for the people of the region round about. Preserve them for that use, but use them so that they will not be squandered, that they will not be wasted, so that they will be of benefit to the Arizona of 1953 as well as the Arizona of 1903

To the Indians here I want to say a word of welcome. In my regiment I had a good many Indians. They were good enough to fight and to die, and they are good enough to have me treat them exactly as square as any white man. There are many problems in connection with them. We must save them from corruption and from brutality; and I regret to say that at times we must save them from unregulated Eastern philanthropy. All I ask is a square deal for every man. Give him a fair chance. Do not let him wrong any one, and do not let him be wronged.

I believe in you. I am glad to see you. I wish you well with all my heart, and I know that your future will justify all the hopes we have.

MARY CHURCH TERRELL

What It Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the United States

(. . . . nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States)

United Women’s Club, Washington, D.C.

October 10, 1906

A public school teacher and civil rights and suffrage activist, Terrell (1863– 1954) was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of slaves. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oberlin College in Ohio, and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through her advocacy, she helped overturn segregation laws in Washington, D.C., in 1953

Washington, D.C., has been called The Colored Man’s Paradise. Whether this sobriquet was given to the national capital in bitter irony by a member of the handicapped race, as he reviewed some of his own persecutions and rebuffs, or whether it was given immediately after the war by an ex-slaveholder who for the first time in his life saw colored people walking about like free men, minus the overseer and his whip, history saith not. It is certain that it would be difficult to find a worse misnomer for Washington than The Colored Man’s Paradise if so prosaic a consideration as veracity is to determine the appropriateness of a name.

For fifteen years I have resided in Washington, and while it was far from being a paradise for colored people when I first touched these shores it has been doing its level best ever since to make conditions for us intolerable. As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night, a stranger in a strange land, and walk miles without finding a place to lay my head. Unless I happened to know colored people who live here or ran across a chance acquaintance who could recommend a colored boarding-house to me, I should be obliged to spend the entire night wandering about. Indians, Chinamen, Filipinos, Japanese and representatives of any other dark race can find hotel accommodations, if they can pay for them. The colored man alone is thrust out of the hotels of the national capital like a leper.

As a colored woman I may walk from the Capitol to the White House, ravenously hungry and abundantly supplied with money with which to purchase a meal, without finding a single restaurant in which I would be permitted to take a morsel of food, if it was patronized by white people, unless I were willing to sit behind a screen. As a colored woman I cannot visit the tomb of the Father of this country, which owes its very existence to the love of freedom in the human heart and which stands for equal opportunity to all, without being forced to sit in the Jim Crow section of an electric car which starts form the very heart of the city—midway between the Capitol and the White House. If I refuse thus to be humiliated, I am cast into jail and forced to pay a fine for violating the Virginia laws. . . .

As a colored woman I may enter more than one white church in Washington without receiving that welcome which as a human being I have the right to expect in the sanctuary of God. . . .

Unless I am willing to engage in a few menial occupations, in which the pay for my services would be very poor, there is no way for me to earn an honest living, if I am not a trained nurse or a dressmaker or can secure a position as teacher in the public schools, which is exceedingly difficult to do. It matters not what my intellectual attainments may be or how great is the need of the services of a competent person, if I try to enter many of the numerous vocations in which my white sisters are allowed to engage, the door is shut in my face.

From one Washington theater I am excluded altogether. In the remainder certain seats are set aside for colored people, and it is almost impossible to secure others. . . .

With the exception of the Catholic University, there is not a single white college in the national capital to which colored people are admitted. … A few years ago the Columbian Law School admitted colored students, but in deference to the Southern white students the authorities have decided to exclude them altogether.

Some time ago a young woman who had already attracted some attention in the literary world by her volume of short stories answered an advertisement which appeared in a Washington newspaper, which called for the services of a skilled stenographer and expert typewriter. … The applicants were requested to send specimens of their work and answer certain questions concerning their experience and their speed before they called in person. In reply to her application the young colored woman … received a letter from the firm stating that her references and experience were the most satisfactory that had been sent and requesting her to call. When she presented herself there was some doubt in the mind of the man to whom she was directed concerning her racial pedigree, so he asked her point-blank whether she was colored or white. When she confessed the truth the merchant expressed … deep regret that he could not avail himself of the services of so competent a person, but frankly admitted that employing a colored woman in his establishment in any except a menial position was simply out of the question. . . .

Not only can colored women secure no employment in the Washington stores, department and otherwise, except as menials, and such positions, of course, are few, but even as customers they are not infrequently treated with discourtesy both by the clerks and the proprietor himself. . . .

Although white and colored teachers are under the same Board of Education and the system for the children of both races is said to be uniform, prejudice against the colored teachers in the public schools is manifested in a variety of ways. From 1870 to 1900 there was a colored superintendent at the head of the colored schools. During all that time the directors of the cooking, sewing, physical culture, manual training, music and art departments were colored people. Six years ago a change was inaugurated. The colored superintendent was legislated out of office and the directorships, without a single exception, were taken from colored teachers and given to the whites. . . .

Now, no matter how competent or superior the colored teachers in our public schools may be, they know that they can never rise to the height of a directorship, can never hope to be more than an assistant and receive the meager salary therefore, unless the present regime is radically changed. . . .

Strenuous efforts are being made to run Jim Crow cars in the national capital. … Representative Heflin, of Alabama, who introduced a bill providing for Jim Crow street cars in the District of Columbia last winter, has just received a letter from the president of the East Brookland Citizens’ Association indorsing the movement for separate street cars and sincerely hoping that you will be successful in getting this enacted into a law as soon as possible. Brookland is a suburb of Washington.

The colored laborer’s path to a decent livelihood is by no means smooth. Into some of the trades unions here he is admitted, while from others he is excluded altogether. By the union men this is denied, although I am personally acquainted with skilled workmen who tell me they are not admitted into the unions because they are colored. But even when they are allowed to join the unions they frequently derive little benefit, owing to certain tricks of the trade. When the word passes round that help is needed and colored laborers apply, they are often told by the union officials that they have secured all the men they needed, because the places are reserved for white men, until they have been provided with jobs, and colored men must remain idle, unless the supply of white men is too small. . . .

And so I might go on citing instance after instance to show the variety of ways in which our people are sacrificed on the altar of prejudice in the capital of the United States and how almost insurmountable are the obstacles which block his path to success. . . .

It is impossible for any white person in the United States, no matter how sympathetic and broad, to realize what life would mean to him if his incentive to effort were suddenly snatched away. To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of score of colored youth. And surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep.

EMMA GOLDMAN

What Is Patriotism?

(. . . . patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time)

San Francisco, California

May 1908

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Emma Goldman (1869– 1940), born in Russia, was one of the most famous and controversial speakers on socialism and women’s rights. As a teenager, she was educated in Germany before she moved to the United States, where she became an anarchist and free-speech advocate. Immediately after this speech in the spring in San Francisco, an American war veteran complimented (or, as he would claim, simply greeted) her, and was consequently arrested for treason and sentenced to five years in prison. Goldman herself would serve two years in prison for encouraging resistance to the draft for World War I and was thereafter deported from the United States.

Men and Women:

What is patriotism? Is it love of one’s birthplace, the place of childhood’s recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naiveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one an eye should be, piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or is it the place where we would sit on Mother’s knee, enraptured by tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today would be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deepening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. No longer can we hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels, said Dr. Samuel Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.

An army and navy represent the people’s toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States.

The city of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred thousand. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theater parties, and revelries, at a time when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the country were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price.

What could not have been accomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as one newspaper said, a lasting memory for the child. A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is poisoned with such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human brotherhood?

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism.

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you. The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism and its bloody specter, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany, Russia and the Scandinavian countries because they dared to defy the ancient superstition.

America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.

The beginning has already been made in the schools. Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful mind perverted to suit the government. Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring posters to join the Army and the Navy. A fine chance to see the world! cries the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaied into patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through the nation.

When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood—a truly free society.

CARLOS MONTEZUMA (WASSAJA)

Light on the Indian Situation

(For four hundred years we have pleaded, begged—yes, sacrificed our lives—to receive fair treatment)

Ohio State University

October 5, 1912

A doctor and long-time advocate for Native American rights and independence, Montezuma (c. 1867–1923) details his amazing life and education and some of the history of anti-Native Americanism for this meeting of the Society of American Indians.

Senator Smith of Arizona, when a member of the House of Representatives, said, There is more hope of educating the rattlesnake, than of educating the Apaches. I am an Apache.

When I was ushered into civilization the warning among the palefaces was: Look out! an Indian is an Indian. If you do not get the first drop on him, he will drop you.

Rounding up the Apaches by the soldiers and Indian scouts was worse than catching bears and rattlesnakes. The Apaches were destroyed in bunches while caged in caves and gulches. If they stampeded they were shot down like dogs. They were deceived into surrender and then killed. Indian scouts were paid for making midnight massacre raids on Apache camps and taking [as] prisoners their children who were sold into captivity.

In one of these midnight raids made by the Pimas in 1871 many Apaches were slaughtered, and I was captured. That dark memorable night with all its awful horrors of massacre is indelibly impressed upon my mind.

The next morning, as from a supernatural stupor I awoke in another world. Childlike, I cried as if my heart would break. I wanted to go to my mother and my father. Not so. Life had another mission for me.

Two days on horseback under the broiling sun brought us to the ‘Pimas’ homes, where I was kept for several days.

To celebrate their victory, about four hundred Pimas danced around me and then helped me onto a horse and carried me off to be sold.

I was purchased for the sum of A30 by Mr. Carlos Gentile, who was on his way east, at Adamsville, Arizona. He legally adopted me and cared for me as his own. In the east we traveled from place to place and within one year landed in Chicago.

Here I entered the public school before I could speak with much intelligence in English. I made rapid progress, because I was a lone Apache in school with English-speaking children. Very soon, unconsciously, I took on their ways. I could do nothing else. In school, in the streets and in whatever way I turned I was led to become like my schoolmates. I was carried by the current of my environment. I was lost in it and had to stick to it. In my earlier days I had become Apache in speech and habit because I had associated with those who spoke only the Apache Indian language.

My public school education was not only in Chicago but also in a little red country schoolhouse near Galesburg, Illinois, where I grasped the rudiments of farm life during a two years’ stay.

I was taken to Brooklyn, New York. There I studied with the children of other races learning to become American citizens; and then came west to Urbana, Illinois, where I was tutored and prepared for the state university.

While a student at the university without money, to pay part of my expenses I helped around the house—gardened, took care of a horse, and worked at whatever I could find to do outside of my study hours. During vacations I worked on a farm. Graduating in the spring of 1884, I came back to Chicago.

Here, like all new comers, I experienced that even with a university degree it was not an easy task to convince the people that you can do anything. After many days of fruitless search I found a job, not a position, where I worked only for my meals and a place in the store to sleep.

Through kind friends my tuition was remitted to me at the Chicago Medical College. For five years alternately behind the counter and attending lectures I finally graduated in medicine and obtained my coveted license to practice medicine and surgery. After several months of private practice I entered the Indian service as physician and clerk at the Fort Stevenson Indian School in North Dakota. Here I saw an Indian school for the first time. One year later I was transferred to Western Shoshone Agency in Nevada as agency physician. There I saw in full what deterioration a reservation is for the Indians. I watched these Indians, cut off from civilized life, trying to become like Yankees with the aid of a few government employees. Because of my own experience I was now able to fully realize how their situation held them to their old Indian life, and often wondered why the government held them so arbitrarily to their tribal life, when better things were all around them.

After three years and a half of hard service in Nevada I was sent to the Colville Agency in Washington, where I had the honor of being physician to the Chief Moses band of Columbia River Indians and Chief Joseph’s band of Nez Percés, these two chiefs being among the greatest in our history.

Though I longed to help these Indians, yet my heart yearned for civilization, and, as God would have it, I received without solicitation a call from the east—a call to become resident physician at the renowned Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Here I had the blessed privilege of working with those who had at heart the real uplift of my people.

Two and one-half years at this institution under the famous God-fearing man, General Pratt, was an inspiration. At that time this school was a lighthouse for all the Indians. It was a stepping stone to all its students helping them to go out into every avenue of civilized American life.

That I might better acquaint myself with all human kind by coming in contact with all races of all climes; that I might see with my own eyes the world’s progress; and that I might exert the energies with which God blessed me and developed in me to the best interest of my fellow men, I resigned my position at Carlisle. Again coming back to Chicago I started at the bottom of my profession, equipped with a firm determination to learn and struggle on. After sixteen years of the steady and persistent practice of medicine, I believe that I am justified in feeling a merited pride in that I can refer with confidence of support to hundreds of the best physicians and surgeons in Chicago and elsewhere, who are my friends and know me, my work and my observance of its professional ethics.

To draw the lesson from this recital of