famous speeches 18th century

Henry Grattan (1746-1820)

Henry Grattan (1746-1820) Anglo-Irish parliamentarian. Grattan's long political career spanned a crucial period of Irish and British history before and after the American and French revolutions, the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion and the Act of Union 1800.

Upload to this page

Add your photos, text, videos, etc. to this page.

Related Libraries

• eBooks by County
• Architecture, Monuments and Built Heritage
• Children's Books
• Church History
• Education in Ireland
• Flora and Fauna
• Geography of Ireland
• Industry and Trade
• Ball: Howth And Its Owners
• Barrington: Historic Memoirs of Ireland
• Borlase: The History Of The Irish Rebellion
• Boulger: The Battle Of The Boyne
• Burrowes: The Manor of Glenmore
• Burton: The History of the Kingdom of Ireland
• Bussey: Irish Conspiracies: Recollections of John Mallon
• Cody: The Insurrection of Twenty-Third July, 1803
• Connolly: Labour and Easter Week
• Connolly: Labour in Ireland
• Connolly: Socialism and Nationalism
• Connolly: The Workers' Republic
• Crawford: History of Ireland
• Curry: Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland
• Cusack: A History of the City and County of Cork
• D'Alton: King James's Irish Army List
• Davitt: The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland
• Dicey: England's Case Against Home Rule
• Dowling: The Hedge Schools Of Ireland
• Froude: The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century
• Gilbert: Historical and Municipal Documents of Ireland
• Gladstone: The Irish Question
• Gogarty: I Follow Saint Patrick
• Good: Irish Unionism
• Grattan: Adventures With The Connaught Rangers
• Griffith: The Resurrection of Hungary
• Grose: The Antiquities of Ireland
• Hall: Ireland: its scenery, character etc.
• Harris: The Whole Works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland
• Harris: Hibernica
• Healy: Ireland’s Ancient Schools And Scholars
• Hussey De Burgh: The Landowners Of Ireland
• Jourdain & Fraser: The Connaught Rangers
• Ledwich: Antiquities of Ireland
• Lynch: Cambrensis Eversus
• MacNeill: The Irish Volunteer
• Madden: The United Irishmen
• Matthews: The O'Neills Of Ulster
• Mitchell: The History of Ireland
• Musgrave: Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland
• O'Brien: Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland
• O'Donavan: Annals of the Four Masters
• O'Donavan: Tribes and Customs of the Hy-Many
• O'Flaherty: Ogygia
• O'Grady: History of Ireland
• O'Halloran: General History of Ireland
• O'Halloran: Study of the History and Antiquities of Ireland
• O'Hart: Irish Pedigrees or the Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation
• Pakenham: Peace By Ordeal
• Parnell: Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics
• Parnell: History of the Penal Laws
• Petty: Down Survey
• Pollard: The Secret Societies Of Ireland
• Roche Ardill: St Patrick A.D. 180
• Sheehan: Nenagh And Its Neighbourhood
• Simington: The Civil Survey 1654-1656, County of Tipperary
• Stafford: Pacata Hibernia
• Stanihurst: De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis
• Story: An Impartial History Of The Wars Of Ireland
• Department of External Affairs: Cuimhneachan 1916-1966
• The Campaigns and History of The Royal Irish Regiment
• Taylor: A History of the Rise, Progress and Suppression of the Rebellion in the County of Wexford in the Year 1798
• Teeling: Personal Narrative of the "Irish Rebellion" of 1798
• Thackeray: The Irish Sketch Book
• Ware: The Antiquities and History of Ireland
• Warner: The History of the Rebellion and Civil-War in Ireland
• Whelan: The Battle of Jadotville
• Wilde: A Descriptive Catalogue
• Folklore of Ireland
• Irish Language
• Irish People
• Life and Society
• Literature and Theatre
• Statistical Surveys of Ireland
• Ordnance Survey of Ireland: Letters
• Talking eBooks

Popular Sections

Classic British and American Essays and Speeches

English Prose From Jack London to Dorothy Parker

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

From the works and musings of Walt Witman to those of Virginia Woolf, some of the cultural heroes and prolific artists of prose are listed below--along with some of the world's greatest essays and speeches  ever composed by these British and American literary treasures.

George Ade (1866-1944)

George Ade was an America playwright, newspaper columnist and humorist whose greatest recognition was "Fables in Slang" (1899), a satire that explored the colloquial vernacular of America. Ade eventually succeeded in doing what he set out to do: Make America laugh.

• The Difference Between Learning and Learning How : "In due time the Faculty gave the Degree of M.A. to what was left of Otis and still his Ambition was not satisfied."
• Luxuries: "About sixty-five per cent of all the people in the world think they are getting along great when they are not starving to death."
• Vacations: "The planet you are now visiting may be the only one you ever see."

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

American activist Susan B. Anthony crusaded for the women's suffrage movement, making way for the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, giving women the right to vote. Anthony is principally known for the six-volume "History of Woman Suffrage." 

• On Women's Right to Vote : "The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?"

Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

The writings of American humorist, actor and drama critic Robert Benchley are considered his best achievement. His socially awkward, slightly confused persona allowed him to write about the inanity of the world to great effect.

• Advice to Writers : "A terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors"
• Business Letters : "As it stands now things are pretty black for the boy."
• Christmas Afternoon : "Done in the Manner, If Not in the Spirit of Dickens"
• Do Insects Think? : "It really was more like a child of our own than a wasp, except that it looked more like a wasp than a child of our own."
• The Most Popular Book of the Month: "In practice, the book is not flawless. There are five hundred thousand names, each with a corresponding telephone number."

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

British novelist and short-story writer Joseph Conrad rendered about the "tragedy of loneliness" at sea and became known for his colorful, rich descriptions about the sea and other exotic places. He is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists of all time.

• Outside Literature : "A sea voyage would have done him good. But it was I who went to sea--this time bound to Calcutta."

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

American Frederick Douglass' great oratory and literary skills helped him to become the first African American citizen to hold high office in the US government. He was one of the 19th century's most prominent human rights activist, and his autobiography, "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" (1882), became an American literary classic.

• The Destiny of Colored Americans : "Slavery is the peculiar weakness of America, as well as its peculiar crime."
• A Glorious Resurrection: "My long-crushed spirit rose."

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)

W.E.B. Du Bois was an American scholar and human rights activist, a respected author and historian of literature. His literature and studies analyzed the unreachable depths of American racism. Du Bois' seminal work is a collection of 14 essays titled "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903). 

• Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others : "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission."
• Of the Passing of the First-Born : "He knew no color-line, poor dear--and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun."

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Known foremost for his novel "The Great Gatsby," American novelist and short-story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald was also a renown playboy and had a tumultuous life compounded by alcoholism and depression. Only after his death did he become known as a preeminent American literary author. 

• What I Think and Feel at 25: "The main thing is to be your own kind of a darn fool."

Ben Hecht  (1894-1964)

American novelist, short-story writer and playwright Ben Hecht is remembered as one of Hollywood's greatest screenplay writers and may best be remembered for "Scarface," Wuthering Heights" and "Guys and Dolls."

• Fog Patterns : "Yes, we are all lost and wandering in the thick mists. We have no destinations."
• Letters: "You would see a procession of mysterious figures flitting through the streets, an unending swarm of dim ones, queer ones."

Ernest Hemingway  (1899-1961)

American novelist Ernest Hemingway won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his mastery of the art of narrative ... and for the influence he has exerted on contemporary style" as demonstrated in his brilliant novel "The Old Man and the Sea."

• American Bohemians in Paris: "The scum of Greenwich Village, New York, has been skimmed off and deposited in large ladles on that section of Paris adjacent to the Café Rotonde."
• Camping Out : "Any man of average office intelligence can make at least as good a pie as his wife."

Martin Luther King Jr.  (1929-1968)

Civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Jr., winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, may be best known for "I Have A Dream," in which he wrote about love, peace, nonviolent activism and equality between all races.

• I Have a Dream : "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
• Reading Quiz on "I Have a Dream"
• Ten Things You Should Know About Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" Speech

Jack London  (1876-1916)

Nineteenth-century American author and journalist Jack London is best known for his adventures "White Fang" and "The Call of the Wild." London published more than 50 books over the last 16 years of his life, including "John Barleycorn," which was somewhat of a memoir about his lifelong battle with alcohol.

• The Somnambulists : "[T]his archdeceiver believes all that they tell him. He reads only the newspapers and magazines that tell him what he wants to be told."
• The Story of an Eyewitness: The San Francisco Earthquake : "Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed."
• Reading Quiz on "The San Francisco Earthquake"
• What Life Means to Me : "I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life."

H.L. Mencken  (1880-1956)

American journalist, activist and editor H.L. Mencken was also a very influential literary critic. His columns were popular not only for their literary criticism, but also for their questioning of popular political, social and cultural views.

• The Hills of Zion : "Dayton was having a roaring time. It was better than the circus."
• The Libido for the Ugly : "Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty."
• Literature and the Schoolma'm : "The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules."
• The Lower Depths : "The worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English."
• Portrait of an Ideal World : "All the great villainies of history have been perpetrated by sober men, and chiefly by teetotalers."

Christopher Morley  (1890-1957)

American writer Christopher Morley was popular for his literary columns in the "New York Evening Post," among other literary magazines. His many collections of essays and columns were "lighthearted, vigorous displays of the English language." 

• 1100 Words : "Let us be brief, crisp, packed with thought."
• The Art of Walking : "Sometimes it seems as though literature were a co-product of legs and head."
• A Morning in Marathon: "[W]e flashed onto the Hackensack marshes and into the fully minted gold of superb morning."
• On Going to Bed : "The happier creatures ... take the tide of sleep at the flood and are borne calmly and with gracious gentleness out to great waters of nothingness."

George Orwell  (1903-1950)

This British novelist, essayist and critic is best known for his novels "1984" and "Animal Farm." George Orwell's disdain for imperialism (he considered himself an anarchist) guided him in his life as well as through some of his writings.

• A Hanging : "We all began laughing again. ... The dead man was a hundred yards away."
• Why Are Beggars Despised? : "A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living."

Dorothy Parker  (1893-1967)

Witty American poet and short-story writer Dorothy Parker began as an editorial assistant at "Vogue" and eventually became the book reviewer known as the "Constant Reader" for "The New Yorker." Among her hundreds of works, Parker won the 1929 O. Henry Award for her short story "Big Blond."

• Good Souls: "They are fated to go through life, congenial pariahs. They live out their little lives, mingling with the world, yet never a part of it."
• Mrs. Post Enlarges on Etiquette : "As one delves deeper and deeper into  Etiquette , disquieting thoughts come."

Bertrand Russell  (1872-1970)

British philosopher and social reformer Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Russell was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century.

• In Praise of Idleness : "The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."

Margaret Sanger  (1879-1966)

American activist Margaret Sanger was a sex educator, nurse and women's rights advocate. She began the first feminist publication, "The Woman Rebel," in 1914. 

• The Turbid Ebb and Flow of Misery: "My own cozy and comfortable family existence was becoming a reproach to me."

George Bernard Shaw  (1856-1950)

An Irish dramatist and critic, George Bernard Shaw was also a socialist propagandist and winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature (which he didn't receive until 1926) for "his work which is marked by both idealism and beauty." Shaw wrote more than 60 plays during his lifetime.

• Preface to Pygmalion: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."
• She Would Have Enjoyed It: "Why does a funeral always sharpen one's sense of humor?"
• Why Law Is Indispensable: "Laws deaden the conscience of individuals by relieving them of responsibility."
• The Art of Political Lying : "Considering that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim so frequent in everybody's mouth, that truth will at last prevail."
• Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation : "This degeneracy of conversation ... hath been owing, among other causes, to the custom arisen, for sometime past, of excluding women from any share in our society."
• A Meditation Upon a Broomstick : "But a broomstick is an emblem of a tree standing on its head."

Henry David Thoreau  (1817-1862)

American essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau is most known for his masterful work, "Walden," about living a life close to nature. He was a dedicated abolitionist and a strong practitioner of civil disobedience.

• The Battle of the Ants : "I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war."
• The Landlord: "If we do not look up to the Landlord, we look round for him on all emergencies, for he is a man of infinite experience, who unites hands with wit."
• The Last Days of John Brown : "[T]he one great rule of composition--and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this--is, to  speak the truth ."

James Thurber  (1894-1961)

American author and illustrator James Thurber is best known for his contributions to "The New Yorker." Via his contributions to the magazine, his cartoons became some of the most popular in the United States.

• The Subjunctive Mood : "Husbands are suspicious of all subjunctives. Wives should avoid them."
• Which: "Never monkey with 'which.'"

Anthony Trollope  (1815-1882)

British author Anthony Trollope is best known for his writing in the Victorian Era--some of his work includes a series of novels known as "The Chronicles of Barsetshire." Trollope also wrote on political, social and gender issues.

• The Plumber : "The plumber is doubtless aware that he is odious. He feels himself, like Dickens's turnpike-man, to be the enemy of mankind."

Mark Twain  (1835-1910)

Mark Twain was an American humorist, journalist, lecturer and novelist best known for his classic American novels "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." With his wit and grand telling of tales, Twain is nothing short of an American national treasure. 

• Advice to Youth : "Always obey your parents, when they are present."
• Corn-Pone Opinions : "Tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."
• The Danger of Lying in Bed : "The danger isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds."
• A Fable : "You can find in a text whatever you bring."
• Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences : " Deerslayer  is just simply a literary delirium tremens."
• The Lowest Animal : "[W]e have descended and degenerated ... till we have reached the bottom stage of development."
• On the Decay of the Art of Lying: "Lying is universal: we all do it; we all must do it."
• Two Ways of Seeing a River : "All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!"
• Unconscious Plagiarism : "[P]ride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas."

H.G. Wells  (1866-1944)

British author and historian H.G. Wells is best known for his works of science fiction, including "The Time Machine," "The First Men in the Moon" and "The War of the Worlds." Wells wrote an astounding 161 full-length books. 

• For Freedom of Spelling: The Discovery of an Art: "Why should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literary merit?"
• Of Conversation: An Apology: "I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe."
• The Pleasure of Quarrelling : "Without quarreling you have not fully appreciated your fellow-man."
• The Possible Collapse of Civilisation: "Modern warfare is an insanity, not a sane business proposition."
• The Writing of Essays: "The art of the essayist ... may be learnt in a brief ten minutes or so."

Walt Whitman  (1819-1892)

American poet and journalist Walt Whitman's verse collection "Leaves of Grass" is an American literature landmark. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised the collection as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom" America had yet contributed.

• A Glimpse of War's Hell Scenes: "There was no exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot."
• Slang in America : "Language in the largest sense ... is really the greatest of studies."
• Street Yarn: "Come and walk in New York streets."

Virginia Woolf  (1882-1941)

British author Virginia Woolf may be best known for her modernist classics "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse." But she also produced feminist texts such as "A Room of One's Own" and "Three Guineas" and wrote pioneering essays on the politics of power, artistic theory and literary history.

• The Decay of Essay Writing : "Under the decent veil of print one can indulge one's egoism to the full."
• The Modern Essay : "The essay must lap us about and draw its curtain across the world."
• The Patron and the Crocus : "Be sure you choose your patron wisely."
• Street Haunting: A London Adventure : "Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way."
• Writing for My Eye Only: "I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea."
• A List of Every Nobel Prize Winner in English Literature
• Complete List of John Steinbeck's Books
• A Brief History of English Literature
• 42 Must-Read Feminist Female Authors
• Biography of John Updike, Pulitzer Prize Winning American Author
• 27 Black American Women Writers You Should Know
• 6 Speeches by American Authors for Secondary ELA Classrooms
• 10 Important Contemporary and Late-20th-Century Authors
• Notable Authors of the 19th Century
• Sinclair Lewis, First American to Win Nobel Prize for Literature
• A Brief Overview of American Literary Periods
• American Author Maps: Informational Texts in the English Classroom
• Mark Twain: His Life and His Humor
• Jack London: His Life and Work
• Top 100 Women of History
• What is a Familiar Essay in Composition?

The Best Eighteenth-Century Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The eighteenth century was the great Age of Enlightenment, but also Romanticism. The Augustan or neoclassical poetry of Alexander Pope and others eventually gave way to the Romantic meditations of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Below, we introduce ten of the greatest and most emblematic poems of the eighteenth century. We’ve confined ourselves to poems written in the English language here, to make the task even vaguely achievable.

1. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock .

The neoclassical return to the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome – coupled with a desire for rationalism and order – dominated the first half of the eighteenth century in English verse. And nobody better personified this neoclassical ideal than Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who made his name while still in his early twenties with this mock-heroic satire on the vanity of upper-class society in the early eighteenth century.

When a lock of Belinda’s hair is cut off, a ‘war’ ensues, taking in the whole epic cast of supernatural entities (Sylphs and the like):

Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel A well-bred lord t’ assault a gentle belle? O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor’d, Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? In tasks so bold, can little men engage, And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?

2. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘ Hymn to the Moon ’.

Montagu (1689-1762) was a remarkable eighteenth-century woman: as well as her writing, she is also credited with introducing smallpox inoculation to Britain, half a century before Edward Jenner developed vaccination against the disease.

‘Hymn to the Moon’ is a wonderful lyric about the moon which shows that eighteenth-century poets weren’t always writing in a satirical vein. Indeed, in many ways Montagu’s poem prefigures the Romantic poems written at the end of the eighteenth century:

By thy pale beams I solitary rove, To thee my tender grief confide; Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove, My friend, my goddess, and my guide.

3. Samuel Johnson, ‘ The Vanity of Human Wishes ’.

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) embodies much of the eighteenth century with its determination to define, categorise, and classify: he is best-remembered for his monumental 1755 Dictionary of the English Language . But he was also a poet: much of Johnson’s poetry is written in the heroic couplets (iambic pentameter rhyming couplets) used in Pope’s poem above.

Much of it also contains a strong element of moral instruction, as here, in his poem about vanity:

The teeming mother, anxious for her race, Begs for each birth the fortune of a face: Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring; And Sedley curs’d the form that pleas’d a king. Ye nymphs of rosy lips and radiant eyes, Whom Pleasure keeps too busy to be wise, Whom Joys with soft varieties invite, By day the frolic, and the dance by night, Who frown with vanity, who smile with art, And ask the latest fashion of the heart, What care, what rules your heedless charms shall save, Each nymph your rival, and each youth your slave?

4. Thomas Gray, ‘ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ’.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm’ring landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds …

Of course, this classic eighteenth-century poem had to feature in our list of the best churchyard poems! The ‘country churchyard’ referred to in the poem’s title belonged to St Giles’ parish church at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire.

‘Gray’s Elegy’ (as it’s often known) was partly inspired by the death of another poet, Richard West, in 1742, but became a grand meditation on death and the simple memorials left behind by rustic village folk rather than statesmen and celebrated figures. The poem also gave Thomas Hardy the phrase ‘far from the madding crowd’ for use as the title of his fourth published novel.

5. Phillis Wheatley, ‘ On Being Brought from Africa to America ’.

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew …

Wheatley (c. 1753-84; pictured right) was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773 when she was probably still in her early twenties.

Wheatley had been taken from Africa to America as a young girl, but was freed shortly after the publication of her poems; the short poem ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’ reminds her (white) readers that although she is black, everyone – regardless of skin colour – can be ‘refined’ and join the choirs of the godly. The poem betrays its eighteenth-century context and the attitudes towards race at the time, but Wheatley’s voice is an important one in eighteenth-century American – indeed, world – poetry.

6. Robert Burns, ‘ A Red, Red Rose ’.

Possibly based on a traditional lyric, this poem – also called ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’ – is one of the most widely anthologised love poems in English. Bob Dylan called it his single biggest inspiration. And did the final two lines inspire The Proclaimers to write ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’? One cannot choose but wonder.

7. Charlotte Smith, ‘ Sonnet on being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland ’.

Is there a solitary wretch who hies To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow, And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes Its distance from the waves that chide below; Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs Chills his cold bed upon the mountain turf, With hoarse, half-uttered lamentation, lies Murmuring responses to the dashing surf …

English Romanticism wasn’t entirely dominated by men, although it’s true that names like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and so on tend to dominate the lists. But as Dorothy Wordsworth’s role in inspiring ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ demonstrates, Romanticism wasn’t quite an all-male affair.

This poem by Charlotte Turner Smith, a pioneer of Romanticism in England who was born before Wordsworth or Coleridge, is that rarest of things: a Gothic sonnet. This needn’t surprise when we bear in mind that the sonnet’s author, Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) was associated with English Romanticism and was also a key figure in the revival of the English sonnet.

8. William Blake, ‘ The Tyger ’.

The opening line of this poem, ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’, is among the most famous lines in all of William Blake’s poetry. Accompanied by a painting of an altogether cuddlier tiger than the ‘Tyger’ depicted by the poem itself, ‘The Tyger’ first appeared in Songs of Experience in 1794. Framed as a series of questions, ‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright’ (as the poem is also often known) sees Blake’s speaker wondering about the creator responsible for such a fearsome creature as the tiger.

The fiery imagery used throughout the poem conjures the tiger’s aura of danger: fire equates to fear. Don’t get too close to the tiger, Blake’s poem seems to say, otherwise you’ll get burnt. This is one of the most famous poems of the late eighteenth century and an important example of English Romanticism, although Blake stands separate from the next two poets on this list…

9. William Wordsworth, ‘ Tintern Abbey ’.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky …

This poem was not actually composed at Tintern Abbey, but, as the poem’s full title reveals, was written nearby, overlooking the ruins of the medieval priory in the Wye Valley in South Wales. Well, actually, according to Wordsworth, he didn’t ‘write’ a word of the poem until he got to Bristol, where he wrote down the whole poem, having composed it in his head shortly after leaving the Wye.

The poem is one of the great hymns to tranquillity, quiet contemplation, and self-examination in all of English literature, and a quintessential piece of Romantic poetry written in meditative blank verse. We have analysed this classic Wordsworth poem here .

10. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink …

Coleridge’s classic 1798 poem first appeared in Lyrical Ballads , the volume Coleridge co-authored with William Wordsworth. Wordsworth disliked The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , a long narrative poem inspired by a story Coleridge had heard from a Somerset sailor, and only reluctantly allowed it to be included in reprints of the collection. Coleridge’s poem, which is now recognised as a classic, contains perhaps the most famous poetic lines about water in the whole of English literature: ‘Water, water, anywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.’

Discover more classic poetry with these  birthday poems ,  short poems about death , and these  classic war poems .

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

Type your email…

1 thought on “The Best Eighteenth-Century Poems Everyone Should Read”

Bound to be! I’ve seen The Proclaimers in concert twice, and they’re very keen on promoting Scottish culture – I’m sure they’ve read Burns!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Native American Rhetorical Traditions

• Books & Articles

Historical Speeches

• Contemporary Speech
• Painting, Drawing & Maps
• Photography
• DH Projects

Online Speech Banks

American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank

A collection of famous speeches, including audio and video where available.

Famous Speeches in History

Video and audio clips of famous speeches available via the History Channel website.

Great Speeches

An extensive collection of speeches available through Learn Out Loud website.

• Introduction
• 17th century
• 18th century
• 19th century before 1861
• 19th century after 1861

Searching for historical speeches by Native Americans may call for an advanced search strategy. While several anthologies exist (see earlier pages of this guide), a large portion of oral rhetorical heritage remains in archival collections, reported in the newspapers of the days, presented in eyewitness accounts transcribed and translated in English, written down in diaries, narratives, and poetry, captured in interviews and in oral history projects. 

A few starting points are suggested below. Texts are arranged chronologically in order to foreground the historical context of the speeches which were delivered close to each other in time. Speeches by the same author follow the overall chronology. Speeches, addresses, and petition with collective authorship appear unattributed.

PUBLISHED COLLECTIONS

• Aboriginal American oratory; the tradition of eloquence among the Indians of the United States Call Number: E98 .O7 J6

Address to Captain John Smith ( 1609) by Powhatan

Powhatan (c. 1547 – c. 1618), whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh (alternately spelled Wahunsenacah, Wahunsunacock or Wahunsonacock), was the leader of the Powhatan, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking American Indians living in the Tidewater region of Virginia at the time English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607. Powhatan, alternately called "King" or "Chief" Powhatan by the English, led the main political and military power facing the early colonists. By initiating the Indian Massacre of 1622 and attacks in 1644, he attempted to force the English from Virginia. These attempts met with strong reprisals from the English, ultimately resulting in the near destruction of the tribe. He was the father of Matoaka (Pocahontas).

On Colonizing Education , 1744 by Chief Canasstego, delivered on behalf of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations.

Chief Canasstego (c.1684-1750) was a leader of the Onondaga nation who became a prominent diplomat and spokesman of the Iroquois Confederacy in the 1740s. He was involved in several controversial land sales to colonial British officials. He is now best known for a speech he gave at the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster, where he recommended that the British colonies emulate the Iroquois by forming a confederacy. Canassatego was reportedly assassinated, perhaps by sympathizers or agents of New France

Speech to an Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Huron Audience , 5 May 1763 by Chief Pontiac

Pontiac , or Obwandiyag, (c. 1714/20 – April 20, 1769) was an Odawa war chief known for his role in the war named for him, from 1763 to 1766. He led Native Americans in an armed struggle against the British in the Great Lakes region. Nineteenth-century accounts portrayed him as the mastermind and leader of the revolt, but some subsequent scholars argued that his role had been exaggerated.

“I Believe It Is Because I Am a Poor Indian”: Samson Occom’s Life as an Indian Minister , 1768 by Samson Occom

A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian , 1772 by Samson Occom

The Reverend Samson Occom (1723 – 1792) was a member of the Mohegan nation, from near New London, Connecticut, who became a Presbyterian cleric. Occom was the second Native American to publish his writings in English, the first Native American to write down his autobiography, and also helped found several settlements, including what ultimately became known as the Brothertown Indians. Together with the missionary John Eliot, Occom became one of the foremost missionaries who cross-fertilized Native American communities with Christianized European culture.

Logan’s Lament , 1774 by Chief Logan.

Logan the Orator (c. 1723–1780) was a Cayuga orator and war leader. After his 1760s move to the Ohio Country, he became affiliated with the Mingo, a tribe formed from Seneca, Cayuga, Lenape and other remnant peoples. He took revenge for family members killed in 1774 in the Yellow Creek Massacre. His actions against settlers on the frontier helped spark Dunmore's War later that year. Logan became known for a speech, later known as Logan's Lament, which he reportedly delivered after the war.

“The Disturbances in America give great trouble to all our Nations,” 1776 by Joseph Brant

Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (1743–1807) was a Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York. He rose to prominence due to his education, abilities, and connections to British officials. During the American Revolutionary War, Brant led Mohawk and colonial Loyalists known as "Brant's Volunteers" against the rebels in a bitter partisan war on the New York frontier.

Address to Christian Native Americans at Gnadenhutten , 1781 by Chief Buckongaheals. 

Born around 1720, Chief Buckongahelas was a regionally and nationally renowned Lenape chief, councilor and warrior. He was active from the days of the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) through the Northwest Indian Wars, after the United States achieved independence and settlers encroached on territory beyond the Appalachian Mountains and Ohio River. He became involved in the Western Confederacy of mostly Algonquian-speaking peoples, who were seeking to repel American settlers. Buckongahelas was respected by the Americans as a chief, although he did not have the position to do political negotiations.

The Chickasaws Send a Message of Conciliation to Congress , 1783

Seneca Chiefs Remind President Washington of the Iroquois' Role in the American Revolution , 1790.

"Speech to British Government Concerning Indian Land Claims ," Niagara, October 22, 1792 by Joseph Brant (manuscript, from Wisconsin Historical Society)

Speech to the Iroquois Six Nations, delivered before a Gentleman Missionary , 1805 by Chief Red Jacket

Chief Red Jacket (c. 1750–1830) was a Seneca orator and chief of the Wolf clan, based in Western New York. On behalf of his nation, he negotiated with the United States when the Seneca were forced to cede much land. He signed the Treaty of Canandaigua (1794) and helped secure some Seneca territory in New York state. Red Jacket's speech defending religion (1805) has been preserved as an example of his great oratorical style. Red Jacket vehemently opposed missionaries’ living on Indian lands and attempted to preserve Indian jurisdiction over criminal acts committed on Indian property.

Speech to Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison , 1808 by Tenskwatawa

Tenskwatawa (1775 – 1836) was a religious and political leader of the Shawnee, a younger brother of Tecumseh. About 1805, he had a spiritual experience after which he denounced Euro-American settlers and led a purification movement, promoting unity among Native Americans and the pursuit of traditional ways. In 1808 he and his brother, Tecumseh, established a village called Prophetstown, and their followers in the pan-Indian resistance movement reached thousands. As tensions with colonists grew, Governor William Henry Harrison of Ohio marched to Prophetstown with about 1000 men. After engagement between the two camps, Prophetstown was abandoned and burned to the ground by the military. Following Tecumseh’s death in 1813, the resistance movement was defeated, and Tenskwatawa went to exile in Canada. He returned in 1824 to assist with the Shawnee removal to reservation land and died in Kansas in 1836.

Address to General William Henry Harrison at Vincennes in the Indiana Territory (probably, 1810) by Chief Tecumseh

A Call for Native American Resistance , 1810 by Tecumseh

"Sleep Not Longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws," 1811 by Tecumseh

Speech to the Osages in the winter of 1811-1812 by Tecumseh 

Tecumseh (c. 1768 –1813) was a Shawnee chief, warrior, diplomat, and orator who promoted resistance to the U.S. expansion onto Native American lands. In the War of 1812, Tecumseh joined with the British, recruiting warriors and helping to capture Detroit. The following year he led an unsuccessful campaign against Americans in Ohio and Indiana. When U.S. naval forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, Tecumseh retreated into Upper Canada and was killed at the Battle of the Thames 1813. His death caused a collapse of the pan-Indian alliance and the lands he fought to defend were ceded to the U.S. government

Response to Chief Tecumseh on War Against the Americans , 1811 by Pushmataba

Chief Pushmataha (c. 1764–1824), the “Indian General,” was one of the three regional chiefs of the major divisions of the Choctaw in the 19th century. Pushmataha was highly regarded among Native Americans, Europeans, and white American, for his skill in both war and diplomacy. Rejecting the offers of alliance and reconquest proffered by Tecumseh, Pushmataha led the Choctaw to fight on the side of the United States in the War of 1812. He negotiated several treaties with the United States. In 1824, he traveled to Washington to petition the Federal government against further cessions of Choctaw land. Chief Pushmataha was buried with full military honors in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Address to General Andrew Jackson , 1814 by Red Eagle

William Weatherford, also referenced as Red Eagle (ca. 1781–1824), was a Creek chief of the Upper Creek towns who led many actions in the Creek War (1813–1814) against Lower Creek towns and against allied forces of the United States. One of many mixed-race descendants of Southeast Indians, he was raised as a Creek and achieved his power through his mother's prominent Wind Clan. After the war, he rebuilt his wealth as a slaveholding planter in lower Monroe County, Alabama.

Surrender Speech , 1832 by Black Hawk

Black Hawk (1767 –1838) was a warrior and leader of the Sauk Native American tribe in the Midwest. During the war of 1812, Black Hawk fought on the British side against the US in hopes to push settlers away from the Sauk territory. Later, during the 1832 War, he led a band of Sauk and Fox warriors against settlers in Illinois and Wisconsin. After the war, he was captured by U.S. forces. While in custody, Black Hawk told his story to an interpreter. The first Native American autobiography to be published in the US, his book became an immediate bestseller.

Eulogy on King Philips , 1836 by William Appes

William Apess , or Pequot, (1798–1839) was an ordained Methodist minister, writer, activist, and a political and religious leader in Massachusetts. After becoming ordained as a Methodist minister in 1829, he published his autobiography -- among the first autobiographies by a Native American writer. In 1833, while serving as an itinerant preacher in New England, Apess visited the Mashpee on Cape Cod. Hearing their grievances against white overseers and settlers, he helped organize the Mashpee Revolt of 1833-34. In 1835, Apess published a book about the experience, which he summarized as "Indian Nullification."

“Our Hearts are Sickened”: Letter from Chief John Ross of the Cherokee, Georgia , 1836 by John Ross

Letter from John Ross, principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Indians: in answer to inquiries from a friend regarding the Cherokee affairs with the United States, followed by a copy of the protest of the Cherokee delegation, laid before the Senate and House of Representatives at the city of Washington, on the twenty-first day of June, eighteen hundred and thirty-six

John Ross (Cherokee: ᎫᏫᏍᎫᏫ, romanized: guwisguwi)(1790 – 1866) , the son of a Cherokee mother and a Scottish father, was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. During the War of 1812, he served as adjutant of a Cherokee regiment under the command of Andrew Jackson. After the War ended, Ross started a tobacco plantation in Tennessee, built a warehouse and trading post on the Tennessee River, and started a ferry service. In 1816, as part of a Cherokee delegation to Washington, DC, and the only delegate fluent in English, he helped negotiate national boundaries, land ownership and white encroachment. Later, Ross petitioned Congress for redress of Cherokee grievances and worked to build political support for the Cherokee cause. He died in Washington DC in 1866 on a trip to negotiate the Reconstruction Treaty with the U.S.

Speech during the Smallpox Epidemic of 1837 by Four Bears (Mato-Tope)

Mato-tope (also known Four Bears)(c. 1784 - 1837) was the second chief of the Mandan tribe to be known as "Four Bears." The tribe lived in the first half of the 19th century on the upper Missouri River in the contemporary North Dakota. Mato-tope was a brave warrior, famous for killing a Cheyenne chief in hand-to-hand combat. The 1837 smallpox epidemic wiped out most of Four Bears' tribe, leaving a handful of survivors out of a former population of around 2,000. Mato-tope himself died on July 30, 1837 after suffering from smallpox. In his last speech to the neighboring tribes, he denounced the white man for deliberately bringing the disease to his people.

"By Peace Our Condition has been improved in the Pursuit of Civilized Life," 1843 by John Ross [look in upper half of the page]

Speech of Wa-o-wa-wa-na-onk [Peter Wilson], 1848

Peter Wilson (Waowawanaonk) was a Cayuga physician and possible chief. He was raised on the Seneca Buffalo Reservation and educated in Quaker schools. In 1844, he graduated from Geneva Medical College, one of the first Native Americans to earn a medical degree. Wa-o-wa-wa-na-onk also worked as an interpreter on the Cattaraugus Reservation and was a signatory on a fraudulent land treaty executed in 1838. In 1846, Wa-o-wa-wa-na-onk spoke to the New York Historical Society about regaining Iroquois land lost through fraud. He also petitioned the New York State Legislature in 1853 in order to address the compensation to the Cayuga for the loss of land. Among other causes, Wilson supported women’s suffrage.

Seattle Letter , 1854

Speech Cautioning Americans to Deal Justly with His People , 12 January 1854

Chief Seattle (c. 1786–1866) was a Suquamish and Duwamish chief who pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers. In March of 1854 he gave a speech in regards to Native lands. He reportedly asked to have guaranteed access to the Native American burial grounds. However, what he actually said has been lost through translation and rewriting.

"The Cherokee People Stand Upon New Ground," Address to the Cherokee National Assembly, delivered at Tahlequah, OK, October 9, 1861 by John Ross. [scroll down to the lower portion of the article to read the text of the speech]

From John Ross to Abraham Lincoln, September 16, 1862 [manuscript]

Account of the Dakota War of 1862 , by Big Eagle

Big Eagle ( Dakota: Waŋbdí Táŋka , c. 1827 – 1906) was the leader of a band of Mdewakanton Dakota Sioux. In 1862, he and his band took part in a Sioux uprising. Big Eagle eventually surrendered. His account of the Dakota War can be found in Collections of the Minnesota Historical Societ y .

Account of the Sand Creek Massacre , 1864 by Little Bear

Little Bear was a Cree leader who lived in Canada and the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He reportedly participated in the Great Sioux War/Black Hills of 1876 and in the 1885 in the North-West Rebellion in Alberta and Saskatchewan. After the Rebellion ended, Little Bear and many of his people came to Montana and for a few years roamed throughout the Blackfeet reservation. In 1909, following Chief Rocky Boy, Little Bear and the people he led settled on a new Chippewa reservation within the Blackfeet reservation. He died in 1921, nearly 80 years old.

Speech at a peace council , 1867 by Chief Satanta (as reported in Frontier Magazine, May 1938)

Satanta (ca. 1820 – 1878) was one of the best known, and last, of the Kiowa War Chiefs. He became known for his prowess as a warrior and for his oratorical skills. Satanta helped negotiate several treaties with the American government during the 1860s. In 1871 Satanta took part in the Warren Wagon Train raid in Texas. Invited by General Sherman to Fort Sill, Satanta and a few other chiefs were arrested, tried, and sent to the state penitentiary at Huntsville. In 1874, after a raid on the buffalo hunters' camp at Adobe Walls, Satanta was re-arrested and sent back to the penitentiary. In October 1878, upon learning that he might never be released, Satanta threw himself headfirst from a second story balcony to the prison courtyard. He was buried in the prison cemetery.

Address at Cooper Union Institute , 1870 by Chief Red Cloud

Chief Red Cloud (1822 – 1909), a leader of the Oglala Lakota from 1868 to 1909, was one of the most capable Native American opponents that the United States Army faced in its mission to occupy the western territories. He defeated the United States during Red Cloud's War over control of the Powder River Country in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana. After signing the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), Red Cloud led his people in the transition to reservation life.

"I am Alone ," n.d., by Chief Cochise

Cochise (or "Cheis") c. 1805 –1874) was leader of the Chihuicahui local group of the Chokonen ("central" or "real" Chiricahua) and principal chief of the Chokonen band of the Chiricahua Apache. A key war leader during the Apache Wars, he led an uprising which began in 1861 and persisted until a peace treaty was negotiated in 1872. Cochise was one of the most noted Apache leaders (along with Geronimo and Mangas Coloradas) to resist intrusions by European Americans during the 19th century.

Indian Taxation, Recent Speech of a Flathead Chief Presenting the Question from an Indian Standpoint, 1876, as reported in The Missoula (Montana) Missoulian, by Charlo(t)

Charlot (Claw of the Little Grizzly or Small Grizzly-Bear Claw) (c. 1830–1910) was head chief of the Bitterroot Salish from 1870 to 1910. Charlot, like Chief Victor, his father, before him, followed a policy of peace with the American settlers in Southwestern Montana and the soldiers at nearby Fort Missoula. In November 1891, Charlot and a small remnant of the Bitterroot Salish were forced to move to the Flathead Reservation.

"We Preferred Our Own Way of Living," 1877 by Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse (c. 1840 –1877) was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band. He fought against white settlers’ encroachment on Native American territory and for the preservation of the Lakota’s traditional way of life. On January 8, 1877, Crazy Horse's warriors fought their last major battle at Wolf Mountain in the Montana Territory. Wrongly informed about Crazy Horse’s intentions to fight, General George Crook ordered his arrest. Stabbed by one of the guards inside the guardhouse, Crazy Horse died late that night. He is commemorated by the incomplete Crazy Horse Memorial carved out of a mountainside near the town of Berne, South Dakota.

Surrender Speech, 1877* by Chief Joseph

[* the linked document features two statements. The second statement is sometimes referenced as Lincoln Hall Speech and is entered below under a separate title. A slightly different text of the surrender speech is presented by Charles Erskine Scott Wood in his account of the pursuit and capture of Chief Joseph . ]

Lincoln Hall Speech , 1879 by Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph (1840 –1904) was a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce in the latter half of the 19th century. He led his band of people during the most tumultuous period in their history when they were forcibly removed by the U.S. from their ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon onto a reservation in the Idaho Territory. A series of violent encounters with white settlers in the spring of 1877 culminated in those Nez Perce who resisted removal (including Joseph's band) to flee the United States in an attempt to reach political asylum.

" We Would Rather Have Died ,"1879 by Standing Bear

Standing Bear (c.1829-1908) was a Ponca chief and Native American civil rights leader who successfully argued in U.S. District Court in 1879 in Omaha that Native Americans have the right of habeas corpus. His first wife Zazette Primeau (Primo), daughter of Lone Chief, was also a signatory on the 1879 writ that initiated the famous court case.

The Battle of Little Bighorn, 1881 by an eyewitness account by Red Horse

Red Horse (1822-1907) was a sub-chief of the Miniconjou Sioux. He fought in the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn, and in 1881 he gave one of the few detailed accounts of the event, including pictographs of the Battle. 42 ledger book drawings created by Red Horse are now held in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives.

Sitting Bull's Report to the Senate Committee from the 48th Congress Senate Report (No. 283, serial 2164 (1883), 80-81)

Sitting Bull (c. 1831 –1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against the U.S. government policies. On June 25, 1876 the confederated Lakota tribes defeated the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, seemingly bearing out Sitting Bull's prophecy earlier that month. In May 1877, Sitting Bull led his band north to Wood Mountain (contemporary Saskatchewan) where he remained until 1881 when he and most of his band returned and surrendered. After working as a performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota. Out of fearing that he would use his influence to support the Ghost Dance movement, Sitting Bull was ordered arrested and was killed during the arrest attempt.

Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims , 1883 by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. Chapter I. "First Meeting of Piutes and Whites." Chapter VII. The Bannock War

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c. 1844–1891) was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator. When the war erupted between the Pyramid Lake Paiute and the settlers, Sarah and some of her family traveled to San Francisco to escape the fighting. They made a living performing onstage as "A Paiute Royal Family." In 1865, their band was attacked by the US cavalry, killing 29 Paiutes including several members of her family. Winnemucca became an advocate for the rights of Native Americans and traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the release of the Paiute interned in a concentration camp. She also served U.S. forces as a messenger, interpreter, and guide, and as a teacher for imprisoned Native Americans.

“ Address at The Council Meeting Of The Hunkpapa Sioux, Great Sioux Reservation ,” 9 October 1890, by Kicking Bear.

Kicking Bear (Lakota: Matȟó Wanáȟtaka,1845 – 1904) was an Oglala Lakota who became a band chief of the Miniconjou Lakota Sioux. During the War for the Black Hills, he fought in several battles with his brother, Flying Hawk and first cousin, Crazy Horse. Kicking Bear was also active in the Ghost Dance religious movement of 1890 and, together with other leaders, was instrumental in bringing the movement to their people living on reservations in South Dakota.

Speech after Wounded Knee , 1890 by Chief Red Cloud

Lakota Accounts of the Massacre at Wounded Knee , 1891. A narrative presenting the word of Turning Hawk, American Horse and Spotted Horse. 

An Interview with The St Paul Pioneer Press , July 1, 1894 by Big Eagle

• << Previous: Books & Articles
• Next: Contemporary Speech >>
• Last Updated: Oct 12, 2022 3:12 PM
• URL: https://haskell.libguides.com/c.php?g=1126255

Uncategorized

40 famous persuasive speeches you need to hear.

Written by Kai Xin Koh

Across eras of calamity and peace in our world’s history, a great many leaders, writers, politicians, theorists, scientists, activists and other revolutionaries have unveiled powerful rousing speeches in their bids for change. In reviewing the plethora of orators across tides of social, political and economic change, we found some truly rousing speeches that brought the world to their feet or to a startling, necessary halt. We’ve chosen 40 of the most impactful speeches we managed to find from agents of change all over the world – a diversity of political campaigns, genders, positionalities and periods of history. You’re sure to find at least a few speeches in this list which will capture you with the sheer power of their words and meaning!

1. I have a dream by MLK

“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. This is our hope. 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. 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 father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

Unsurprisingly, Martin Luther King’s speech comes up top as the most inspiring speech of all time, especially given the harrowing conditions of African Americans in America at the time. In the post-abolition era when slavery was outlawed constitutionally, African Americans experienced an intense period of backlash from white supremacists who supported slavery where various institutional means were sought to subordinate African American people to positions similar to that of the slavery era. This later came to be known as the times of Jim Crow and segregation, which Martin Luther King powerfully voiced his vision for a day when racial discrimination would be a mere figment, where equality would reign.

2. Tilbury Speech by Queen Elizabeth I

“My loving people, We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you on a word of a prince, they shall be duly paid. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”

While at war with Spain, Queen Elizabeth I was most renowned for her noble speech rallying the English troops against their comparatively formidable opponent. Using brilliant rhetorical devices like metonymy, meronymy, and other potent metaphors, she voiced her deeply-held commitment as a leader to the battle against the Spanish Armada – convincing the English army to keep holding their ground and upholding the sacrifice of war for the good of their people. Eventually against all odds, she led England to victory despite their underdog status in the conflict with her confident and masterful oratory.

3. Woodrow Wilson, address to Congress (April 2, 1917)

“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. … It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us—however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship—exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live among us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few. It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson of the USA delivered his address to Congress, calling for declaration of war against what was at the time, a belligerent and aggressive Germany in WWI. Despite his isolationism and anti-war position earlier in his tenure as president, he convinced Congress that America had a moral duty to the world to step out of their neutral observer status into an active role of world leadership and stewardship in order to liberate attacked nations from their German aggressors. The idealistic values he preached in his speech left an indelible imprint upon the American spirit and self-conception, forming the moral basis for the country’s people and aspirational visions to this very day.

4. Ain’t I A Woman by Sojourner Truth

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman? … If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

Hailing from a background of slavery and oppression, Sojourner Truth was one of the most revolutionary advocates for women’s human rights in the 1800s. In spite of the New York Anti-Slavery Law of 1827, her slavemaster refused to free her. As such, she fled, became an itinerant preacher and leading figure in the anti-slavery movement. By the 1850s, she became involved in the women’s rights movement as well. At the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, she delivered her illuminating, forceful speech against discrimination of women and African Americans in the post-Civil War era, entrenching her status as one of the most revolutionary abolitionists and women’s rights activists across history.

5. The Gettsyburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

President Abraham Lincoln had left the most lasting legacy upon American history for good reason, as one of the presidents with the moral courage to denounce slavery for the national atrocity it was. However, more difficult than standing up for the anti-slavery cause was the task of unifying the country post-abolition despite the looming shadows of a time when white Americans could own and subjugate slaves with impunity over the thousands of Americans who stood for liberation of African Americans from discrimination. He urged Americans to remember their common roots, heritage and the importance of “charity for all”, to ensure a “just and lasting peace” among within the country despite throes of racial division and self-determination.

6. Woman’s Rights to the Suffrage by Susan B Anthony

“For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are for ever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the right govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household–which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation. Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no State has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes.”

Susan B. Anthony was a pivotal leader in the women’s suffrage movement who helped to found the National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and fight for the constitutional right for women to vote. She courageously and relentlessly advocated for women’s rights, giving speeches all over the USA to convince people of women’s human rights to choice and the ballot. She is most well known for her act of righteous rebellion in 1872 when she voted in the presidential election illegally, for which she was arrested and tried unsuccessfully. She refused to pay the $100 fine in a bid to reject the demands of the American system she denounced as a ‘hateful oligarchy of sex’, sparking change with her righteous oratory and inspiring many others in the women’s suffrage movement within and beyond America.

7. Vladimir Lenin’s Speech at an International Meeting in Berne, February 8, 1916

“It may sound incredible, especially to Swiss comrades, but it is nevertheless true that in Russia, also, not only bloody tsarism, not only the capitalists, but also a section of the so-called or ex-Socialists say that Russia is fighting a “war of defence,” that Russia is only fighting against German invasion. The whole world knows, however, that for decades tsarism has been oppressing more than a hundred million people belonging to other nationalities in Russia; that for decades Russia has been pursuing a predatory policy towards China, Persia, Armenia and Galicia. Neither Russia, nor Germany, nor any other Great Power has the right to claim that it is waging a “war of defence”; all the Great Powers are waging an imperialist, capitalist war, a predatory war, a war for the oppression of small and foreign nations, a war for the sake of the profits of the capitalists, who are coining golden profits amounting to billions out of the appalling sufferings of the masses, out of the blood of the proletariat. … This again shows you, comrades, that in all countries of the world real preparations are being made to rally the forces of the working class. The horrors of war and the sufferings of the people are incredible. But we must not, and we have no reason whatever, to view the future with despair. The millions of victims who will fall in the war, and as a consequence of the war, will not fall in vain. The millions who are starving, the millions who are sacrificing their lives in the trenches, are not only suffering, they are also gathering strength, are pondering over the real cause of the war, are becoming more determined and are acquiring a clearer revolutionary understanding. Rising discontent of the masses, growing ferment, strikes, demonstrations, protests against the war—all this is taking place in all countries of the world. And this is the guarantee that the European War will be followed by the proletarian revolution against capitalism”

Vladimir Lenin remains to this day one of the most lauded communist revolutionaries in the world who brought the dangers of imperialism and capitalism to light with his rousing speeches condemning capitalist structures of power which inevitably enslave people to lives of misery and class stratification. In his genuine passion for the rights of the working class, he urged fellow comrades to turn the “imperialist war” into a “civil” or class war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. He encouraged the development of new revolutionary socialist organisations, solidarity across places in society so people could unite against their capitalist overlords, and criticised nationalism for its divisive effect on the socialist movement. In this speech especially, he lambasts “bloody Tsarism” for its oppression of millions of people of other nationalities in Russia, calling for the working class people to revolt against the Tsarist authority for the proletariat revolution to succeed and liberate them from class oppression.

8. I Have A Dream Speech by Mary Wollstonecraft

“If, I say, for I would not impress by declamation when Reason offers her sober light, if they be really capable of acting like rational creatures, let them not be treated like slaves; or, like the brutes who are dependent on the reason of man, when they associate with him; but cultivate their minds, give them the salutary, sublime curb of principle, and let them attain conscious dignity by feeling themselves only dependent on God. Teach them, in common with man, to submit to necessity, instead of giving, to render them more pleasing, a sex to morals. Further, should experience prove that they cannot attain the same degree of strength of mind, perseverance, and fortitude, let their virtues be the same in kind, though they may vainly struggle for the same degree; and the superiority of man will be equally clear, if not clearer; and truth, as it is a simple principle, which admits of no modification, would be common to both. Nay, the order of society as it is at present regulated would not be inverted, for woman would then only have the rank that reason assigned her, and arts could not be practised to bring the balance even, much less to turn it.”

In her vindication of the rights of women, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the pioneers of the feminist movement back in 1792 who not only theorised and advocated revolutionarily, but gave speeches that voiced these challenges against a dominantly sexist society intent on classifying women as irrational less-than-human creatures to be enslaved as they were. In this landmark speech, she pronounces her ‘dream’ of a day when women would be treated as the rational, deserving humans they are, who are equal to man in strength and capability. With this speech setting an effective precedent for her call to equalize women before the law, she also went on to champion the provision of equal educational opportunities to women and girls, and persuasively argued against the patriarchal gender norms which prevented women from finding their own lot in life through their being locked into traditional institutions of marriage and motherhood against their will.

9. First Inaugural Speech by Franklin D Roosevelt

“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. … 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. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly. … 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, and 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.”

Roosevelt’s famous inaugural speech was delivered in the midst of a period of immense tension and strain under the Great Depression, where he highlighted the need for ‘quick action’ by Congress to prepare for government expansion in his pursuit of reforms to lift the American people out of devastating poverty. In a landslide victory, he certainly consolidated the hopes and will of the American people through this compelling speech.

10. The Hypocrisy of American Slavery by Frederick Douglass

“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

On 4 July 1852, Frederick Douglass gave this speech in Rochester, New York, highlighting the hypocrisy of celebrating freedom while slavery continues. He exposed the ‘revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy’ of slavery which had gone unabolished amidst the comparatively obscene celebration of independence and liberty with his potent speech and passion for the anti-abolition cause. After escaping from slavery, he went on to become a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York with his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. To this day, his fierce activism and devotion to exposing virulent racism for what it was has left a lasting legacy upon pro-Black social movements and the overall sociopolitical landscape of America.

11. Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

“You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.”

With her iconic poem Still I Rise , Maya Angelou is well-known for uplifting fellow African American women through her empowering novels and poetry and her work as a civil rights activist. Every bit as lyrical on the page, her recitation of Still I Rise continues to give poetry audiences shivers all over the world, inspiring women of colour everywhere to keep the good faith in striving for equality and peace, while radically believing in and empowering themselves to be agents of change. A dramatic reading of the poem will easily showcase the self-belief, strength and punch that it packs in the last stanza on the power of resisting marginalization.

12. Their Finest Hour by Winston Churchill

“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.””

In the darkest shadows cast by war, few leaders have been able to step up to the mantle and effectively unify millions of citizens for truly sacrificial causes. Winston Churchill was the extraordinary exception – lifting 1940 Britain out of the darkness with his hopeful, convicted rhetoric to galvanise the English amidst bleak, dreary days of war and loss. Through Britain’s standalone position in WWII against the Nazis, he left his legacy by unifying the nation under shared sacrifices of the army and commemorating their courage.

13. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

“Life for both sexes – and I looked at them (through a restaurant window while waiting for my lunch to be served), shouldering their way along the pavement – is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority – it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney – for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination – over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the great sources of his power….Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn their crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilised societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness in life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilising natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is?”

In this transformational speech , Virginia Woolf pronounces her vision that ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. She calls out the years in which women have been deprived of their own space for individual development through being chained to traditional arrangements or men’s prescriptions – demanding ‘gigantic courage’ and ‘confidence in oneself’ to brave through the onerous struggle of creating change for women’s rights. With her steadfast, stolid rhetoric and radical theorization, she paved the way for many women’s rights activists and writers to forge their own paths against patriarchal authority.

14. Inaugural Address by John F Kennedy

“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.”

For what is probably the most historically groundbreaking use of parallelism in speech across American history, President JFK placed the weighty task of ‘asking what one can do for their country’ onto the shoulders of each American citizen. Using an air of firmness in his rhetoric by declaring his commitment to his countrymen, he urges each American to do the same for the broader, noble ideal of freedom for all. With his crucial interrogation of a citizen’s moral duty to his nation, President JFK truly made history.

15. Atoms for Peace Speech by Dwight Eisenhower

“To pause there would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world. To stop there would be to accept helplessly the probability of civilization destroyed, the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us from generation to generation, and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery towards decency, and right, and justice. Surely no sane member of the human race could discover victory in such desolation. Could anyone wish his name to be coupled by history with such human degradation and destruction?Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the “great destroyers”, but the whole book of history reveals mankind’s never-ending quest for peace and mankind’s God-given capacity to build. It is with the book of history, and not with isolated pages, that the United States will ever wish to be identified. My country wants to be constructive,not destructive. It wants agreements, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom and in the confidence that the peoples of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life. So my country’s purpose is to help us to move out of the dark chamber of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls of men everywhere, can move forward towards peace and happiness and well-being.”

On a possibility as frightful and tense as nuclear war, President Eisenhower managed to convey the gravity of the world’s plight in his measured and persuasive speech centred on the greater good of mankind. Using rhetorical devices such as the three-part paratactical syntax which most world leaders are fond of for ingraining their words in the minds of their audience, he centers the discourse of the atomic bomb on those affected by such a world-changing decision in ‘the minds, hopes and souls of men everywhere’ – effectively putting the vivid image of millions of people’s fates at stake in the minds of his audience. Being able to make a topic as heavy and fraught with moral conflict as this as eloquent as he did, Eisenhower definitely ranks among some of the most skilled orators to date.

16. The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action by Audre Lorde

“I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am black, because I am myself, a black woman warrior poet doing my work, come to ask you, are you doing yours?”

Revolutionary writer, feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde first delivered this phenomenal speech at Lesbian and Literature panel of the Modern Language Association’s December 28, 1977 meeting, which went on to feature permanently in her writings for its sheer wisdom and truth. Her powerful writing and speech about living on the margins of society has enlightened millions of people discriminated across various intersections, confronting them with the reality that they must speak – since their ‘silence will not protect’ them from further marginalization. Through her illuminating words and oratory, she has reminded marginalized persons of the importance of their selfhood and the radical capacity for change they have in a world blighted by prejudice and division.

17. 1965 Cambridge Union Hall Speech by James Baldwin

“What is dangerous here is the turning away from – the turning away from – anything any white American says. The reason for the political hesitation, in spite of the Johnson landslide is that one has been betrayed by American politicians for so long. And I am a grown man and perhaps I can be reasoned with. I certainly hope I can be. But I don’t know, and neither does Martin Luther King, none of us know how to deal with those other people whom the white world has so long ignored, who don’t believe anything the white world says and don’t entirely believe anything I or Martin is saying. And one can’t blame them. You watch what has happened to them in less than twenty years.”

Baldwin’s invitation to the Cambridge Union Hall is best remembered for foregrounding the unflinching differences in white and African Americans’ ‘system of reality’ in everyday life. Raising uncomfortable truths about the insidious nature of racism post-civil war, he provides several nuggets of thought-provoking wisdom on the state of relations between the oppressed and their oppressors, and what is necessary to mediate such relations and destroy the exploitative thread of racist hatred. With great frankness, he admits to not having all the answers but provides hard-hitting wisdom on engagement to guide activists through confounding times nonetheless.

18. I Am Prepared to Die by Nelson Mandela

“Above all, My Lord, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs as it certainly must, it will not change that policy. This then is what the ANC is fighting. Our struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by our own suffering and our own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Apartheid is still considered one of these most devastating events of world history, and it would not have ended without the crucial effort and words of Nelson Mandela during his courageous political leadership. In this heartbreaking speech , he voices his utter devotion to the fight against institutionalised racism in African society – an ideal for which he was ‘prepared to die for’. Mandela continues to remind us today of his moral conviction in leading, wherein the world would likely to be a better place if all politicians had the same resolve and genuine commitment to human rights and the abolition of oppression as he did.

19. Critique on British Imperialism by General Aung San

“Do they form their observations by seeing the attendances at not very many cinemas and theatres of Rangoon? Do they judge this question of money circulation by paying a stray visit to a local bazaar? Do they know that cinemas and theatres are not true indicators, at least in Burma, of the people’s conditions? Do they know that there are many in this country who cannot think of going to these places by having to struggle for their bare existence from day to day? Do they know that those who nowadays patronise or frequent cinemas and theatres which exist only in Rangoon and a few big towns, belong generally to middle and upper classes and the very few of the many poor who can attend at all are doing so as a desperate form of relaxation just to make them forget their unsupportable existences for the while whatever may be the tomorrow that awaits them?”

Under British colonial rule, one of the most legendary nationalist leaders emerged from the ranks of the thousands of Burmese to boldly lead them towards independence, out of the exploitation and control under the British. General Aung San’s speech criticising British social, political and economic control of Burma continues to be scathing, articulate, and relevant – especially given his necessary goal of uniting the Burmese natives against their common oppressor. He successfully galvanised his people against the British, taking endless risks through nationalist speeches and demonstrations which gradually bore fruit in Burma’s independence.

20. Nobel Lecture by Mother Teresa

“I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we are touching the Body Of Christ 24 hours. We have 24 hours in this presence, and so you and I. You too try to bring that presence of God in your family, for the family that prays together stays together. And I think that we in our family don’t need bombs and guns, to destroy to bring peace–just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world. There is so much suffering, so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. It is to God Almighty–how much we do it does not matter, because He is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving.”

In contemporary culture, most people understand Mother Teresa to be the epitome of compassion and kindness. However, if one were to look closer at her speeches from the past, one would discover not merely her altruistic contributions, but her keen heart for social justice and the downtrodden. She wisely and gracefully remarks that ‘love begins at home’ from the individual actions of each person within their private lives, which accumulate into a life of goodness and charity. For this, her speeches served not just consolatory value or momentary relevance, as they still inform the present on how we can live lives worth living.

21. June 9 Speech to Martial Law Units by Deng Xiaoping

“This army still maintains the traditions of our old Red Army. What they crossed this time was in the true sense of the expression a political barrier, a threshold of life and death. This was not easy. This shows that the People’s Army is truly a great wall of iron and steel of the party and state. This shows that no matter how heavy our losses, the army, under the leadership of the party, will always remain the defender of the country, the defender of socialism, and the defender of the public interest. They are a most lovable people. At the same time, we should never forget how cruel our enemies are. We should have not one bit of forgiveness for them. The fact that this incident broke out as it did is very worthy of our pondering. It prompts us cool-headedly to consider the past and the future. Perhaps this bad thing will enable us to go ahead with reform and the open policy at a steadier and better — even a faster — pace, more speedily correct our mistakes, and better develop our strong points.”

Mere days before the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping sat with six party elders (senior officials) and the three remaining members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the paramount decision-making body in China’s government. The meeting was organised to discuss the best course of action for restoring social and political order to China, given the sweeping economic reforms that had taken place in the past decade that inevitably resulted in some social resistance from the populace. Deng then gave this astute and well-regarded speech, outlining the political complexities in shutting down student protests given the context of reforms encouraging economic liberalization already taking place, as aligned with the students’ desires. It may not be the most rousing or inflammatory of speeches, but it was certainly persuasive in voicing the importance of taking a strong stand for the economic reforms Deng was implementing to benefit Chinese citizens in the long run. Today, China is an economic superpower, far from its war-torn developing country status before Deng’s leadership – thanks to his foresight in ensuring political stability would allow China to enjoy the fruits of the massive changes they adapted to.

22. Freedom or Death by Emmeline Pankhurst

“You won your freedom in America when you had the revolution, by bloodshed, by sacrificing human life. You won the civil war by the sacrifice of human life when you decided to emancipate the negro. You have left it to women in your land, the men of all civilised countries have left it to women, to work out their own salvation. That is the way in which we women of England are doing. Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is to be sacrificed it shall be ours; we won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death. Now whether you approve of us or whether you do not, you must see that we have brought the question of women’s suffrage into a position where it is of first rate importance, where it can be ignored no longer. Even the most hardened politician will hesitate to take upon himself directly the responsibility of sacrificing the lives of women of undoubted honour, of undoubted earnestness of purpose. That is the political situation as I lay it before you today.”

In 1913 after Suffragette Emily Davison stepped in front of King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby and suffered fatal injuries, Emmeline Pankhurst delivered her speech to Connecticut as a call to action for people to support the suffragette movement. Her fortitude in delivering such a sobering speech on the state of women’s rights is worth remembering for its invaluable impact and contributions to the rights we enjoy in today’s world.

23. Quit India by Mahatma Gandhi

“We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery. Every true Congressman or woman will join the struggle with an inflexible determination not to remain alive to see the country in bondage and slavery. Let that be your pledge. Keep jails out of your consideration. If the Government keep me free, I will not put on the Government the strain of maintaining a large number of prisoners at a time, when it is in trouble. Let every man and woman live every moment of his or her life hereafter in the consciousness that he or she eats or lives for achieving freedom and will die, if need be, to attain that goal. Take a pledge, with God and your own conscience as witness, that you will no longer rest till freedom is achieved and will be prepared to lay down your lives in the attempt to achieve it. He who loses his life will gain it; he who will seek to save it shall lose it. Freedom is not for the coward or the faint-hearted.”

Naturally, the revolutionary activist Gandhi had to appear in this list for his impassioned anti-colonial speeches which rallied Indians towards independence. Famous for leading non-violent demonstrations, his speeches were a key element in gathering Indians of all backgrounds together for the common cause of eliminating their colonial masters. His speeches were resolute, eloquent, and courageous, inspiring the hope and admiration of many not just within India, but around the world.

24. 1974 National Book Award Speech by Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde

“The statement I am going to read was prepared by three of the women nominated for the National Book Award for poetry, with the agreement that it would be read by whichever of us, if any, was chosen.We, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker, together accept this award in the name of all the women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world, and in the name of those who, like us, have been tolerated as token women in this culture, often at great cost and in great pain. We believe that we can enrich ourselves more in supporting and giving to each other than by competing against each other; and that poetry—if it is poetry—exists in a realm beyond ranking and comparison. We symbolically join together here in refusing the terms of patriarchal competition and declaring that we will share this prize among us, to be used as best we can for women. We appreciate the good faith of the judges for this award, but none of us could accept this money for herself, nor could she let go unquestioned the terms on which poets are given or denied honor and livelihood in this world, especially when they are women. We dedicate this occasion to the struggle for self-determination of all women, of every color, identification, or derived class: the poet, the housewife, the lesbian, the mathematician, the mother, the dishwasher, the pregnant teen-ager, the teacher, the grandmother, the prostitute, the philosopher, the waitress, the women who will understand what we are doing here and those who will not understand yet; the silent women whose voices have been denied us, the articulate women who have given us strength to do our work.”

Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker wrote this joint speech to be delivered by Adrienne Rich at the 1974 National Book Awards, based on their suspicions that the first few African American lesbian women to be nominated for the awards would be snubbed in favour of a white woman nominee. Their suspicions were confirmed, and Adrienne Rich delivered this socially significant speech in solidarity with her fellow nominees, upholding the voices of the ‘silent women whose voices have been denied’.

25. Speech to 20th Congress of the CPSU by Nikita Khruschev

“Considering the question of the cult of an individual, we must first of all show everyone what harm this caused to the interests of our Party. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had always stressed the Party’s role and significance in the direction of the socialist government of workers and peasants; he saw in this the chief precondition for a successful building of socialism in our country. Pointing to the great responsibility of the Bolshevik Party, as ruling Party of the Soviet state, Lenin called for the most meticulous observance of all norms of Party life; he called for the realization of the principles of collegiality in the direction of the Party and the state. Collegiality of leadership flows from the very nature of our Party, a Party built on the principles of democratic centralism. “This means,” said Lenin, “that all Party matters are accomplished by all Party members – directly or through representatives – who, without any exceptions, are subject to the same rules; in addition, all administrative members, all directing collegia, all holders of Party positions are elective, they must account for their activities and are recallable.””

This speech is possibly the most famed Russian speech for its status as a ‘secret’ speech delivered only to the CPSU at the time, which was eventually revealed to the public. Given the unchallenged political legacy and cult of personality which Stalin left in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khruschev’s speech condemning the authoritarian means Stalin had resorted to to consolidate power as un-socialist was an important mark in Russian history.

26. The Struggle for Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt

“It is my belief, and I am sure it is also yours, that the struggle for democracy and freedom is a critical struggle, for their preservation is essential to the great objective of the United Nations to maintain international peace and security. Among free men the end cannot justify the means. We know the patterns of totalitarianism — the single political party, the control of schools, press, radio, the arts, the sciences, and the church to support autocratic authority; these are the age-old patterns against which men have struggled for three thousand years. These are the signs of reaction, retreat, and retrogression. The United Nations must hold fast to the heritage of freedom won by the struggle of its people; it must help us to pass it on to generations to come. The development of the ideal of freedom and its translation into the everyday life of the people in great areas of the earth is the product of the efforts of many peoples. It is the fruit of a long tradition of vigorous thinking and courageous action. No one race and on one people can claim to have done all the work to achieve greater dignity for human beings and great freedom to develop human personality. In each generation and in each country there must be a continuation of the struggle and new steps forward must be taken since this is preeminently a field in which to stand still is to retreat.”

Eleanor Roosevelt has been among the most well-loved First Ladies for good reason – her eloquence and gravitas in delivering every speech convinced everyone of her suitability for the oval office. In this determined and articulate speech , she outlines the fundamental values that form the bedrock of democracy, urging the rest of the world to uphold human rights regardless of national ideology and interests.

27. The Ballot or The Bullet by Malcolm X

“And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality, and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist party, we’ll form a black nationalist party. If it’s necessary to form a black nationalist army, we’ll form a black nationalist army. It’ll be the ballot or the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death.”

Inarguably, the revolutionary impact Malcolm X’s fearless oratory had was substantial in his time as a radical anti-racist civil rights activist. His speeches’ emancipatory potential put forth his ‘theory of rhetorical action’ where he urges Black Americans to employ both the ballot and the bullet, strategically without being dependent on the other should the conditions of oppression change. A crucial leader in the fight for civil rights, he opened the eyes of thousands of Black Americans, politicising and convincing them of the necessity of fighting for their democratic rights against white supremacists.

28. Living the Revolution by Gloria Steinem

“The challenge to all of us, and to you men and women who are graduating today, is to live a revolution, not to die for one. There has been too much killing, and the weapons are now far too terrible. This revolution has to change consciousness, to upset the injustice of our current hierarchy by refusing to honor it, and to live a life that enforces a new social justice. Because the truth is none of us can be liberated if other groups are not.”

In an unexpected commencement speech delivered at Vassar College in 1970, Gloria Steinem boldly makes a call to action on behalf of marginalized groups in need of liberation to newly graduated students. She proclaimed it the year of Women’s Liberation and forcefully highlighted the need for a social revolution to ‘upset the injustice of the current hierarchy’ in favour of human rights – echoing the hard-hitting motto on social justice, ‘until all of us are free, none of us are free’.

29. The Last Words of Harvey Milk by Harvey Milk

“I cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad in response to my death, but I hope they will take the frustration and madness and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope that they would take the power and I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to do that, urge them to come out. Only that way will we start to achieve our rights. … All I ask is for the movement to continue, and if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door…”

As the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, Harvey Milk’s entire political candidature was in itself a radical statement against the homophobic status quo at the time. Given the dangerous times he was in as an openly gay man, he anticipated that he would be assassinated eventually in his political career. As such, these are some of his last words which show the utter devotion he had to campaigning against homophobia while representing the American people, voicing his heartbreaking wish for the bullet that would eventually kill him to ‘destroy every closet door’.

30. Black Power Address at UC Berkeley by Stokely Carmichael

“Now we are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country, and that is whether or not black people will have the right to use the words they want to use without white people giving their sanction to it; and that we maintain, whether they like it or not, we gonna use the word “Black Power” — and let them address themselves to that; but that we are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired waiting; every time black people move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position before they move. It’s time that the people who are supposed to be defending their position do that. That’s white people. They ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us.”

A forceful and impressive orator, Stokely Carmichael was among those at the forefront of the civil rights movement, who was a vigorous socialist organizer as well. He led the Black Power movement wherein he gave this urgent, influential speech that propelled Black Americans forward in their fight for constitutional rights in the 1960s.

31. Speech on Vietnam by Lyndon Johnson

“The true peace-keepers are those men who stand out there on the DMZ at this very hour, taking the worst that the enemy can give. The true peace-keepers are the soldiers who are breaking the terrorist’s grip around the villages of Vietnam—the civilians who are bringing medical care and food and education to people who have already suffered a generation of war. And so I report to you that we are going to continue to press forward. Two things we must do. Two things we shall do. First, we must not mislead the enemy. Let him not think that debate and dissent will produce wavering and withdrawal. For I can assure you they won’t. Let him not think that protests will produce surrender. Because they won’t. Let him not think that he will wait us out. For he won’t. Second, we will provide all that our brave men require to do the job that must be done. And that job is going to be done. These gallant men have our prayers-have our thanks—have our heart-felt praise—and our deepest gratitude. Let the world know that the keepers of peace will endure through every trial—and that with the full backing of their countrymen, they are going to prevail.”

During some of the most harrowing periods of human history, the Vietnam War, American soldiers were getting soundly defeated by the Vietnamese in guerrilla warfare. President Lyndon Johnson then issued this dignified, consolatory speech to encourage patriotism and support for the soldiers putting their lives on the line for the nation.

32. A Whisper of AIDS by Mary Fisher

“We may take refuge in our stereotypes, but we cannot hide there long, because HIV asks only one thing of those it attacks. Are you human? And this is the right question. Are you human? Because people with HIV have not entered some alien state of being. They are human. They have not earned cruelty, and they do not deserve meanness. They don’t benefit from being isolated or treated as outcasts. Each of them is exactly what God made: a person; not evil, deserving of our judgment; not victims, longing for our pity ­­ people, ready for  support and worthy of compassion. We must be consistent if we are to be believed. We cannot love justice and ignore prejudice, love our children and fear to teach them. Whatever our role as parent or policymaker, we must act as eloquently as we speak ­­ else we have no integrity. My call to the nation is a plea for awareness. If you believe you are safe, you are in danger. Because I was not hemophiliac, I was not at risk. Because I was not gay, I was not at risk. Because I did not inject drugs, I was not at risk. The lesson history teaches is this: If you believe you are safe, you are at risk. If you do not see this killer stalking your children, look again. There is no family or community, no race or religion, no place left in America that is safe. Until we genuinely embrace this message, we are a nation at risk.”

Back when AIDS research was still undeveloped, the stigma of contracting HIV was even more immense than it is today. A celebrated artist, author and speaker, Mary Fisher became an outspoken activist for those with HIV/AIDS, persuading people to extend compassion to the population with HIV instead of stigmatizing them – as injustice has a way of coming around to people eventually. Her bold act of speaking out for the community regardless of the way they contracted the disease, their sexual orientation or social group, was an influential move in advancing the human rights of those with HIV and spreading awareness on the discrimination they face.

33. Freedom from Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi

“The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear. Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear.”

Famous for her resoluteness and fortitude in campaigning for democracy in Burma despite being put under house arrest by the military government, Aung San Suu Kyi’s speeches have been widely touted as inspirational. In this renowned speech of hers, she delivers a potent message to Burmese to ‘liberate their minds from apathy and fear’ in the struggle for freedom and human rights in the country. To this day, she continues to tirelessly champion the welfare and freedom of Burmese in a state still overcome by vestiges of authoritarian rule.

34. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace

“Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

Esteemed writer David Foster Wallace gave a remarkably casual yet wise commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 on the importance of learning to think beyond attaining a formal education. He encouraged hundreds of students to develop freedom of thought, a heart of sacrificial care for those in need of justice, and a consciousness that would serve them in discerning the right choices to make within a status quo that is easy to fall in line with. His captivating speech on what it meant to truly be ‘educated’ tugged at the hearts of many young and critical minds striving to achieve their dreams and change the world.

35. Questioning the Universe by Stephen Hawking

“This brings me to the last of the big questions: the future of the human race. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. The answers to these big questions show that we have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I am in favor of manned — or should I say, personned — space flight.”

Extraordinary theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking was a considerable influence upon modern physics and scientific research at large, inspiring people regardless of physical ability to aspire towards expanding knowledge in the world. In his speech on Questioning the Universe, he speaks of the emerging currents and issues in the scientific world like that of outer space, raising and answering big questions that have stumped great thinkers for years.

36. 2008 Democratic National Convention Speech by Michelle Obama

“I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history — knowing that my piece of the American dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me. All of them driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work. The same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country: People who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift — without disappointment, without regret — that goodnight kiss a reminder of everything they’re working for. The military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. The servicemen and women who love this country so much, they leave those they love most to defend it. The young people across America serving our communities — teaching children, cleaning up neighborhoods, caring for the least among us each and every day. People like Hillary Clinton, who put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters — and sons — can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher. People like Joe Biden, who’s never forgotten where he came from and never stopped fighting for folks who work long hours and face long odds and need someone on their side again. All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do — that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be. That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack’s journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope. That is why I love this country.”

Ever the favourite modern First Lady of America, Michelle Obama has delivered an abundance of iconic speeches in her political capacity, never forgetting to foreground the indomitable human spirit embodied in American citizens’ everyday lives and efforts towards a better world. The Obamas might just have been the most articulate couple of rhetoricians of their time, making waves as the first African American president and First Lady while introducing important policies in their period of governance.

37. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

“I’m not talking about blind optimism here — the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.”

Now published into a book, Barack Obama’s heart-capturing personal story of transformational hope was first delivered as a speech on the merits of patriotic optimism and determination put to the mission of concrete change. He has come to be known as one of the most favoured and inspiring presidents in American history, and arguably the most skilled orators ever.

38. “Be Your Own Story” by Toni Morrison

“But I’m not going to talk anymore about the future because I’m hesitant to describe or predict because I’m not even certain that it exists. That is to say, I’m not certain that somehow, perhaps, a burgeoning ménage a trois of political interests, corporate interests and military interests will not prevail and literally annihilate an inhabitable, humane future. Because I don’t think we can any longer rely on separation of powers, free speech, religious tolerance or unchallengeable civil liberties as a matter of course. That is, not while finite humans in the flux of time make decisions of infinite damage. Not while finite humans make infinite claims of virtue and unassailable power that are beyond their competence, if not their reach. So, no happy talk about the future. … Because the past is already in debt to the mismanaged present. And besides, contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still in process, which is another way of saying that when it’s critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself. The past is already changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being listened to for deeper resonances. Actually it can be more liberating than any imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions, its distortions, its lies, and are willing to unleash its secrets.”

Venerated author and professor Toni Morrison delivered an impressively articulate speech at Wellesley College in 2004 to new graduates, bucking the trend by discussing the importance of the past in informing current and future ways of living. With her brilliance and eloquence, she blew the crowd away and renewed in them the capacity for reflection upon using the past as a talisman to guide oneself along the journey of life.

39. Nobel Speech by Malala Yousafzai

“Dear brothers and sisters, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don’t. Why is it that countries which we call “strong” are so powerful in creating wars but so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so difficult? As we are living in the modern age, the 21st century and we all believe that nothing is impossible. We can reach the moon and maybe soon will land on Mars. Then, in this, the 21st century, we must be determined that our dream of quality education for all will also come true. So let us bring equality, justice and peace for all. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. It is our duty. So we must work … and not wait. I call upon my fellow children to stand up around the world. Dear sisters and brothers, let us become the first generation to decide to be the last. The empty classrooms, the lost childhoods, wasted potential-let these things end with us.”

At a mere 16 years of age, Malala Yousafzai gave a speech on the severity of the state of human rights across the world, and wowed the world with her passion for justice at her tender age. She displayed tenacity and fearlessness speaking about her survival of an assassination attempt for her activism for gender equality in the field of education. A model of courage to us all, her speech remains an essential one in the fight for human rights in the 21st century.

40. Final Commencement Speech by Michelle Obama

“If you are a person of faith, know that religious diversity is a great American tradition, too. In fact, that’s why people first came to this country — to worship freely. And whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh — these religions are teaching our young people about justice, and compassion, and honesty. So I want our young people to continue to learn and practice those values with pride. You see, our glorious diversity — our diversities of faiths and colors and creeds — that is not a threat to who we are, it makes us who we are. So the young people here and the young people out there: Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter, or like you don’t have a place in our American story — because you do. And you have a right to be exactly who you are. But I also want to be very clear: This right isn’t just handed to you. No, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms. … It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us. The hope that when people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves.”

Finally, we have yet another speech by Michelle Obama given in her final remarks as First Lady – a tear-inducing event for many Americans and even people around the world. In this emotional end to her political tenure, she gives an empowering, hopeful, expressive speech to young Americans, exhorting them to take hold of its future in all their diversity and work hard at being their best possible selves.

Amidst the bleak era of our current time with Trump as president of the USA, not only Michelle Obama, but all 40 of these amazing speeches can serve as sources of inspiration and hope to everyone – regardless of their identity or ambitions. After hearing these speeches, which one’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!

Article Written By: Kai Xin Koh

You may also like….

How To Prepare An Awesome Business Presentation

by Kai Xin Koh

Business presentations are inescapable in today’s world, where entrepreneurship and innovation are at the heart of businesses. With limited...

Sign Up for Winning With Stories!

• First Name *
• Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

TURN to a historian

Has "turn: washington's spies" left you feeling a little… spy-curious, accents and anachronisms: what did people sound like in 18th century america.

Posted on May 4, 2015 Updated on May 4, 2015

Today we’re tackling a popular subject: What’s going on with all the different accents in TURN? It’s one of our most-requested topics! The questions we’ve received range from skeptical commentary to pure curiosity (which tends to be the case with every topic, not just this one). We’ve chosen one example from each category below.  The greater takeaway is that among TURN viewers, there’s clearly a lot of interest in what people in the 18th century sounded like when they spoke. There’s a wealth of scholarship on 18th century linguistics out there, but for purposes of answering these TURN-related questions, we’ll try to tackle one small slice at a time — with plenty of links for further reading!

Question 1: “Yeah,” “Okay,” and Other Aggravating Anachronisms

Q1: “I am curious about the recent devolution of the King’s English this season. “Yeah”? “Great!”? Seems disappointingly anachronistic.”

Well, yeah! Great question. (wink)  Although as we can see from the pictures below, anachronistic speech has been present throughout TURN’s entire run.

(Once again, Caleb Brewster takes first place as the most egregious violator of 18th century standards: a quick script search shows that “Yeah” is one of his favorite replies to just about anything.)

While the words and responses above are good examples of modern words that are inappropriate for 18 th century speech, just how “disappointing” they are is a good subject for healthy debate. Most modern viewers don’t even notice anachronistic words, inflections, and turns of phrase like “yeah” and “that’s great” because they’re so deeply ingrained into our everyday conversations. If you find your ears perking up at the sound of modern words in a historical setting, your historical spider-sense is finely tuned, indeed! (Readers: Are you bothered when you hear modern words and phrases in historical TV shows? Do you even notice them at all? Let us know in the comments!)

Your question brings up a very interesting larger point, however: Should a period TV show or movie aspire to linguistic purity as one of its goals? Of course, like everything else in historical fiction, it’s more than just a simple yes or no question; there’s a huge range of historically-informed possibilities to consider. Modern audiences would likely be lost if TURN used nothing but meticulously reconstructed 18 th century American accents and vocabulary. However, words like “yeah,” “ okay ,” and even “ hello ” are pretty obvious anachronisms (well, obvious to anyone who’s studied the 18th century in depth) that could easily be swapped out for other period-correct alternatives.

The writers of TURN have touted the show’s very sporadic use of 18 th century slang (like “chunder bucket” in Episode 8 of Season 1) – but while those occasional trivia tidbits are certainly fun, viewers shouldn’t be fooled into believing that the dialogue in TURN is a faithful representation of how people conversed in 18 th century America.

Interested in more word histories? Want to try hunting down linguistic anachronisms yourself? Try searching online dictionaries like the extremely thorough Oxford English Dictionary or free sites like dictionary.com to look up the etymology (historical origins) of common words. Most etymologies specify a date range when the word in question was first observed in common use. Then, if you’re really ambitious, you can even search online transcripts of TURN (or any other historical show) to see if and when they pop up in the script!

In order to try and piece together accurate vocabulary lists and speech patterns of the past, historians have to cross-reference as many letters, journals, diaries, schoolbooks, and other documents as they can find. It’s no easy task! (Yet another good reason for Hollywood to hire — and actually listen to — reputable historians as behind-the-scenes consultants.)  If you’re feeling ambitious, you can browse through Samuel Johnson’s famous 1755 dictionary for a better idea of how English speakers used certain words. For those who might be intimidated by total immersion in 18th century sources, Colonial Williamsburg has a fun, light, and very readable guide with greetings and phrases appropriate to the Revolutionary era.

Question 2: Anomalous Accents

  Q2: “What kind of accent would people [in colonial America] have in the 1770s?”

In lieu of using 18 th century language, it seems like the strategy on TURN has been to give the main characters distinct accents in order to subtly remind viewers that the show takes place in the 18 th century. Apparently this strategy has been very successful, if the volume of accent-related questions we’ve received about accents is any indication! While all of the colorful shades of English, Irish, and Scottish accents featured in TURN are pleasing to the modern ear, how appropriate are they for the historical characters and places depicted in the show?

In most cases, not very. For example: in TURN, Robert Rogers’ Scottish brogue is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The real Robert Rogers , in marked contrast, was born in Massachusetts and raised in New Hampshire – two colonies with overwhelmingly English populations in the 18 th century. And the original ‘Major’ Hewlett (meaning Richard Hewlett , of course, not the “wait, never mind, we decided to call him Edmund, he’s a completely different person now!” Hewlett revealed to viewers during last week’s episode) was a Long Island-born American loyalist who certainly wouldn’t have spoken with an impeccably crisp high British accent. Indeed, many of the most heavily-accented characters in TURN were, in reality, American-born men and women whose families had been anchored in the American colonies for generations . Their families weren’t “fresh off the boat” from England, Scotland, or anywhere else. The Woodhull family alone had been anchored in Long Island for over a hundred years before the Revolution began!

All right, then: So what did American colonists from New England and New York sound like in the 18 th century?

First of all, there’s no one right answer to that question. It depends on a number of factors, like the heritage, location, and education level of any given person. In some bustling colonial port cities, an 18 th century traveler could find himself surrounded by several strange and exotic-sounding accents all in the course of a single day, as one itinerant doctor observed while traveling through New York in 1744 . It would be just as hard to argue for one single representative “Colonial American” accent as it would be to argue for one single representative “Modern American” accent today. (Try getting a Texan and a New Yorker to agree on that! )

Take Paul Revere for example. In his (excellent and very readable) book Paul Revere’s Ride, David Hackett Fischer helps us imagine what it might have been like to converse with the famous (and modestly educated) Boston patriot:

“His spelling tells us that Paul Revere talked with a harsh, nasal New England twang. His strong Yankee accent derived from a family of East Anglian dialects that came to Boston in the 17 th century, and can still be faintly heard today. When Paul Revere’s friends wrote in defense of their cherished charter rights, they spelled “charter” as chattaer … and probably pronounced it with no r at all. All his life Paul Revere spelled “get” as git. His mother’s maiden name of Hitchborn was written Hitchbon in the town of Boston, which was pronounced Bast’n. His friends wrote mash for “marsh” and want for “weren’t,” hull for “whole” and foller for “follow,” sarve for “serve” and acummin for “coming.” …This was the folk-speech of an Anglo-American culture that was already six generations old by 1775, and deeply rooted in Paul Revere’s New England.”

Notice that Fischer states that this proto-Boston accent had been in place long before the start of the Revolution!   (Fischer expands on this concept in his book Albion’s Seed .) Indeed, British soldiers and European travelers had been noting since the mid-18 th century how odd the speech of American colonists sounded compared to the King’s English.

So, while there’s no single correct answer to “What did people in Early America sound like?”, we can get a fun glimpse of what common New England speech might have sounded like in the late 18th to early 19th century thanks to primary sources like the one below. This is just one of many books, diaries, and journals out there that give us a colorful glimpse into the sounds and speech of Early America. If you have any favorite sources, share them with us on Facebook , Twitter , or in the comments below! Enjoy your browsing, and keep those questions coming!

Caleb Bingham’s “Improprieties in Pronunciation common among the people of New-England”

Click on the thumbnails to view and/or download the full sized pages. If you’re not used to reading Early American print, keep in mind that many of the “f” characters are actually a lowercase “s.” Google Books has a full copy of Mr. Bingham’s spelling book online, if you’d like to save or view it as a PDF form.

Share this:

This entry was posted in material culture , reader request and tagged 18th century speech , 18th century vocabulary , accents , anachronisms , anna strong , boston , Caleb Brewster , caleb brigham , david hackett fischer , historical accents , historical accuracy , historical speech , linguistic history , linguistic studies , linguistics , new england , new england history , new york history , paul revere , richard hall , richard hewlett , richard woodhull , robert rogers , samuel johnson , TURN , turn amc , TURN: Washington's Spies , washington's spies .

• Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hewlett: The Loyal-est Loyalist
• Simcoe Takes Command! Reforming the Queen’s Rangers in 1777

25 thoughts on “ Accents and Anachronisms: What did people sound like in 18th century America? ”

Thank you so much! That was fascinating. I reckon I hadn’t noticed the “yeahs” of Caleb before! The accent question was very interesting–particularly some similarities I “heard” in the pronunciation guide between New England and the part of the South that is my home. Of particular interest I noted the use of “ax” for “ask,” which I very frequently hear in the African-American community. Thanks for another great post!

I am so glad I found this blog. I adore TURN and am fascinated by colonial America, the American Revolution and our country’s founding. I had wondered about the accents and use of certain words on the show. Thank you for the blog AND the links – I’ve added to my reading list.

These are always tough choices. Dorothy Dunnett gets away with her characters talking about “melodrama” in the 1540s, but it works because emotionally it’s true to the story. Joanna Bourne (anyone who loves historical spy fiction should try her excellent Spymaster’s Lady–don’t be put off by the cover) will not use the term “silhouette” but I’m willing to bend on that one in my books because it conjures an instant image, whereas “corset” drives me bonkers, but many popular authors like to use it and their readers don’t complain.

On SALEM I’m pretty sure we’ve never used “OK” but I could be wrong (and the show is obviously fantasy). And we delight in “behagged” and other 17th century peculiarities. If I had an excuse to employ “chunder bucket” I probably would.

My first priority, whether it’s books or TV is to try to tell a good story. Second, is to try to paint a vivid picture of the times. When period detail gets in the way of clarity–using a term that my readers/viewers won’t be able to glean from context–when it diffuses their immersion in the story instead of deepens it, then I’m inclined to reach for more modern and familiar language.

Thanks for the great insight, Donna! (For those who might not know, Donna is a writer for “Salem” on WGN.) I definitely empathize with the need to weigh pure historical accuracy against how much it might subtract from the show’s ability to tell a story without distraction. I imagine you’re faced with a lot of tough calls. Just exactly where someone sets the bar for accuracy definitely varies from person to person and show to show!

I was actually a bit (pleasantly?) surprised to receive multiple questions from readers about the accuracy of speech in TURN. While historical language is a fun topic and a wellspring of historical trivia, it’s rather far down on the list of things I tend to look for first when considering the accuracy of a period show (especially when a show contains so many massive historical blunders about big, important events). Not that I’m complaining — I think it’s fantastic to hear from so many viewers who pay attention to detail in TURN and are curious to learn more!

One modern expression that ruined the movie Amistad for me was “Yes!” followed by a fist pump. This happened when Matthew McConaughey and their team received a favorable final decision from Judge Coglin.

Yes is ancient!!!

But the Michael Jordan-esque fist pump is 1990s.

In the above example of the book of pronunciations by Richard Hall, the pronunciations have a bit of a Cockney flavor with a hint of what most refer to these days as a “country” accent in some of the words as well. For instance, the Cockney habit of pronouncing ‘H’s’ at the beginning of some words not spelled with a beginning ‘H’ like, the pronouncements of ‘artichoke’ and ‘achievement’. Of course, Cockney accents remove the ‘H’ sound on most words that are spelled with a beginning ‘H’, although there are no examples in the above photo of the books so we can’t tell from those mere 2 pages if that was in practice in any American accents at the time. The “country” accent has it’s examples in words such as “apurn” (apron), “buty” (beauty), and “buro (bureau). I’ve always been interested in linguistics and have a bit of an ear for accents, though I’ve never seriously studied those things, only read and watched informative programs for my own pleasure and edification. I plan to look into some of the resources for further info that are mentioned in the article.

What bothered me about the show was not so much the anachronisms of speech but the differing accents. I know that Angus MacFadyen who plays Rogers is Scottish but he’s quite capable of doing an American accent. And why is Abraham speaking with an English accent while his father is not? It was just too confusing for me, apart from the obvious historical inaccuracies. Which I could deal with if only the writers and producers would own up to them and stop pretending that what they are writing and producing is fact-based.

Indeed! Your comment on the odd mixture of different accents sums up what I’ve heard from most viewers. Why such an eclectic mix? The rationale (even a fictional one), isn’t clear.

Also, I agree 100% with this: “….[Various inaccuracies] I could deal with if only the writers and producers would own up to them and stop pretending that what they are writing and producing is fact-based.” Just think — if they did this, their credibility would increase exponentially (heck, it wouldn’t even be an issue in the first place!) and they’d no longer have to spend so much time and effort twisting themselves into pretzels to justify their most extreme deviations from the historical record. (e.g. using a steampunk/colonial “lie detector,” killing off actual historical characters decades too early, etc.) Why not give the show “The Patriot” treatment and change the names of the main characters, since they’re almost entirely fictional creations anyway?

How pop culture interprets our history is more a reflection of our collective values than a fair statement of the motives and character of our ancestors. By that standard alone I find TURN deeply disappointing. Fictionalizing the story wouldn’t make the message any less disturbing.

For starters, look at the depictions of institutional torture in our nascent US military. Woodhull is tortured by Continentals. Simcoe is tortured by Continentals. Hewlett will be tortured… and again, it seems by Continentals. From the quick video cuts, it looks like his treatment will be spectacularly savage. (I won’t see it, though. I hate melodrama. I hate soap operas, and I hate being pandered to. So I’ve stopped watching TURN. Let me know if I guessed right and the dirty deed is YET AGAIN carried out by Continentals.)

Still claiming the work is grounded in history, the writers (Alexander Rose most prominently) have made torture a procedure in Washington’s army: soldiers torture British officers and Tories, and shoot teenage boys in the head without courts martial. (The murder of Newt was torture). No one bats an eye at these depictions… Because it’s not history, it’s social commentary. The story becomes an anodyne, a myth to excuse torture post 9/11 in the same way the show 24 did.

If TURN isn’t good history is it at least good allegory? Do they explore of the effects of torture on the victims or the perpetrators? No. Abe harbors no resentment at being water boarded. Simcoe is evil incarnate, a Man of Blood (caricature). Not only does he deserve torture, but he also has a gleeful masochistic enjoyment of it, and uses it as an excuse to “act-out.” General Scott is completely unfazed, as if he blows children’s brains out every day. Brewster beats a tied-up Simcoe to a bloody pulp, yet is one of the most-beloved characters. Poor Major Hewlett (like Poor Ensign Baker and Poor Mr. Sackett) is a melodramatic cheat. Another good man, a Man of Reason (caricature again), he’s looking a lot like cannon fodder, to be destroyed to elicit a powerful emotional response.

In the world of TURN, this is all status quo. I’ve read the posts on Twitter and Facebook. Many viewers believe this is history. Great. So we can all feel better about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret prisons? Because “Oh well! It’s what we’ve always done. It’s what we’ve had to do.” Except it is a lie. We learn nothing about the American Revolution, and what we learn about ourselves is something quite ugly.

This is one of the most excellent pieces of cultural commentary I’ve ever seen regarding TURN (and as you might imagine, I’ve seen many). Concise and direct, with plenty of food for thought. Thank you for sharing it here — I hope many more people get the chance to read this.

Called it right, didn’t I Spycurious?

Continental officers as serial torturers—the myth is perpetuated.

Honestly, I hope my thoughts are a mere storm in a teapot, that the ratings continue to tank and this THING just goes away. (It should go without saying though, I would miss your excellent blog.)

Indeed you did! I wouldn’t have bet against you, that’s for sure. All the more opportunities to live-tweet links to more historically-grounded blog posts and articles (and even your comment above, on one occasion). And thank you for the compliment — we’ll all cross that post-TURN bridge when we come to it!

I’m not sure if you saw last night’s episode (“Valley Forge”), but it contained plenty of content that further support your excellent characterization of TURN as a reflection of modern cultural myths and values. In addition to more shocking, anachronistic depictions of torture, there was the Shakespearean-esque mental breakdown of George Washington. Perhaps most notably, the episode perpetuated the mythical image of Washington praying at Valley Forge (with a camera angle mimicking the famous 20th century painting and everything), but with a pointedly modern twist — showing a crazed Washington speaking to a hallucination of his dead half-brother Lawrence instead of Washington speaking/praying/convening with any sort of Providential power. A reflection of cultural values, indeed…

I did NOT watch it. I can’t in good conscience add to their viewership. Plus I’m still mad about the 16 hours I’ve thrown away waiting for TURN to fulfill the promise of Alexander Rose’s book… 16 hours of my life I’ll never get back.

I asked a friend how the Continentals treated Hewlett. Apparently our forefathers-in-arms were WORSE than pro-Nazis. They know he didn’t do it. They strip him naked and try to freeze him to death anyway. What the &@#$!!!! At least in the Patriot the cliched, anachronistic, pro-Nazis were the enemy, the British. WE were the good guys.

It’s so bizarre, like an evil shade of Parson Weems, an anti-hagiograhy… yet still packaged to somehow make us feel good?! “Whoa Dude! Look at how SHITTY and NUTTY our Founding Fathers were! No wonder this country is so screwed up! But hey, by comparison we don’t SUCK as much as we thought.” Oh Heavens!

Oops, I meant PROTO-Nazis, not pro-Nazis.

Taxing people without letting them vote is not being the “good guys.” There were good, decent humans fighting on both sides. And this show does skew that fact, which is wrong. But you can’t claim moral superiority in a war when you take away democracy from tax-paying people.

The title of your page should be “Turn to an Historian.”

Actually, “Turn to a Historian” is correct usage. Chicago Manual Style 15/e (Word Usage, 5.202): When the “h” is pronounced, use the article “a.” When the “h” is not pronounced, use “an.”

Example: We attended an hourlong talk at a historic society.

My husband and I are enjoying the show and your blog and have a question for you. Did the real Simcoe speak with such a high pitch?

I am enjoying TURN immensely and just discovered your site this afternoon. Thank you for all you put into it. Though I do understand that to speak totally in an 18th century manner would be a turn off for many, I am always very disappointed when “Aggravating Anachronisms” are used a bit too over the top. To hear such words as “yeah,” “hello,” “okay” and other similar words does drive me a little crazy. But just as aggravating are the use of handshakes. To my knowledge, a slight bow between two people with arms slightly extended from the body was the proper manner in greeting, not the shaking of hands. Verbally, a “your servant” was an acceptable spoken greeting as well. And since even the lower classes at the time strived to be higher than their lot, I would venture to guess they, too, would greet in the same. Anyhow, thank you once again for your very informative site – I am passing it along on my own blog that I write (Passion for the Past) as well as on my Facebook page.

[…] you believe historical reenactments in film and television, no. Many people assume colonists spoke with the same accents their families immigrated with, which […]

I heard Lady Shippen say “Count me in” in Season Four. Sounded funny to me!

Oh, 100% the use of modern words takes me out of a period piece. Every time. It’s driven me a little bit crazy in TURN, because they barely even try! I don’t care as much about the accents.

I never thought about the lack of standardized spelling as a positive thing before. It’s been very difficult for me to trace some of my genealogy because there are so many different spellings for each name. Now that I know there’s a silver lining, I’ll try to focus on it, I suppose. 🙂

Join the conversation: Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar