Great Speeches

The Weather, by Mark Twain.

From The New England Societie's 71st annual Dinner, New York City.

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Original Campaign Speech by incumbent President Wiliam H. Taft.

Full text:

William Howard Taft: We are living in an age in which by exaggeration of the defects of our present condition, by false charges and responsibility for it against individuals and classes, by holding up to the feverish imagination of the less fortunate and the discontented the possibilities of a millenium, a condition of popular unrest has been produced.

New parties are being formed with the proposed purpose of satisfying this unrest by promising a panacea. Insofar as inequality of condition can be lessened and equality of opportunity can be promoted by improvement of our educational systems, the betterment of the laws to ensure the quick administration of justice, and by the prevention of the acquisition of privilege without just compensation—insofar as the adoption of the legislation above recited and laws of a similar character may aid the less fortunate in their struggle with the hardships of life—all are in sympathy with the continued effort to remedy injustice and to aid the weak. And I venture to say, that there’s no national administration in which more real steps of such progress have been taken than in the present one. But insofar as the propaganda for the satisfaction of unrest involves the promise of a millenium—a condition in which the rich are to be made reasonably poor and the poor reasonably rich, by law - we are chasing a phantom. We are holding out to those whose unrest we fear, a prospect and a dream, a vision of the impossible.

After we have changed all the governmental machinery, so as to permit instantaneous expression of the people in constitutional amendments, in statutes, and in recall of public agents, what then? Votes are not bread, constitutional amendments are not work, referendums do not pay rent or furnish houses, recalls do not furnish clothing, initiatives do not supply employment or relieve inequalities of condition or of opportunity. We still ought to have set before us the definite plans to bring on complete equality of opportunity, and to abolish hardship and evil for humanity. We listen for them in vain.

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Original Campaign Speech by Woodrow Wilson, in 1912.

Full Text:

Woodrow Wilson: To look at the politics of the day from the viewpoint of the laboring man is not to suggest that there is one view proper to him, another to the employer, another to the capitalist, another to the professional man, but merely that the life of the country as a whole may be looked at from various points of view, and yet be viewed as a whole. The whole business of politics is to bring classes together upon a platform of accommodation and common interest. In a political campaign the voters are called upon to choose between parties and leaders. Parties and platforms and candidates should be frankly put under examination to see what they will yield us by way of progress. And there are a great many questions which the working man may legitimately ask and quest until he gets a definite answer.

The predictions of the leader of the new party are as alarming as the predictions of the various stand-patters. He declares that he is not troubled by the fact that a very large amount of money is taken out of the pockets of the general taxpayer and put into the pockets of particular classes that protect his manufacturers, but that his concern is that so little of this money gets into the pockets of the laboring man and so large a proportion of it into the pockets of the employers. I have searched his program very thoroughly for an indication of what he expects to do in order to see to it that a larger proportion of this prize money gets into the pay envelope—and I have found only one suggestion. There is a plank in the program which speaks of establishing a minimum, or a living wage, for women workers. And I suppose that we may assume that the principle is not in the long run meant to be confined in its application to women only. Perhaps we are justified in assuming that the third party looks forward to the general establishment by law of a minimum wage.

It is very likely, I take it for granted, that if a minimum wage were established by law the great majority of employers would take occasion to bring their wage scale as nearly as might be down to the level of that minimum. And it would be very awkward for the working man to resist that process successfully because it would be dangerous to strike against the authority in the Federal government. Moreover, most of his employers—at any rate, practically all of the most powerful of them—would be wards and proteges of that very government which is the master of us all. For no part of this program can be discussed intelligently, without remembering that monopoly, as handled by it, is not to be prevented, but accepted and regulated.

When you have thought the whole thing out, therefore, you will find that the program of the new party legalizes monopolies and, of necessity, subordinates working men to them and to the plans made by the government, both with regard to employment, and with regard to wages. Take the thing as a whole, and it looks strangely like economic mastery over the very lives and fortunes of those who do the daily work of the nation. And all this under the overwhelming power and sovereignty of the national government. What most of us are fighting for is to break up this very partnership between big business and the government.

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Original Recording of Campaign Speech by Theodore Roosevelt of the Bull Moose Party, in 1912.

Full Text:

Theodore Roosevelt: The difference between Mr. Wilson and myself is fundamental. The other day in a speech at Sioux Falls, Mr. Wilson stated his position when he said that the history of government, the history of liberty, was the history of the limitation of governmental power. This is true as an academic statement of history in the past. It is not true as a statement affecting the present. It is true of the history of medieval Europe. It is not true of the history of twentieth-century America.

In the days when all governmental power existed exclusively in the king or in the baronage and when the people had no shred of that power in their own hands, then it undoubtedly was true that the history of liberty was the history of the limitation of the governmental power of the outsiders who possessed that power. But today, the people have, actually or potentially, the entire governmental power. It is theirs to use and to exercise, if they choose to use and to exercise it. It offers the only adequate instrument with which they can work for the betterment, for the uplifting of the masses of our people.

The liberty of which Mr. Wilson speaks today means merely the liberty of some great trust magnate to do that which he is not entitled to do. It means merely the liberty of some factory owner to work haggard women over-hours for under-pay and himself to pocket the profits. It means the liberty of the factory owner to close his operatives into some crazy deathtrap on a top floor, where if fire starts, the slaughter is immense. It means the liberty of the big factory owner—who is conscienceless, and unscrupulous—to work his men and women under conditions which [inaudible] their lives like an [inaudible]. It means the liberty of even less conscientious factory owners to make their money out of the toil, the labor, of little children. Men of this stamp are the men whose liberty would be preserved by Mr. Wilson. Men of this stamp are the men whose liberty would be preserved by the limitation of governmental power.

We propose, on the contrary, to extend governmental power in order to secure the liberty of the wage workers, of the men and women who toil in industry, to save the liberty of the oppressed from the oppressor. Mr. Wilson stands for the liberty of the oppressor to oppress. We stand for the limitation of his liberty not to oppress those who are weaker than himself.

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In 1894, French writer and bibliophile Octave Uzanne wrote the article "The End of Books" for Scribner's Magazine, which he thought would come about because of the rise of phonography, and where he predicted the rise of radio and television.

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Original Recording:

Abolishment of war throughout the world.

by William Howard Taft, Twenty-seventh President, 1909-1913.

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Original Speech by President Jimmy Carter, on Sept 7th, 1977.

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Abraham Lincoln Anecdotes (from "Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln 1832-1865"), by Merwin Roe.

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The Fifth Annual Message to Congress, by George Washington, on December 03, 1793.

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The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated Confederate forces in the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War's deadliest battle. It remains one of the best known speeches in American history.

Lincoln's carefully crafted but brief address, which was not scheduled as the day's primary speech, came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements on the American national purpose. In just 271 words, beginning with the now famous phrase "Four score and seven years ago,"‍ referring to the signing of the Declaration of Independence 87 years earlier, Lincoln described the U.S. as a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and represented the Civil War as a test that would determine whether such a nation could endure. Lincoln extolled the sacrifices of those who died at Gettysburg in defense of those principles, and then urged that the nation ensure:

"that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." (From Wikipedia.)

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