Dear speech-fans and -friends,
Peace.
Peace is the recurring theme in this
month’s selection of quotes and speeches.
Peace for places as diverse as Aleppo,
Columbia, Germany, Pearl Harbor.
Peace as the most precious lesson past and
current leaders urge us to embrace.
And peace as my best wish to you, readers
of this newsletter, as we start a new year. To you, from Australia to Arizona, who
read these lines : peace.
I also recommend two webpages:
- The
outgoing White House administration reminds us that ‘behind (President Obama’s)
words is a group of speechwriters who have worked closely with the President to
craft important messages to the American people. It’s meant countless drafts
and rewrites, late nights, and last-minute edits from the motorcade. As his
time in office comes to a close, the President’s speechwriters — past and present — took a look back at eight years of remarks to share
some of the words, speeches, and memories that stand out to them.
Take a look at a few of the President’s top speeches as chosen by his speechwriters’.
- Nancy Duarte, whose books we strongly recommend in our Bibliography, has designed, together with Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an insightful test to help speakers with fear of public speaking, available on the Harvard Business Review website. Answering some 24 questions provides guidance on one’s strengths and where to focus to improve and ultimately feel … at peace when taking the floor.
You’ll find the full latest selection of quotes and speeches on http://www.logospathosethos.eu
Isabelle
Allow me to tell you, from my own experience, that it is much harder to
make peace than to wage war.
Read the full speech here: Nobel Lecture by Juan Manuel Santos, Peace in Columbia: from the impossible to the possible, 10 December 2016.
Peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or
gold.
I hope that
together, we send a message to the world that there is more to be won in peace
than in war; that reconciliation carries more rewards than retribution.
Read
the full speech here: Barack Obama, Remarks at Pearl Harbor, 28
December 2016
Fear is driving the decisions of many
people around the world. We must understand their anxieties and meet their needs,
without losing sight of our universal values. It is time to reconstruct
relations between people and leaders — national and international; time for
leaders to listen and show that they care.
Read
the full speech here: United Nations Secretary General designate
António Guterres, Remarks to the General Assembly on taking the oath of office,
12 December 2016
As nations,
and as people, we cannot choose the history that we inherit. But we can
choose what lessons to draw from it, and use those lessons to chart our own
futures. Prime Minister Abe, I welcome you here in the spirit of
friendship, as the people of Japan have always welcomed me. I hope that
together, we send a message to the world that there is more to be won in peace
than in war; that reconciliation carries more rewards than retribution.
Read
the full speech here: Barack Obama, Remarks at Pearl Harbor, 28 December
2016
Nadia (co-laureate of the Sakharov Prize), you said:
the world must know. Yes the world must know. And allow me to add: The world
must act.
Read
the full speech here: European Parliament President Martin
Schulz, Sakharov Prize 2016 Award Ceremony, 13 December 2016
The last thing your people in Aleppo need today is
more words of sympathy. The only thing you need today is real and effective
protection and assistance.
Read
the full speech here: European Council President Donald Tusk
after his meeting with Brita Hagi Hasan, President of the local Council of
Eastern Aleppo, 15 December 2016
A flame of hope had been
lit (…) and now that flame appeared to be suddenly snuffed out. Many of us in
Colombia recalled a passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude, the great
masterpiece of our Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which seemed to
illustrate the moment we were living:
"It was as if God
had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the
inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alteration between excitement and
disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for
certain where the limits of reality lay."
Read
the full speech here: Nobel Lecture by Juan Manuel Santos, Peace
in Columbia: from the impossible to the possible, 10 December 2016.
We feel fear,
but we are not consumed by it.
We feel
powerlessness, but we are not consumed by it.
We feel rage, but we are not consumed by it.
Read the full speech here: German Bundespraesident, Joachim Gauck, Christmas message, 25 December 2016
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