Dear speech-fans and -friends,
Happy New Year!
Best wishes to you, speech-fans and –friends
from Australia to Arizona, with most of you reading this newsletter in Europe.
This January 2018 selection has a special flavour: the best quotes and speeches delivered last month come from men and women receiving a prize or distinction, from the European Parliament Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought to the Nobel Prize. These speeches are typically the perfect occasion to focus on common values, combine logos, pathos and ethos, and call for action. You will find them below.
You will also find the Bibliography section updated : Philip Collins’s When they go low, we go high – speeches that shape the world and why we need them deserves a special mention : find out why in the bibliography section.
Best wishes,
Great speeches,
Isabelle
Make it simple – make it tangible
A European will easily identify what is common for a Portuguese and a
Lithuanian, for a Swede and a Croat. Common in the spatial order and
architecture, music, painting and in metaphysical experience. As different and
colourful as we are – as ambiguous and complicated as we are – we all
understand the Bible, Homer, Cicero, Cervantes, Dante and Shakespeare. We find
ourselves in the music of Bach, Chopin and Liszt, in the paintings of Piero
della Francesca and Vermeer. And we all feel good in towns where we can easily
find the market square, directing ourselves towards the distant towers of the
cathedral and the town hall. If we want to protect our territory, it is
precisely because it is defined not only by borders, but also by the symbols of
our culture.
[The Sakharov
Prize] is an acknowledgment for mothers denying themselves food to save their
children, for children rummaging in the rubbish to satiate their hunger, for
old people wasting away to death because of a lack of medicines.
Read here: Julio Borges, Democratic opposition of Venezuela
receiving Sakharov Prize, 13 December 2017
Watch the full speech in Spanish, English,
French, German, Italian or Estonian here
Tangible … very tangible :
How can you translate an abstract
inflation rate of 2.000% into something very tangible for your audience :
Hunger has been
made into a political system in Venezuela: 75% of Venezuelans have lost 10
kilos weight over the last 12 months.
Read here: Julio Borges, Democratic opposition of Venezuela
receiving Sakharov Prize, 13 December 2017
Watch the full speech in Spanish, English,
French, German, Italian or Estonian here
At
dozens of locations around the world - in missile silos buried in our earth, on
submarines navigating through our oceans, and aboard planes flying high in our
sky - lie 15,000 objects of humankind's destruction.
Read the full speech
here: Beatrice Fihn, Nobel Lecture given by the Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate 2017, ICAN, 10 December 2017
Call for action :
And I call on every nation to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons.
The United States, choose freedom over fear.
Russia, choose disarmament over destruction.
Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression.
France, choose human rights over terror.
China, choose reason over irrationality.
India, choose sense over senselessness.
Pakistan, choose logic over Armageddon.
Israel, choose common sense over obliteration.
North Korea, choose wisdom over ruin.
(…) To all nations: choose the end of nuclear weapons over the end of
us!
This is the choice that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
represents. Join this Treaty.
Read the full speech
here: Beatrice Fihn, Nobel Lecture given by the Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate 2017, ICAN, 10 December 2017
The impact of a prop
Evoquant, dans un livre
d'entretien, votre enterrement, vous aviez écrit : « à l'enterrement de
Malraux, on avait mis un chat près du cercueil, à celui de Defferre c'était un
chapeau, moi je voudrais un crayon, un crayon à papier, les mêmes que dans notre
enfance. Ni épée, ni Légion
d’honneur, un simple crayon à papier. »
(…) Puis-je, au nom de tous,
vous rester fidèle en déposant sur votre cercueil (…) un crayon, un simple
crayon, le crayon des enchantements.
Retrouvez le discours intégral ici : Emmanuel
Macron, Céremonie d’hommage national à Jean d’Ormesson, 8 décembre 2017
Start with a story …
I would like to tell you, our
guests from New York, a story that wasn’t published in your paper. It is the
story of the demise of a civilisation, and it was experienced by an
eight-year-old boy.
… and close with your story and a few
lessons learnt
And
that brings me back to the start of my speech, to the milkman in Augsburg.
Read the full speech
here: Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Marion Dönhoff
Prize to the New York Times, 3 December 2017
More
about this Prize ? Read here.
Antithesis :
There will not be a Europe as we know it, if there are no borders and no
law enforcement – and there will not be a Europe we desire, if it is taken over
from within by our political barbarians.
Read the full speech
here: Donald Tusk, receiving Honorary Doctorate
from the University of Pécs, 8 December 2017
Alliterations
Today I want to talk of three things: fear, freedom,
and the future.
Read the full speech
here: Beatrice Fihn, Nobel Lecture given by the Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate 2017, ICAN, 10 December 2017
Les débats sont
nécessaires, les désaccords sont légitimes mais les divisions irréconciliables
minent notre pays.
Retrouvez le discours intégral ici : Emmanuel Macron, Voeux pour l'année 2018, 31 décembre 2017
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