An illuminating collection of speeches, articles and essays
assembled for your enjoyment and edification.

President Nelson Mandella Inaugural Speech

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate..... Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, to be gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us. And as we let our light shine, we consciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Nelson Mandella - 1994 Inaugural Speech

On December 3rd, 1964, UC Berkeley student Mario Savo, advocating free speech, spoke these words on campus:

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

The following is taken from an impromptu speech given by Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, after learning of the slaying of Martin Luther King Jr.

Senator Kennedy spoke these words on April 4th, 1968 and was assassinated just two month's later at age 42, ending his campaign for presidency.

"I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. You can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country in great polarization or we can make an effort as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend and to replace that violence, that stain of blood shed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the grace of God." What we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."

- Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)

On June 8th, 1968, Senator Edward Kennedy delivered this eulogy at his brother Robert Kennedy's funeral:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us, who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."