Great Speeches of Our Time

Hywel Williams is a renowned historian, newspaper columnist, political advisor and TV presenter. He is the author of the famous political exposé Guilty Men and the massive Cassell's Chronology of World History.

• Introduction. Eamon de Valera: 'It is, indeed, hard for the strong to be just to the weak' - 16 May 1945. Winston Churchill: 'An iron curtain has descended across the Continent' - 5 March 1946. George Marshall: 'Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos' - 5 June 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru: 'A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east' - 14 August 1947. David Ben-Gurion: 'This is our native land, it is not as birds of passage that we return to it' - 2 October 1947. Eleanor Roosevelt: 'The basic problem confronting the world today ... is the preservation of human freedom' - 9 December 1948. Douglas MacArthur: 'Old soldiers never die, they just fade away' - 19 April 1951. Nikita Khrushchev: 'The cult of the individual brought about rude violation of party democracy' - 25 February 1956. Aneurin Bevan: 'The government resorted to epic weapons for squalid and trivial ends' - 5 December 1956. Mao Zedong: 'Let a hundred flowers blossom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend' - 27 February 1957. Harold Macmillan: 'The wind of change is blowing through this continent' - 3 February 1960. John F. Kennedy: 'We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier' - 15 July 1960. John F. Kennedy: 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country' - 20 January 1961. John F. Kennedy: 'Mankind must put an end to war - or war will put an end to mankind' - 25 September 1961. Charles de Gaulle: 'There is no independence imaginable for a country that does not have its own nuclear weapon' - 15 February 1963. Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream' - 28 August 1963. Harold Wilson: 'The white heat of the technological revolution' - 1 October 1963. Nelson Mandela: 'An ideal for which I am prepared to die' - 20 April 1964. Barry Goldwater: 'Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice ... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue' - 16 July 1964. Martin Luther King Jr: 'The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit' - 4 April 1967. Julius Nyerere: 'Socialism is an attitude of mind' - 10 April 1967. Gamal Abdel Nasser: 'We are determined that the Palestine question will not be liquidated or forgiven' - 26 May 1967. Gamal Abdel Nasser: 'We are now ready to deal with the entire Palestine question' - 29 May 1967. Richard Nixon: 'North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that' - 3 November 1969. Richard Nixon: 'Mistakes, yes. But for personal gain, never' - 9 August 1974. Pierre Trudeau: 'The bringing home of our constitution marks the end of a long winter' - 17 April 1982. Neil Kinnock: 'I warn you that you will have pain' - 7 June 1983. Neil Kinnock: 'We are democratic socialists. We care all the time' - 15 May 1987. Ronald Reagan: 'Isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments' - 6 June 1984. Mario Cuomo: 'For the love of God: Please, make this nation remember how futures are built' - 16 July 1984. Jesse Jackson: 'Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint' - 18 July 1984. Richard von Weizsacker: 'Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present' - 8 May 1985. Margaret Thatcher: 'Let Europe be a family of nations ... relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour' - 20 September 1988. Mikhail Gorbachev: 'Freedom of choice is a universal principle to which there should be no exceptions' - 7 December 1988. Nelson Mandela: 'A rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world' - 10 May 1994. Seamus Heaney: 'The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine' - 7 December 1995. Fidel Castro: 'Socialism or death!' - 1 January 1999. Anita Roddick: 'By putting our money where our heart is ... we will mould the world into a kinder, more loving shape' - 27 November 1999. Tony Blair: 'Our policies only succeed when the realism is as clear as the idealism' - 2 October 2001. Orhan Pamuk: 'Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights' - 25 April 2006. Kevin Rudd: 'As of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end' - 13 February 2008. Barack Obama: 'Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward' 6 November 2012. Index. Acknowledgements/credits.