Speeches That Changed Our Times

The history of humankind has always been marked by natural catastrophes, migrations, discoveries, revolutions, and wars. But there have also been speeches that marked an era; instilling hope in crucial moments, reawakening the collective conscience of a population—or of all humanity.

In homes throughout the world, millions of people watched these speeches on television or listened to them on the radio, fascinated by the charismatic words, by the moral integrity, by the tireless passion and sacrifice of the orators, by those who dedicated their entire existence to the causes they believed in.

The thirty-eight speeches featured in this book were delivered over a period that ranges from immediately following World War II to today, and the authors include politicians and brilliant orators, as well as scientists, a writer, a missionary, a businesswoman, a talk-show host, and a young girl.

From Charles de Gaulle’s announcement of the end of World War II in 1945, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” in 1963 and Stephen Hawking’s 2022 speech at his 60th birthday symposium, to Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address in 2022, Speeches That Changed Our Times invites you to read these masterpieces of oratory without restraining the emotions they provoke, in the hope that learning from the past will help build a better world for the present and the future.