spoken word — all

Words that Changed The World
”For 15 years, Intelligence Squared has vigorously championed the spoken word. The finest speakers from across the globe have come to our stage — to argue, to move, to persuade and change minds. Their speeches epitomise the vital role that public speaking plays in our lives. To celebrate the power of oratory, we held a major event which will showcase how great speeches have swayed the course of history and demonstrate how, more than ever, we need them to help define our values and who we are.”

Speech by Elizabeth I

”… Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”

Lieutenant Colonel T T C Collins delivers his eve-of-battle speech to officers and Rangers of 1 R IRISH Battle Group on 19 March 2003. [via Royal Irish]

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins' Eve-of-Battle Speech recorded in shorthand by journalist Sarah Oliver,

'We go to liberate, not to conquer.
We will not fly our flags in their country.
We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own.
Show respect for them.

There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly.
Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send.
As for the others, I expect you to rock their world.
Wipe them out if that is what they choose.
But if you are ferocious in battle remember to be magnanimous in victory.

Iraq is steeped in history.
It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham.
Tread lightly there.

You will see things that no man could pay to see
-- and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.
You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing.

Don't treat them as refugees for they are in their own country.
Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.

If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day.
Allow them dignity in death.
Bury them properly and mark their graves.

It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive.
But there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign.
We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back.
There will be no time for sorrow.

The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction.
There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of hell for Saddam.
He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done.
As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity.

It is a big step to take another human life.
It is not to be done lightly.
I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts.
I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.

If someone surrenders to you then remember they have that right in international law and ensure that one day they go home to their family.
The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please.

If you harm the Regiment or its history by over-enthusiasm in killing or in cowardice, know it is your family who will suffer.
You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest -- for your deeds will follow you down through history.
We will bring shame on neither our uniform or our nation.

[Regarding the use by Saddam of chemical or biological weapons]

It is not a question of if, it's a question of when.
We know he has already devolved the decision to lower commanders, and that means he has already taken the decision himself.
If we survive the first strike we will survive the attack.

As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there.

Our business now is north.'

Elie Wiesel

The Perils of Indifference

delivered 12 April 1999, Washington, D.C. [via. American Rhetoric]

‘…Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God -- not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.’

James: “When you get older, you start to learn about where you come from. You, honey boy, come from alcoholics. A long line of people who were hurting and didn't know what to do.”

Otis: “The only thing my father gave me of any value was pain. And now you want to take that away from me?”

Otis, as a child: “I’ve missed you for a long time, dad.”

James: “You know, a seed has to completely destroy itself to become a flower. It’s a violent act, honey boy.”

2019 film written by Shia LeBeouf. Directed by Alma Har’el.

”At its core, Honey Boy is about what it means … to carry the weight of a generational curse. More professionally known as inherited or trans-generational trauma, this is the idea that our parents can pass on their pain to us when they are unable to heal it…a cycle that can seem unstoppable, until one child is able to find the proper tools to confront it, and therefore heal the wounds that were handed down to them.

Shia LaBeouf, in a brave act, embodies this by playing the character who represents his real-life father, James. He steps into the man who caused the trauma that led him to turn to alcohol, and he does so without malice or vengeance. In the movie, we are shown a portrait of a father who is not absolved of his crimes, but who is allowed empathy for the way in which he struggles. James, like Otis, had his pain handed down to him, and did not know what to do with it.

…he said, in speaking as part of The Hollywood Reporter Actor’s Roundtable, ‘[In rehab] I gained empathy for my father, who was always the biggest villain in my life. If you can empathize with the biggest villain in your life, and scrape some of these shadows, it makes you lighter and more free. ‘ " [via Alanna Grace, Honey Boy and the Magic of Breaking a Generational Curse]

Leonard Cohen - The Hills (Official Video) Directed by Vincent Haycock

“Leonard is such an amazing poet and you can’t listen to his music without having images pop into your head,” says Haycock, “I kept seeing a man sitting in a chair waiting for the world to end but it wasn’t sad. Rather, there was a relief or even a desire for it to end.” —via NOWNESS

Leonard Cohen - Happens to the Heart (Official Video) Directed by Daniel Askill

“I wanted to make something that spoke to Leonard’s years as a zen monk,” says the director, who was inspired by the musician’s dedication to Buddhism and the five years Cohen spent living at California’s Mount Baldy Zen Center. “This film is a quiet, symbolic narrative that charts the letting go of ego and the trappings of fame.” —via NOWNESS

Bunny Kinney, Nowness creative director says, “our ambition with this series of short films is not only to uphold and celebrate Leonard Cohen’s incredible artistic legacy with new visuals, helmed by some of the most exciting image-makers working today, but to also further explore Cohen’s work and the core thematics of his music: from love and loss to artistic expression itself, identity, self-reflection, transformation and transcendence.” —via NOWNESS

Now the angel's got a fiddle
The devil's got a harp
Every soul is like a minnow
Every mind is like a shark
Me, I've broken every window
But the house, the house is dark
I care, but very little
What happens to the heart

Then I studied with this beggar
He was filthy, he was scarred
By the claws of many women
He had failed to disregard
No fable here, no lesson
No singing meadowlark
Just a filthy beggar guessing
What happens to the heart

I was always working steady
But I never called it art
It was just some old convention
Like the horse before the cart
I had no trouble betting
On the flood, against the ark
You see, I knew about the ending
What happens to the heart

—Leonard Cohen

“My mind was always very cluttered, so, I took great pains to simplify my environment because if my environment was half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn’t be able to make it from room to room.”

“We all are motivated by deep impulses and deep appetite to serve, even though we may not be able to locate that which we are willing to serve.”

Leonard Cohen in around 1960. Photograph: Roz Kelly/Getty Images

“Religion, teachers, women, drugs, the road, fame, money,” Adam quotes his father saying; “nothing gets me high and offers relief from the suffering like blackening pages, writing.” It was also, he writes in his foreword, “a statement of regret”, since Cohen sacrificed so much – he never married, considered himself a poor father, let his health and financial state decline – for the Muse. Amidst numerous liaisons and botched relationships, poetry is the one thing he remained entirely faithful to. The Flame is the incontrovertible proof. [via Romance, regrets and notebooks in the freezer: Leonard Cohen’s son on his father’s final poems]

Johnny Depp discussing meeting Hunter S. Thompson and firing a shotgun at a propane tank wrapped in nitroglycerine. A clip taken from the dialogue with Lawre...

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” —Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being A Wall Flower

From the 2012 film The Perks Of Being A Wall Flower, written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller

LIT#201003-Rhetoric

LIT#200930-Recent Discoveries