The Dictators Speech

The Dictators Speech

"Now before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement. Change… Change is the law of life. Those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. As we express our gratitude for the days we live, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. A man may die for his country and nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on, because efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. As history is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. And Democracy… while it lasts more bloody than either aristocracy or a monarchy. We must remember that democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. For there is never a democracy that did not commit suicide, and their Liberty cannot be preserved without the general knowledge among the people. They tried. They tried and held firm to their ideal beliefs. However to try to hold fast is to be swept aside and yet to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often, not to conform. For conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemies of growth, but as we all know Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds, because with self-discipline most anything is possible. Yet no matter what those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly even against the test of time. For we know the happiness of society is the end of government, and we also know how great the guilt of an unnecessary war is.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan filled with blinding ignorance, and it does mislead us so. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes! For we must beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance and a bad attitude. Because attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference, because success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm; And nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; yet nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. To all of those out there feeling as if you’re going through hell, keep going! Because you have to do what you can, with what you have, where you are and nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care!

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, and hope. They say that nine –tenths of wisdom is being wise in time… You know I like the dreams of the future much better than the history of the past. Unfortunately there has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering, but we have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Now we must remember that nothing is permanent in this wicked world- not even our troubles; and the hate of men will pass and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Power corrupts, forcing society’s demands for moral authority and character increase, as the importance of the position increases, their abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. For a lie told often becomes the truth and our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds. This forces us to realize Life’s most persistent and urgent question, ‘What are you doing for others?’

For most it is nothing.

But we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich. Because the worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. For injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools. Many believe that Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily, and in cases like that there is no such thing as accidents; for it is fate misnamed.

Now I love power. But it is because I am an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds of chords and harmonies. But I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. However a leader is a dealer in hope, for they have great ambitions and that is the passion of a character and those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. And it all depends on the principles which direct them. Remember that you will never do anything in this world without courage, because it is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor and I love the name of honor, more than I fear death. And we are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it, because nothing in the entire world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

For our enemies believe that is “impossible”. Now I believe that a day without laughter is a day wasted, and so I laugh at them, for something to be ‘Impossible’ is a word to be found in the dictionary of fools, because I believe that imagination rules the world, and victory belongs to the most preserving. This is why I must study politics and war so that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. However the truest wisdom is a resolute determination, because no one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. What we think, we become; I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it. Through it all I’ll never see what has been done; instead I only see what remains to be done, because I was born into the world as the king of truth for the salvation of the world."