Charlie Chaplin's final speech in the film the great dictator, with a splash of modern imagery.
Song: Window by The Album Leaf
The speech itself is from a comedy directed by and starring Charlie
Chaplin. First released in October 1940, Chaplin plays two characters
who look strikingly similar- a jewish barber and a dictator who looks
like Adolf Hitler. Near the end of the film, after a series of bizarre
incidents, the dictator gets replaced by his look-alike, the barber, and
is taken to the capital where he is asked to give a speech. It’s worth watching because the speech is as relevant today as it was
71 years ago. The full transcript of the speech can be found below the
video.
"I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my
business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help
everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to
help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s
misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world
there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for
everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery
that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us
cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too
little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we
need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be
violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The
very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries
out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my
voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing
men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men
torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do
not despair”.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the
bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: 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 [now] liberty will
never perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you
and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to
think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as
cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with
machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not
cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You
don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the
kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but
in all men – in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the
power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life
free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the
name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight
for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work,
that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise
of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not
fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but
they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us
fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away
with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of
reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s
happiness.
Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!"
