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charlie chaplin speech i love

This speech, I saw it a few years ago, and its always blown me away that Charlie Chaplin write this in 1937 before the world was fully aware of the power the Nazi regime was building, and that in Hollywood of 1940 this film with this speech in and a full out parody of Hitler (Chaplin plays a Hitler-esque dictator and a Jewish barber who looks just like the dictator and gets mistaken for him)…

Final Speech of "The Great Dictator" (also known as "Look Up, Hannah") by Charlie Chaplin

Schulz: Speak – it is our only hope.

The Jewish Barber (Charlie Chaplin’s character): Hope…
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!

Look
up! Look up! The clouds are lifting – the sun is breaking through. We
are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new
world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and
brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings – and at
last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow – into the
light of hope – into the future, that glorious future that belongs to
you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up."