Charlie Chaplin
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I am sorry, but I don’t want to
be an emperor. That is 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 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 good
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 aero plane 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 men, 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, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves
to the brutes, men who despise you, 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 like cattle, use you 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, the unloved and unnatural!
Soldier! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th
chapter of St 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! You, the people have the power.
The power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people,
have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a
wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy,
let us use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent
world that will give you men a chance to work. That will give youth a future
and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to
power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!
Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to
fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national
barriers, to 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!
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