This 73 year old speech from a Hollywood comedy is one of the most important ever made...

[Gravitycollapse]

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 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 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 will 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 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.
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!

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 men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age, 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, 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!

[nomorenomore08]

1. Great stuff, and timeless. Should be revisited more often.

[yends21012]

2. Great speech and timeless

and inspiring.

[Union Scribe]

3. Wow! I'd never seen this.

Thanks for posting it

[Nanjing to Seoul]

4. Chaplin's Magnum Opus. And one of my favorite movies ever. . .on a side note, the Three Stooges

short where Moe becomes Emperor of Moronica predated this movie by about nine months. And I thought that 18 minute short was just as good.

[Martin Eden]

5. Jon Stewart interviewd Richard Dawkins last night

He asked him whether religious zealotry or technology were the greater threat to the future of mankind, and Dawkins essentially replied that destructive technology falling into the hands of zealots was the greatest threat.

I think this fits in well with Chaplains's speech. Our technology has far outpaced the capacity of human civilization to use advanced technology wisely. Our politcal and societal relations with each other are highly dysfunctional, leading to incessant conflict. We are not machines, but the "soldiers" of the world become cogs in machines wielded by maniacs.

Great speech, BTW. When I was a teenager in the early 70's my parents took me to see a Chaplain triple feature, which included The Great Dictator, Modern Times, and City Lights.

Thank you Mom and Dad,
Martin

(and thanks Gravitycollapse for posting this)

[MFM008]

6. a thought

This guy should have begun talkiing waaaayyyyy before this.....

To Mr. Chaplin.

[hfojvt]

7. "we need kindness and gentleness"

Yet that cheering crowd at the end, where was that from? Wasn't that a crowd that was cheering for Hitler's hate?

Unfortunately men, and women, are very good at hating. "Only the unloved hate". Perhaps that is true, but also true that all of us have felt unloved, unappreciated, and not valued, and those who have not are probably so full of themselves that they would not condescend to care about very many people.

[Gravitycollapse]

11. I still think "only the unloved hate" is generally true excepting actual sociopaths...

Or other persons who are partially or wholly incapable of experiencing emotional and intellectual attachment to another person.

That condescension is the greed mentioned in the speech and it's sort of transcendental and thus not entirely attached to any individual. In other words, it's escapable.

[reddread]

8. great post!

I knew from the subject header exactly what you had posted.
Now, whatever became of Charlie Chaplin, the Great American?

[Gravitycollapse]

9. Bump.

[Uncle Joe]

10. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Gravitycollapse.

[Rockyj]

12. The Occupy Movement revised this old clip...

and played it a lot to fill in for livestreaming! Amazing how the same issues are just as reverent today!

[Scootaloo]

13. It's an a amzing movie as well, and genuinely funny

I love this version of the speech, remixed by melodysheep of youtube (the person who does the "Symphony of Science" remixes - which I can't reccomend enough, either)

[libdem4life]

14. K & R

[el_bryanto]

15. It's an interestingly divisive speech

I think it's great, but many argue that it just stops the movie dead. which it kind of does - but it's still a great speech.

But of course the greatest political satire of that time is Duck Soup.

Bryant

[pacalo]

16. A speech that calls for unity & to embrace diversity is "divisive" only to those who need to hear it

the most.

[el_bryanto]

18. Divisive artistically i should clarify

I don't think many disagree with the sentiment (well actually many do, but film critics tend to be more liberal); they just question the effectiveness after 2 hours of making fun of Hitler of stopping to lecture the audience. Consider Roger Eberts comments on the speech, in his review of the film.

But audiences at the time, and ever since, have felt that the film comes to a dead end when the barber, impersonating Hynkel, delivers a monologue of more than three minutes which represents Chaplin's own views.

Incredibly, no one tries to stop the fake "Hynkel." Chaplin talks straight into the camera, in his own voice, with no comic touches and only three cutaways, as the barber is presumably heard on radio all over the world. What he says is true enough, but it deflates the comedy and ends the picture as a lecture, followed by a shot of Goddard outlined against the sky, joyously facing the Hynkel-free future, as the music swells. It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now. It is fatal when Chaplin drops his comic persona, abruptly changes the tone of the film, and leaves us wondering how long he is going to talk (a question that should never arise during a comedy). The movie plays like a comedy followed by an editorial.

To me the speech has always seemed very heartfelt and meaningful. I think the best sequence is the one with Hynkel and the globe, but the speech is close on its heels. But tastes differ.

Bryant

[pacalo]

19. Thank you for that background.

I'm probably one of the few people who hasn't seen any silent films (although "The Great Dictator" was Chaplin's first 'talkie') or any of the Marx Brothers movies. I'm going to have to watch "Duck Soup", though, next time it comes on TCM:

If Chaplin had not been "premature," however, it is unlikely he would have made the film at all. Once the horrors of the Holocaust began to be known, Hitler was no longer funny, not at all. The Marx Brothers, ahead of the curve, made "Duck Soup" in 1933, with Groucho playing the dictator Rufus T. Firefly in a comedy that had ominous undertones about what was already under way in Europe.

[Triana]

17. It absolutely is! n/t