A treasury of the world's great speeches: each speech prefaced with its dramatic and biographical setting and placed in its full historical perspective

Moses proclaims The Ten Commandments

Isaiah cries out for social justice

Pericles, in the deathless funeral oration sums up the glory that was Athens

Demosthenes denounces the imperialistic ambitions of Philip the Macedon

The conspiracy of Catiline

Cicero pours on the vitriol

Julius Caesar objects to illegal execution of the captured conspirators

Cato demands the immediate execution of the conspirators

Catiline rallies his small, desperate army on the eve of battle

Jesus of Nazareth delivers The sermon on the Mount

Chrysostom preaches on the fall of Eutropius, minister of state

Pope Urban II calls for the first crusade

Bernard of Clairvaux shows that the name of Jesus is a salutary medicine

Savonarola exhorts the people of Florence to repent

Luther defends himself at the diet of worms

Queen Elizabeth rallies her army during the Armada Peril

John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's delivers his own funeral

Thomas Harrison, regicide, speaks from the scaffold

Andrew Hamilton, the day star of the American Revolution, defends the freedom of the press

John Wesley denounces the doctrine of predestination

James Otis argues against illegal search and seizure

William Pitt objects to taxation without representation

John Wilkes denies the right of the house of commons to reject duly elected members

Edmund Burke makes a last desperate plea for conciliation with the American colonies

Patrick Henry prepares Virginia for war against the mother country

Lord Chatham, formerly William Pitt, would stop the war with the colonies

Henry Grattan demands an independent parliament for Ireland

Burke attempts to vindicate himself before his estranged constituents

Charles James Fox introduces his bill to abolish the tyranny of the East India Company

Burke supports Fox's bill and lauds its author

Burke cites the charges against Warren Hastings

Richard Brinsley Sheridan brings the Hastings trial to a climax

Thomas Erskine points out the inevitable consequences of empire

Benjamin Franklin, as the Constitutional Convention closes, has the last wise word to say

Patrick Henry fears the strength of the proposed Constitution

Alexander Hamilton wins over the foes of the Constitution in New York

William Wilberforce, in The House of Commons, pictures the slave trade in all its honor

William Pitt the younger indicts the slave trade and foresees a liberated Africa

Mirabeau wars the nobility and clergy of Provence of the impending storm

Mirabeau defends a desperate financial measure

Doctor Richard Price, in London, hails the French Revolution

Mirabeau argues for the King's right to make war and peace

Vergniaud reveals the desperate position of revolutionary France

Danton thunders for unity

Thomas Erskine defends Tom Paine for writing "The rights of man"

Danton reinvigorates his countrymen

Vergniaud admits to Rebespierre's charges of moderation

Robespierre recommends virtue and terror

Robespierre faces the guilloting

General Bonaparte addresses his triumphant army of Italy

Pitt advises against accepting Bonaparte's overtures for peace

Charles James Fox replies to Pitt

Henry Grattan flays a turncoat

Robert Emmet defends the Irish cause before being sentenced to death

Lazare Carnot opposes a crown for Bonaparte

Pitt replies to a toast

Byron strikes an early blow for the rights of Labor

Napolion bids farewell to the old guard

Daniel Webster celebrates the American heritage

John Randolph of Roanoke lays the ground for disunion

Webster proclaims the doctrine of a strong central government

John C. Calhoun, disciple of Randolph and antagonist of Webster, Champions states' rights

Frances Wright, beautiful and fearless, delivers a fourth-of-July oration

Seth Luther addresses the workingmen of New England

Ralph Waldo Emerson points out the duties of the American Scholar

Wendell Phillips, a young Boston Brahmin, leaps into the Abolitionist crusade

Thomas Corwin, in the most fearless speech ever delivered in Congress, denounces the Mexican War

Elizabeth Cady Stanton keynotes the first woman's rights convention

The compormise of 1850; Henry Clay makes his last effort to preserve the Union, The dying Calhoun hears his bitter swan song read by a fellow Senator, Webster, in "The most-heralded speech ever made in America" supports Clay's compromise

Theodore Parker mourns over a fallen idol

Daniel Webster

George Canning sees the world at peace in the shadow of The British Navy

Daniel O'Connell carries on the fight for Catholic emancipation

Macaulay makes his first speech for the reform bill

Lord Brougham, with his ususal vehemence, also supports the Reform Bill

Macaulay renews his case for emancipation of the Jews

O'Connell enthralls an Irish multitude

Richard Cobden argues for free trade and against the corn laws

Alexis De Tocqueville feels "A gale of revolution in the air"

Mazzini mourns for martyrs of Italian liberty

Kossuth, a militant exile, calles for aid to downtrodden Hungary

Louis pasteur depicts the spirit of science

Karl Marx, and exile in England, give an after-dinner speech

Frederick Douglass, an ex-slave, discusses slavery

Sam Houston, Senator from Texas, closes an ominous debate on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise

Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer, returns to political life and delivers his first great speech

Lincoln argues that a house divided against itself cannot stand

Lincoln closes his campaign against Douglas

John Brown explains a martyr's course

Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate

President-elect Lincoln bids farewell to his friends at Springfield, Illinois

Lincoln delivers his first inaugural address

John Bright educates English public opinion in the cause of the North

Edward Everett delivers the oration at the dedication of the National cemetery at Gettysburg

President Lincoln makes a "Few appropriate remarks" on the same occation

Abraham Lincoln delivers his second inaugural address

Bismarck recommends the values of blood and iron

Ferdinand Lassalle attaks the German press

Thomas Henry Huxley examines Darwin's "Origin of species"

John Ruskin bemoans the degradation of modern life

Leon Gambetta begins the reconstruction of France after the German conquest.

Disraeli defends the principles of the conservative party

Gladston supports the right of freethinkers to enter the House of Commons

Dostoyevsky interrupts the writing of "The Brothers Karamazov" to celebrate the cenetary of Pushkin's birth

Friedrch Engels says a few words at the burial of Karl Marx

Charles Stewart Parnell demands home rule for Ireland

Bismarck pleads for a bigger arms budget

Emile Zola, on trial for libel, denounces the conspiracy against Dreyfus

J. Proctor Knott of Kentucky captivates the House of Representatives

Robert G. Ingersoll nominates James G. Blaine for President of the United States

Ingersoll speaks at his brother's grave

Henry George lectures on Moses, progressand poverty

Henry W. Grady of Georgia leaps into national fame with an address on the new south

Booker T. Washington proposes a modest role for the negro

William Jennings Bryan stampedes the Democratic National Convention

Bourke Cockran, an eminent Democrat, replies to Bryan

"Beveridge the brillliant" takes up the white man's burden

Theodore Roosevelt advocates the strenuous life

Kaiser Wilhelm II is outraged and adamant

Sun Yat-sen takes up the yellow man's burdent

Jean Jaures and Georges Clemenceau debate the question of capital and labor

David Lloyd George call for a steep increase in taxes

Woodrow Wilson, at fifty-four, gives his first political address

Lloyd George calls for voluteers

Cardinal Mercier preaches a sermon in German-occupied Brussels

President Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany

Lenin speaks to a street crowd in Petrograd

Lenin makes a world-shaking announcement

Trotsky rallies one of his armies during the Civil War

Eugene V. Debs makes a statement to the court

President Wilson goes to the people in behalf of the League of Nations

Gandhi propounds his faith before an English judge

Mussolini renders his first account to the chamber of disputes

Clarence Darrow pleads for justice for the negro

Sacco and Vanzetti proclaim their innocence

Franklin Delano Roosevelt gives his first inaugural address

Roosevelt gives his first fireside chat

Hitler takes full responsibility for the blood purge

Mussolini applies the torch of civilization to Ethiopia

Edward VIII gives all for love

Prime Minister Chamberlain returns in triumph from Munich

Lloyd George gives some advice to Prime Minister Chamberlain

Prime Minister Churchill presents his program

Churchill reports the miracle of Dunkirk

Churchill anticipates the Battle of Britain

General Charles de Gaulle calls free France into existence

Stalin, ten days after the Nazi invastion, instructs his people

Roosevelt asks for a declaration of war against Japan

Henry A. Wallace estimates the price of free world victory

General Eisenhower conquers London

Ex-prime Minister Churchill perceives an iron curtain

David E. Lilienthal offers a definition of Democracy

Nehru speaks to mourning millions a few hours after the murder of Gandhi

A.P. Herbert advocates a festival for Britain

William Faulkner, accepting the Nobel Prize, exhorts the young writers of the world

General Douglas MacArthur defends his conduct of the war in Korea

Governor Adlai Stevenson agrees to run for President

Khrushchev reveals some of the crimes of Stalin

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivers his inaugural address

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., speaks to a unique audience

President Kennedy addresses the general assembly of the United Nations for the second and last time

President Lyndon Baines Johnson makes his first address to the nation.