we can change the world speech

“Make Your Bed”

This speech was delivered as the commencement address to the graduates of The University of Texas at Austin on May 17, 2014.  1

Speech Transcript

President Powers, Provost Fenves, Deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and most importantly, the class of 2014. Congratulations on your achievement.

It’s been almost 37 years to the day that I graduated from UT. I remember a lot of things about that day. I remember I had throbbing headache from a party the night before. I remember I had a serious girlfriend, whom I later married — that’s important to remember by the way — and I remember that I was getting commissioned in the Navy that day.

But of all the things I remember, I don’t have a clue who the commencement speaker was that evening, and I certainly don’t remember anything they said. So, acknowledging that fact, if I can’t make this commencement speech memorable, I will at least try to make it short.

The University’s slogan is, “What starts here changes the world.” I have to admit — I kinda like it. “What starts here changes the world.”

Tonight there are almost 8,000 students graduating from UT. That great paragon of analytical rigor, Ask.Com, says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime. That’s a lot of folks. But, if every one of you changed the lives of just 10 people — and each one of those folks changed the lives of another 10 people — just 10 — then in five generations — 125 years — the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.

800 million people — think of it — over twice the population of the United States. Go one more generation and you can change the entire population of the world — eight billion people.

If you think it’s hard to change the lives of 10 people — change their lives forever — you’re wrong. I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan: A young Army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad and the 10 soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush. In Kandahar province, Afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the Female Engagement Team senses something isn’t right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500-pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.

But, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, but their children yet unborn were also saved. And their children’s children were saved. Generations were saved by one decision, by one person.

But changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it. So, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is — what will the world look like after you change it?

Well, I am confident that it will look much, much better. But if you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world. And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform. It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation or your social status.

Our struggles in this world are similar, and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward — changing ourselves and the world around us — will apply equally to all.

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harrassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships. To me basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.

So, here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack — that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

During SEAL training the students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students — three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy. Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surfzone and paddle several miles down the coast. In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.

For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle. You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.

If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.

Over a few weeks of difficult training my SEAL class, which started with 150 men, was down to just 35. There were now six boat crews of seven men each. I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the the little guys — the munchkin crew we called them — no one was over about five-foot-five.

The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the midwest. They out-paddled, out-ran and out-swam all the other boat crews. The big men in the other boat crews would always make good-natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim. But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation and the world, always had the last laugh — swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough. Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges. But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle — it just wasn’t good enough. The instructors would find “something” wrong.

For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand. The effect was known as a “sugar cookie.” You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day — cold, wet and sandy.

There were many a student who just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right, it was unappreciated. Those students didn’t make it through training. Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It’s just the way life is sometimes.

If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

Every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events — long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics — something designed to test your mettle. Every event had standards — times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those standards your name was posted on a list, and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to a “circus.” A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.

No one wanted a circus.

A circus meant that for that day you didn’t measure up. A circus meant more fatigue — and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult — and more circuses were likely. But at some time during SEAL training, everyone — everyone — made the circus list.

But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Over time those students — who did two hours of extra calisthenics — got stronger and stronger. The pain of the circuses built inner strength, built physical resiliency.

Life is filled with circuses. You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.

But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.

At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot high wall, a 30-foot cargo net and a barbed wire crawl, to name a few. But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three-level 30-foot tower at one end and a one-level tower at the other. In between was a 200-foot-long rope. You had to climb the three-tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end.

The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977. The record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life head first. Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.

It was a dangerous move — seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training. Without hesitation the student slid down the rope perilously fast. Instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.

If you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.

During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island which lies off the coast of San Diego. The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass SEAL training there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim.

Before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente. They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark — at least not recently. But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position — stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you — then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout, and he will turn and swim away.

There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.

So, if you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.

As Navy SEALs one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training. The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles — underwater — using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.

During the entire swim, even well below the surface, there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you. But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight, it blocks the surrounding street lamps, it blocks all ambient light.

To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel — the centerline and the deepest part of the ship. This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship — where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.

Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm, composed — when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.

If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment, and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slues, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors. As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud.

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit — just five men — and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up — eight more hours of bone-chilling cold.

The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything. And then, one voice began to echo through the night, one voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing. We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singingbut the singing persisted. And somehow the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.

Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see. All you have to do to quit is ring the bell.

Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT — and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training. Just ring the bell.

If you want to change the world don’t ever, ever ring the bell.

To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away from starting to change the world — for the better. It will not be easy.

But, YOU are the class of 2014, the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.

Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if take you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up — if you do these things, then the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today.

And what started here will indeed have changed the world — for the better.

Thank you very much. Hook ’em horns.

The speech was originally published on the University of Texas website .

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James Clear writes about habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits . The book has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 60 languages.

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Everyone has the power to change the world .

Admiral William McRaven — arguably the most famous Navy Seal in U.S. history — stood in front of a packed auditorium of nearly 8,000 graduates at his alma mater, the University of Texas in 2014.

He was there to deliver the commencement address.

What he would give instead was a powerful motivational speech to the students and the world.

You have the power to become a better person and to impact the world. And it all starts with your shifting your mindset.

Who is Admiral William H. McRaven?

Most famous for bringing down Osama Bin Laden, McRaven spent 37 years in the Navy Seals . Now retired from military life, the highly decorated US Navy admiral and former commander of US Special Operations Command fought in the Persian Gulf War and Afghanistan.

He has faced off against Somali Pirates, survived a horrific parachuting accident, worked on numerous covert operations with the CIA, and commanded hundreds of night raids on suspected terrorist targets.

RELATED: David Goggins: Half Navy SEAL, Half Superman, All Too Human

But it was the lessons that he learned during basic SEAL training that really stuck with him and helped to shape his life.

And it is these lessons that he shared in his now-viral speech. A speech that has garnered hundreds of millions of views online and inspired people all over the world. And one that he has since turned into a best-selling book, entitled Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life... And Maybe the World.

The Speech that Would Inspire Millions of People to "Make Your Bed"

According to McRaven, basic SEAL training consisted of 6 months of "long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable."

However, it wasn't just about testing the body's limits, it was about testing the mind's as well. And in order to survive the grueling challenges, you first had to set your mind right.

So, every morning, the instructors (all Vietnam veterans) had the recruits make their beds to perfection.

While this may seem like a small and insignificant task, McRaven argued that it can set the tone for the rest of the day and give you a sense of accomplishment.

"If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another," McRaven shared.

"By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right."

By doing the little things, you empower yourself to do the big ones.

More Guiding Principles to Help You Change the World

Throughout his nearly 20-minute speech, McRaven emphasized the importance of setting goals, persevering through adversity, facing fears, and never backing down.

He also urged the students to focus on character and integrity and to "measure a person by the size of their heart, not by the size of their flippers."

"If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle." - Admiral William McRaven

McRaven also shared that during the ninth week of training, known as "Hell Week," he learned the most valuable lesson of all: the power of hope.

Hell Week consists of "six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment, and one special day at the Mud Flats." For 15 hours, recruits are up to their necks in freezing cold mud, howling winds, and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors. It is enough to break even the strongest of men.

All it takes, the instructors informed them, is five men quitting for the misery to end. Turns out, all it took was one.

With 8 hours left to go, amidst the "chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees," one voice shattered the darkness. And that one voice was everything.

"And then, one voice began to echo through the night, one voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm," McRaven shared. "One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing. We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well."

One voice made all the difference.

The Power of One

It is a lesson that McRaven has witnessed throughout his life. "If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person," he said.

He summed up his speech on how to change the world in just a few words, "Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone," he said.

He went on to remind the audience that failure is inevitable. But it's how you come back from it that matters most.

"But if you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up — if you do these things, then the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today." - Admiral William McRaven

So often we think that one person can't make a difference, however, McRaven tells us otherwise. And history proves it with the likes of George Washington, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala.

And one Admiral William H. McRaven.

All it takes is changing the life of one person, who changes the life of another, and so on. That's how real change happens. That is how the world becomes a better place.

And it all starts simply, just by making your bed.

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Greta Thunberg Ted Talk Transcript: School Strike For Climate

Climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a Ted Talk speech titled “School strike for climate – save the world by changing the rules” on December 12, 2018. Read the transcript of her speech here.

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Greta Thunberg: ( 00:07 ) When I was about eight years old, I first heard about something called climate change or global warming. Apparently that was something humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources. I remember thinking that it was very strange that humans who are an animal species among others could be capable of changing the earth’s climate. Because if we were and if it was really happening, we wouldn’t be talking about anything else. As soon as you turn on the TV, everything would be about that; headlines, radio, newspapers. You would never read or hear about anything else as if there was a world war going on. But no one ever talked about it. If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were the no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal?

Greta Thunberg: ( 01:25 ) To me that did not add up. It was too unreal. So when I was 11, I became ill. I fell into depression. I stopped talking and I stopped eating. In two months, I lost about 10 kilos of weight. Later on, I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, OCD and selective mutism. That basically means I only speak when I think it’s necessary. Now is one of those moments. For those of us who are on the spectrum, almost everything is black or white. We aren’t very good at lying and we usually don’t enjoy participating in the social game that the rest of you seem so fond of. I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange, especially when it comes to the sustainability crisis where everyone keeps saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all and yet they just carry on like before. I don’t understand that because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions.

Greta Thunberg: ( 02:53 ) To me that is black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change. Rich countries like Sweden need to start reducing emissions by at least 15% every year. And that is so that we can stay below a two degree warming target. Yet as the IPCC have recently demonstrated, aiming instead for 1.5 degrees Celsius would significantly reduced the climate impacts, but we can only imagine what that means for reducing emissions. You would think the media and every one of our leaders would be talking about nothing else, but they never even mention it. Nor does anyone ever mention the greenhouse gases already locked in the system, nor that air pollution is hiding a warming so that when we stop burning fossil fuels, we already have an extra level of warming, perhaps as high as 0.5 to 1.1 degrees Celsius. Furthermore does hardly anyone speak about the fact that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction with up to 200 species going extinct every single day.

Greta Thunberg: ( 04:16 ) That the extinction rate is today between 1000 and 10,000 times higher than what is seen as normal. Nor does hardly anyone ever speak about the aspect of equity or climate justice clearly stated everywhere in the Paris Agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale. That means that rich countries need to get down to zero emissions within six to 12 years with today’s emission speed. And that is so that people in poorer countries can have a chance to heighten their standard of living by building some of the infrastructure that we have already built, such as roads, schools, hospitals, clean drinking water, electricity, and so on. Because how can we expect countries like India or Nigeria to care about the climate crisis if we who already have everything don’t care even a second about it, or our actual commitments to the Paris Agreement.

Greta Thunberg: ( 05:26 ) So why are we not reducing our emissions? Why are they in fact still increasing? Are we knowingly causing a mass extinction? Are we evil? No, of course not. People keep doing what they do because the vast majority doesn’t have a clue about the actual consequences of our everyday life and they don’t know what the rapid changes required. We will think we know and we will think everybody knows, but we don’t because how could we. If there really was a crisis, and if this crisis was caused by our emissions, you would at least see some signs, not just flooded cities, tens of thousands of dead people, the whole nations leveled to piles of torn down buildings. You would see some restrictions, but no, and no one talks about it.

Greta Thunberg: ( 06:34 ) There are no emergency meetings, no headlines, no breaking news. No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. Even most climate scientists or green politicians keep on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy. If I live to be 100, I will be alive in the year 2103. When you think about the future today, you don’t think beyond the year 2050. By then I will, in the best case, not even have lived half of my life. What happens next? The year 2078 I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children or grandchildren, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you, the people who were around back in 2018. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there was still time to act.

Greta Thunberg: ( 07:47 ) What we do or don’t do right now will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grandchildren. What we do or don’t do right now, me and my generation can’t undo in the future. So when school started in August of this year, I decided that this was enough. I sat myself down on the ground outside of the Swedish parliament. I school striked for the climate. Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can solve the climate crisis. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions, all we have to do is to wake up and change.

Greta Thunberg: ( 08:44 ) And why should I be studying for a future that soon will be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts in the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society? Some people say that Sweden is just a small country and that it doesn’t matter what we do. But I think that if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could all do together if we wanted to.

Greta Thunberg: ( 09:30 ) Now we’re almost at the end of my talk and this is where people usually starts talking about hope, solar panels, wind power, circular economy, and so on. But I’m not going to do that. We’ve had 30 years of pep talking and selling positive ideas. And I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work because it you would have the emissions would have gone down by now, they haven’t. And yes, we do need hope. Of course, we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then hope will come. Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change and it has to start today. Thank you.

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It’s time to disrupt the status quo for how we speak in public.

We are living through a period of great change and our existing model of speaking in front of audiences is outdated. It represents a standard of speaking that deactivates, instead of activates; that is a monologue, instead of a dialogue; and that is zipped-up and tense, instead of relaxed and at ease. Our present reality calls for a different model of speaking, one which connects us to our shared humanity.

As a community of leaders and changemakers at the United Nations, you are in the driver’s seat. What you say and how you say it, matters. Let’s explore three practical ways to meaningfully connect with your audiences.

Activate your voice

We’ve all been there, drowning in the dreary dullness of a monotonous speaker. The air is heavy with the weight of their words and the message has leaked out of the room. We long for movement, laughter, and human connection, but nothing happens.

A secret to defeating vocal monotony is to “play” with your voice. One way to do this is to engage your face when you speak. As you say words, lift your eyebrows and over-enunciate what you say with your mouth. To get a sense of what this feels like, try saying the following quote by Benjamin Franklin three ways:

“If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail”

1.) Say it with very limited lip movement and no other facial gestures. This is how monotone people speak, can you feel how constraining this is?

2.) Say it and lift your eyebrows up and down at the same time. Do you hear a change?

3.) Say it and over-enunciate the words with your mouth. Notice a difference? Another way to play with your voice is to use vocal accents. These include varying the volume and the speed of your voice and “popping” your words. Try saying the following sentence while emphasizing (popping) each word separately:

“Why do you love?”

“WHY do you love”; “Why DO you love”; “Why do YOU love”; “Why do you LOVE.” Do you see how the skill of popping makes such a big difference? It transforms the meaning of the sentence. Speakers who know how to use vocal accents effectively, can bring their words to life and connect to the hearts and minds of their audiences.

Make your speech a dialogue, not a monologue

Too many speeches these days are a one-way street. A unidirectional transfer of information from one brain to many. This model is flawed because people don’t remember what you tell them, they remember how you make them feel.

An effective way to activate your audience into feeling something is to make every speech you give a conversation. From the point of view of creating your content, simulate a dialogue. Imagine yourself as the audience asking “who”, “what”, “where”, “why”, and “how” questions. In your speaking, you can actually say: “You might be asking yourself, WHY is this important”; or “Raise your hand if you are curious about HOW this works”. Your aim is to engage your audience in a two-way exchange so that they feel involved. Audience participation is an excellent conduit for this.

Tension is the enemy of connection

Beyond the suggestions shared so far, the very best one is to release tension whenever it surfaces. If you don’t it will tighten the muscles of your face, neck, chest, and lower body, shrinking your presence, limiting the sound of your voice, and making your body rigid. This will chip away your credibility, undermine your message, and make it much harder to connect with your audiences. To reduce tension, get into the habit of warming up your whole body before you speak and aim to keep it tension-free.

No free lunch

The practical suggestions highlighted here are an excellent starting point for those of you who feel called to make more meaningful connections with your audiences. The key to success with this timely and noble goal is to understand that learning the art of effective leadership speaking takes effort and dedication. There is no free lunch. It involves you doing the work of activating the meaning of your words, creating dialogues instead of monologues, and vanquishing tension. When you’ve mastered these elements, there is a lot more to discover about this remarkable art form, especially as it pertains to speaking online, which is how most of us speak in front of audiences these days. Get curious, never stop learning, and stay committed to improving yourself so that you and a growing number of other leaders and changemakers can help make the world a better place, one speech at a time.

• climate change

How ‘Urgent Optimism’ Can Save the World

I used to think optimists were naive and pessimists were smart. Pessimism seemed like an essential feature of being a scientist: the basis of science is to challenge every result, to pick theories apart to see which ones stand up. I thought cynicism was one of its founding principles. Maybe there is some truth to that. But science is inherently optimistic too. How else would we describe the willingness to try experiments over and over, often with slim odds of success?

Scientific progress can be frustratingly slow: the best minds can dedicate their entire lives to a single question and come away with nothing. They do so with the hope that a breakthrough might be round the corner. It’s unlikely they will be the person to discover it, but there’s a chance. Those odds drop to zero if they give up.

Nevertheless, pessimism still sounds intelligent and optimism dumb. I often feel embarrassed to admit that I’m an optimist. I imagine it knocks me down a peg or two in people’s estimations. But the world desperately needs more optimism. The problem is that people mistake optimism for “blind optimism,” the unfounded faith that things will just get better. Blind optimism really is dumb. And dangerous. If we sit back and do nothing, things will not turn out fine. That’s not the kind of optimism that I’m talking about.

Optimism is seeing challenges as opportunities to make progress; it’s having the confidence that there are things we can do to make a difference. We can shape the future, and we can build a great one if we want to. The economist Paul Romer makes this distinction nicely. He separates “complacent optimism” from “conditional optimism.” “Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents,” Romer wrote. “Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. ‘If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.’”

I’ve heard various other terms for this “conditional” or effective optimism: “urgent optimism,” “pragmatic optimism,” “realistic optimism,” “impatient optimism.” All these terms are grounded in inspiration and action.

Read More: 13 Ways the World Got Better in 2023

The reason pessimists often sound smart is that they can avoid being “wrong” by moving the goalposts. When a doomer predicts that the world will end in five years, and it doesn’t, they just move the date. The American biologist Paul R. Ehrlich—author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb —has been doing this for decades. In 1970 he said that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. And by ‘the end” I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.” Of course, that was woefully wrong. He had another go: he said that “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Wrong again. Ehrlich will keep pushing this deadline back. A pessimistic stance is a safe one.

Don’t mistake criticism for pessimism. Criticism is essential for an effective optimist. We need to work through ideas to find the most promising ones. Most innovators that have changed the world have been optimists, even if they didn’t identify as one. But they were also fiercely critical: no one picks apart the ideas of Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming, Marie Curie, or Norman Borlaug more than they did themselves.

In particular, if we want to get serious about tackling the world’s environmental problems, we need to be more optimistic. We need to believe that it is possible to tackle them. And if we do, we can be the first generation to achieve a sustainable world.

More From TIME

The Last Generation is an activist group in Germany, the name implying that our unsustainability will push us to extinction. To force their government into action, some of the group went on a month-long hunger strike in August 2021. It wasn’t a half-hearted effort: several ended up in hospital. They’re not the only ones who feel this way. The global environmental group Extinction Rebellion is also founded on this principle. And the studies show that the notion of us being the ‘last generation’ isn’t far from the minds of many young people.

But I’d like to take the opposite framing. I don’t think we’re going to be the last generation. The evidence points to the opposite. I think we could be the first generation. We have the opportunity to be the first generation that leaves the environment in a better state than we found it. The first generation in human history to achieve sustainability.

Read more: We Need Climate Action Everywhere, All at Once

Yes, that seems hard to believe. I’ll explain why. Here I’m using the term “generation” loosely. I am from a generation that will be defined by our environmental problems. I was a child when climate change really came on the radar. Most of my adulthood will be spent in the midst of the major energy transition. I will see countries move from being almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels to being free of them. I will be 57 when governments hit the “2050 deadline” of reaching net-zero carbon emissions that so many have promised.

But, of course, there will be several generations involved in this project. There are a couple above me—my parents and grandparents—and a couple below me, my future children (and perhaps grandchildren). Generations are often pitted against each other: older generations are blamed for ruining the planet; younger generations are framed as hysterical and indignant. When it comes down to it, though, most of us want to build a better world, where our children and grandchildren can thrive. And we all need to work together to achieve that. All of us will be involved in this transformation.

Urgent optimism isn’t about looking away from the climate crisis that faces us. It’s about facing up to it, not from a place of ‘damage limitation’ but with a clear vision of the future we can build. One that not only stops warming in its tracks but builds a better world for us – all of us – and the species that we share the planet with.

That’s not going to happen on its own. It’s something we need to fight for.

Excerpted from NOT THE END OF THE WORLD by Hannah Ritchie. Copyright © 2024 by Hannah Ritchie. Used with permission by Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Election 2008

Transcript of barack obama's victory speech, obama's victory speech.

In these prepared remarks provided by his campaign, President-Elect Barack Obama calls himself the unlikeliest presidential candidate. He thanks many members of his campaign, along with his enormous army of volunteers, and he warns supporters about what he calls the enormity of the tasks at hand that now face the U.S. He concludes by telling an anecdote about a 106-year-old African-American voter from Atlanta.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled — Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Sen. McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Gov. Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the vice-president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next first lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager, David Plouffe; my chief strategist, David Axelrod; and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics — you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to — it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington — it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn't do this just to win an election, and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you: We as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, callused hand by callused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation — as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House — a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends... Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." And, to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world — our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight, we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America — that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election, except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.

When there was despair in the Dust Bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes, we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves: If our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time — to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

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9 influential speeches that changed the world

From Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty, or give me death" to FDR's "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," we have selected nine of our favorite speeches that have changed the world:

Napoleon Bonaparte — "Farewell to the Old Guard"

After suffering several setbacks in the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon was forced to abdicate his throne on April 6, 1814.

At the time of the abdication, he gave a speech praising his faithful soldiers and generals who had stuck by him:

Soldiers of my Old Guard: I bid you farewell. For twenty years I have constantly accompanied you on the road to honor and glory.

In these latter times, as in the days of our prosperity, you have invariably been models of courage and fidelity.

With men such as you our cause could not be lost; but the war would have been interminable; it would have been civil war, and that would have entailed deeper misfortunes on France.

I have sacrificed all of my interests to those of the country. 

Source: Speeches That Changed The World

Georges Jacques Danton — “Dare, Dare Again, Always Dare”

Given during the tumult of the French Revolution, Danton urged his fellow French citizens to mobilize in order to push back the invading Prussian forces.

The speech was inspiring, but also chilling, as Danton pushed for those not supporting the war efforts to be put to death: 

 At such a moment this National Assembly becomes a veritable committee of war. We ask that you concur with us in directing this sublime movement of the people, by naming commissioners who will second us in these great measures.

We ask that any one refusing to give personal service or to furnish arms shall be punished with death. We ask that a set of instructions be drawn up for the citizens to direct their movements.

We ask that couriers be sent to all the departments to notify them of the decrees that you proclaim here. The tocsin we are about to ring is not an alarm signal; it sounds the charge on the enemies of our country.

To conquer them we must dare, dare again, always dare, and France is saved!

Giuseppe Garibaldi — Speech to his Soldiers

In the mid 19th century, Giuseppe Garibaldi led a military movement to liberate the various Italian kingdoms from Austrian rule and create a unified modern nation of Italy.

Garibaldi gave this speech in 1860 to rally his troops for further action to unify the nation: 

To arms, then, all of you! all of you! And the oppressors and the mighty shall disappear like dust.

You, too, women, cast away all the cowards from your embraces; they will give you only cowards for children, and you who are the daughters of the land of beauty must bear children who are noble and brave.

Let timid doctrinaires depart from among us to carry their servility and their miserable fears elsewhere. This people is its own master.

It wishes to be the brother of other peoples, but to look on the insolent with a proud glance, not to grovel before them imploring its own freedom.

It will no longer follow in the trail of men whose hearts are foul. No! No! No!

Patrick Henry — "Liberty or Death"

On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry stood and delivered a riveting speech to the Constitutional Congress in Richmond, Virginia. The speech had the impact of causing a resolution to narrowly pass the Congress that led to Virginia joining the American Revolution: 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace! Peace!" -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!

The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!

Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Abraham Lincoln — "The Gettysburg Address"

Delivered on November 19, 1863, the address was delivered at the Gettysburg cemetery. The speech was given at a ceremony dedicating the cemetery as the National Cemetery: 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Winston Churchill — "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat"

Upon first entering the British House of Commons as the Prime Minister, Churchill gave a speech rallying the country to war against Nazi Germany.

Delivered on May 13, 1940, the speech was a call-to-arms aimed at uniting the British public against the threat of the Nazis: 

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.

That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Franklin D. Roosevelt — First Inaugural Address

Roosevelt delivered his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1933 at the heart of the Great Depression in the US.

Speaking to the concerns of Americans throughout the country, Roosevelt sought to ease the fears of his citizens and highlight what the country would do to resuscitate the economy: 

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself --nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Watch the speech below:

Source: Speeches That Changed The World  

John F. Kennedy — Inaugural Address

When taking the oath of office on January 20, 1961, Kennedy uttered perhaps one of the most famous lines in US political history.

Kennedy's speech was intended to inspire his audience and unite the USA against the threat of Communism: 

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it.

I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Martin Luther King Jr — "I Have a Dream"

Speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, King gave one of the most famous speeches in US history on August 28, 1963. Imploring the nation to abandon its racial hatred, King shared in the speech his dream of the future of the nation: 

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

• Main content

Malala Yousafzai: 16th birthday speech at the United Nations

"So let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism and let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons." {"content":{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":"\"So let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism and let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons.\"","nodeType":"text"}],"nodeType":"paragraph"}],"nodeType":"document"}}

New York, New York

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent.

Honourable UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki-moon, Respected President General Assembly Vuk Jeremic Honourable UN envoy for Global education Mr Gordon Brown, Respected elders and my dear brothers and sisters; Today, it is an honour for me to be speaking again after a long time. Being here with such honourable people is a great moment in my life.

I don't know where to begin my speech. I don't know what people would be expecting me to say. But first of all, thank you to God for whom we all are equal and thank you to every person who has prayed for my fast recovery and a new life. I cannot believe how much love people have shown me. I have received thousands of good wish cards and gifts from all over the world. Thank you to all of them. Thank you to the children whose innocent words encouraged me. Thank you to my elders whose prayers strengthened me.

I would like to thank my nurses, doctors and all of the staff of the hospitals in Pakistan and the UK and the UAE government who have helped me get better and recover my strength. I fully support Mr Ban Ki-moon the Secretary-General in his Global Education First Initiative and the work of the UN Special Envoy Mr Gordon Brown. And I thank them both for the leadership they continue to give. They continue to inspire all of us to action.

There are hundreds of human rights activists and social workers who are not only speaking for human rights, but who are struggling to achieve their goals of education, peace and equality. Thousands of people have been killed by the terrorists and millions have been injured. I am just one of them.

So here I stand, one girl among many.

I speak not for myself, but for all girls and boys.

I raise up my voice — not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.

Those who have fought for their rights:

Their right to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity. Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated.

Dear Friends, on the 9th of October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came, thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. My dreams are the same.

Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorists group. I am here to speak up for the right of education of every child. I want education for the sons and the daughters of all the extremists especially the Taliban.

I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me. I would not shoot him. This is the compassion that I have learnt from Muhammad — the prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha. This is the legacy of change that I have inherited from Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. This is the philosophy of non-violence that I have learnt from Gandhi Jee, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa. And this is the forgiveness that I have learnt from my mother and father. This is what my soul is telling me, be peaceful and love everyone.

Dear sisters and brothers, we realise the importance of light when we see darkness. We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way, when we were in Swat, the north of Pakistan, we realised the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.

The wise saying, "The pen is mightier than sword” was true. The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them. And that is why they killed 14 innocent medical students in the recent attack in Quetta. And that is why they killed many female teachers and polio workers in Khyber Pukhtoon Khwa and FATA. That is why they are blasting schools every day. Because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring into our society.

I remember that there was a boy in our school who was asked by a journalist, "Why are the Taliban against education?” He answered very simply. By pointing to his book he said, “A Talib doesn't know what is written inside this book.” They think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would send girls to the hell just because of going to school. The terrorists are misusing the name of Islam and Pashtun society for their own personal benefits. Pakistan is peace-loving democratic country. Pashtuns want education for their daughters and sons. And Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood. Islam says that it is not only each child's right to get education, rather it is their duty and responsibility.

Honourable Secretary General, peace is necessary for education. In many parts of the world especially Pakistan and Afghanistan; terrorism, wars and conflicts stop children to go to their schools. We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering in many parts of the world in many ways. In India, innocent and poor children are victims of child labour. Many schools have been destroyed in Nigeria. People in Afghanistan have been affected by the hurdles of extremism for decades. Young girls have to do domestic child labour and are forced to get married at early age. Poverty, ignorance, injustice, racism and the deprivation of basic rights are the main problems faced by both men and women.

Dear fellows, today I am focusing on women's rights and girls' education because they are suffering the most. There was a time when women social activists asked men to stand up for their rights. But, this time, we will do it by ourselves. I am not telling men to step away from speaking for women's rights rather I am focusing on women to be independent to fight for themselves.

Dear sisters and brothers, now it's time to speak up.

So today, we call upon the world leaders to change their strategic policies in favour of peace and prosperity.

We call upon the world leaders that all the peace deals must protect women and children's rights. A deal that goes against the dignity of women and their rights is unacceptable.

We call upon all governments to ensure free compulsory education for every child all over the world.

We call upon all governments to fight against terrorism and violence, to protect children from brutality and harm.

We call upon the developed nations to support the expansion of educational opportunities for girls in the developing world.

We call upon all communities to be tolerant — to reject prejudice based on cast, creed, sect, religion or gender. To ensure freedom and equality for women so that they can flourish. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.

We call upon our sisters around the world to be brave — to embrace the strength within themselves and realise their full potential.

Dear brothers and sisters, we want schools and education for every child's bright future. We will continue our journey to our destination of peace and education for everyone. No one can stop us. We will speak for our rights and we will bring change through our voice. We must believe in the power and the strength of our words. Our words can change the world.

Because we are all together, united for the cause of education. And if we want to achieve our goal, then let us empower ourselves with the weapon of knowledge and let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.

Dear brothers and sisters, we must not forget that millions of people are suffering from poverty, injustice and ignorance. We must not forget that millions of children are out of schools. We must not forget that our sisters and brothers are waiting for a bright peaceful future.

So let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism and let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons.

One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world.

Education is the only solution. Education first.

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist, student, UN messenger of peace and the youngest Nobel Laureate. As co-founder of Malala Fund, she is building a world where every girl can learn and lead without fear.

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Building a Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Recovery: Speech by World Bank Group President David Malpass

World Bank Group President David Malpass Speech at the London School of Economics

As Prepared for Delivery

You can watch the replay of the event  here

Introduction

Thank you, Baroness Shafik.  It’s a pleasure to be here with you, a distinguished alumna of the World Bank Group, and other distinguished World Bank alumni at LSE including Lord Stern, our former Chief Economist.  And thanks to the London School of Economics for hosting me virtually.  Today, I will set the stage ahead of the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings.  This provides an opportunity to engage partners on urgent matters, including work on climate change, debt, and inequality, working toward a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery.  

Let me begin by acknowledging the importance of the United Kingdom within the World Bank Group.  The UK is the largest contributor to IDA.  It is the IBRD’s fifth-largest shareholder, and I enjoy strong relationships with Prime Minister Johnson, Secretary of State Raab, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak, Bank of England Governor Bailey, President of COP26 Alok Sharma, and members of Parliament, civil society, the private sector, academia, and media.  Our office in London works to promote consensus around the international development agenda and build a platform for collaboration on shared priorities.

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the scale of the tragedy is unprecedented: 127 million infections, 2.8 million deaths, more than 100 million people pushed into extreme poverty, the equivalent of 250 million jobs lost, and a quarter-billion people driven into acute hunger.  Besides its immediate harm, COVID-19 is leaving lasting “scars:”  closed schools and physical stunting of children; collapsed businesses and lost jobs; the depletion of savings and assets; and debt overhangs that will depress investment and squeeze out urgent social spending.

COVID-19 descended on the poor like wildfire.  It was layered on several slow-burning crises—rising conflict and violence, refugee camps, stagnant median incomes, reckless lending and poorly chosen debt contracts, and damage caused by climate change.  Because these crises struck at different speeds, the natural tendency everywhere was to tackle them separately—one-at-a-time, without sufficient attention to cross-connections that might have enabled a more effective response.

The world is developing a better line of sight forward.  Our collective responses to poverty, climate change, and inequality will be the defining choices of our age.  It is time to move urgently toward opportunities and solutions that achieve sustainable and broad-based economic growth without harming climate, degrading the environment, or leaving hundreds of millions of families in poverty.  We’re calling our approach to these interlinked crises GRID—Green, Resilient, Inclusive Development. 

In previous addresses, I’ve detailed some of the World Bank Group’s actions in helping countries respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, tackle what I’ve called the “pandemic of inequality,” and work toward recovery.  These include new COVID-related emergency health programs in 112 countries, vaccination operations that we expect will reach $4 billion of commitments available in 50 countries by mid-year, and a quick doubling of our trade and working capital finance to help fill the banking vacuum that hit private sectors.  Despite COVID-related work-from-home restrictions, the World Bank had record 65% growth in program delivery in 2020—an even bigger surge than the height of the global financial crisis response in 2009—and this elevated level of delivery is continuing in 2021.  It’s important that every commitment has the greatest possible development impact and robust operational policies and review processes.  And we’re building a culture of contestability, where we encourage our highly diverse, multi-disciplinary and globally experienced staff to challenge each other’s perspectives and help to enhance the quality of operations, throughout both preparation and implementation.

External input is vital too, including from development professionals and schools such as yours.  Each of our Country Partnership Frameworks is developed with citizen participation.  We’re working to help countries build “Country Platforms” to engage with a wider groups of development actors as they develop the programs we support.  External experts frequently participate in the development of our projects and programs.  And in the past year, we’ve taken significant steps to enhance the accountability mechanisms for both the World Bank, and for IFC and MIGA.  It’s worth mentioning that IFC has committed $330 billion in long term finance from 1960-2021, and over half of this has been delivered just in the last 10 years.

I encourage each of you to read World Bank country programs, project documents, and our knowledge sharing to think about what works—and possibly what doesn’t.  Good development outcomes in countries are at the heart of the Bank’s mission and activities.  The challenge extends to every academic discipline, and we need faster progress across the board—in water, nutrition, education, health, infrastructure, electricity access, governance, regulation, taxation, connectivity, inclusion, tolerance, and a host of other critical issues. 

I’m going to focus today on three of the most pressing challenges – climate, debt, and inequality.  But first allow me to give you some of the background and context.

The World Bank was created with the IMF in 1944 before World War II was over.  The first goal for the Bank was post-war reconstruction and development, and the first arm of the World Bank Group was IBRD, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.  Today, it’s made up of 189 member countries, or shareholders, and operates somewhat like a non-profit bank, making floating and fixed rate loans to governments for development purposes, for example to support expenditures on clean water, climate, or education.

A second important arm of the Bank is IDA, the International Development Association, which started in 1960 explicitly to help the world’s poorest countries.  IDA aims to reduce poverty by providing grants and very long-term, zero-rate or near-zero-rate loans.  In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2020, IDA made commitments for 305 projects totaling $30 billion, of which 26% was provided on grant terms.  Since its inception, IDA has provided about $450 billion for investments in 114 countries.  It is an effective way for donors to provide highly concessional financing to poorer nations.  Due to the severity of the pandemic, IDA was able to accelerate its financing commitments dramatically in 2020, and I’m happy to say our shareholders have agreed to an early replenishment of IDA in order to continue current elevated levels of assistance to the poorest countries.  We’re working to conclude an ambitious IDA20 replenishment by December, with the support of major contributors including the UK.

The WBG is the largest of the multilateral development banks, making over $100 billion in grants and loans over the last year and raising nearly $100 billion in global bond markets.  In addition to IBRD and IDA, we have an important arm to support the private sector, IFC, and a guarantee agency to support investment in developing countries, MIGA.

During my tenure as President, we’ve made several important changes at the WBG to make our work as effective as possible.  I’d like to mention the realignment that was completed last June.  It increases management accountability and brings staff closer to clients and country programs.  The realignment created a greater focus on country-level impact, supported by more operationally relevant and policy-focused knowledge programs and research.  The organizational goal is to apply the Bank’s global knowledge in client countries to achieve development outcomes that will be transformational and scalable.  At the country-level, we are focusing more on countries afflicted by fragility, conflict, and violence.  We have expanded our presence and our delivery in these FCV countries, which will be critical in our work to support refugees, reduce migration and violence, and help countries and regions stabilize.  In the next few years, these steps will lead to a smaller footprint in Washington and a growing majority of our globally and locally recruited staff in developing countries.

Topic 1: Climate

Now let me turn to climate, one of my three focus topics today.  I know climate is on all our minds, and perhaps particularly in the UK as the hosts of COP26 in Glasgow this November.  The World Bank is actively supporting developing countries to achieve significant progress on the climate agenda through the lens that investing in climate offers development opportunities.

The World Bank Group is the biggest provider of climate finance to the developing world.  My first year as President saw the biggest climate investments in our history—and investments in my second year are on track to be bigger still.  We’ve set an ambitious new target of 35% for climate investments on average over the next five years—meaning that 35% of the financing within our investments as a whole is supporting developing country climate benefits.  To give you a sense of the scale of the ambition, over the previous 5 years the World Bank Group climate finance was 26% of a significantly smaller amount of lending. 

Our climate financing will be used toward “mitigation” efforts, to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions and their impacts; and for “adaptation” efforts, to help countries prepare for negative climate effects.  We’ve set a second important target in that regard.  Of our total climate finance over the next five years, at least 50% on average will be for adaptation.  I’d expect the share of adaptation to be particularly large in the IDA countries, which currently account for just 4% of global emissions, even as many of them suffer life-threatening climate change impacts.

In addition to these high targets for financing, we are working to achieve the most impact in terms of results—actual improvements in the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and lives and livelihoods saved through adaptation.  To help this effort, we’re moving to integrate climate into all our country diagnostics and country strategies.  Over the next year, we plan to complete up to 25 Country Climate and Development Reports.  We’ll aim to include in this first wave those developing countries with the largest carbon emissions and those with the greatest climate-vulnerabilities.  We’re also working to improve results-measurement to help make sure that our financing and strategies deliver impact. 

A key part of our climate action is to support countries with their Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, and long-term low carbon development plans.  Countries have widely varying approaches, and we want to help them integrate climate and development as effectively as possible, including through fiscal policy and plans for sustainable growth.  For some countries, carbon taxation will be an effective way to help guide capital and respond to the distributive impact of the response to climate change.  Every year, G20 countries alone put tens of billions of dollars into subsidizing high carbon industries.  If these billions could instead be used to fund a “just transition,” just think how much faster we could progress toward a low-carbon, net-zero world. 

Green growth will involve several key systemic transformations—for example, in energy, food systems, manufacturing, transportation and urban infrastructure.  Each transformation is complicated, but these sectors account for 90% of GHG emissions, so they are the key to GHG reduction.  One of the most challenging and important transformations is for countries to achieve a just transition from coal to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy.  The Bank can help countries with this, but it is complicated for a number of reasons including:  economic dependence on coal, worker displacement as the transition occurs, the cost of new infrastructure and writing off many large, recent investments, and the importance of identifying ways to provide rapid growth in affordable, reliable and year-round base load to replace coal in the national grids of developing countries facing energy poverty.  The world needs to make further technological breakthroughs before we can achieve a zero-carbon world.

Climate presents several big challenges and opportunities for economics, finance, and development.  I’d like to mention several and encourage public discussion.  First, how does the world help poorer countries make large investments in global public goods such as their reduction in coal usage?  Should the costs be shared worldwide?  If so, how?  Second, how can national incentives be aligned and financed to help people transition to greener fuels and jobs, for example using carbon and gasoline taxes?  Third, can an effective carbon credit market be created that allows greenhouse gas emissions for some while paying for reductions elsewhere—not just certificates of notional carbon reduction but actual measurable and sustainable decarbonization?  Fourth, how can we properly measure the full life-cycle costs and benefits of various climate policy choices?  Fifth, how can people in poorer countries best make the necessary but expensive adaptations to climate change and how can they best prepare for future pandemics and natural disasters – knowing that preparation is much better than after-the-fact disaster relief?  And lastly, how can the necessary progress on global public goods be best integrated with development and the necessary reductions in poverty and increases in shared prosperity?

These are key questions and challenges at the core of combatting climate change.  The Bank is addressing these challenges in our analytical work in low- and middle-income countries, and in our rapidly expanding climate operations.  

Topic 2: Debt

I also want to comment on the debt situation facing poorer countries.  At the outset, let me mention the progress that is occurring in Sudan, one of the most heavily indebted and poorest countries in Africa.  Sudan already bears scars from decades of conflict.  And its people face deep peril from climate change:  food security depends on rainfall, especially in rural areas, which are home to 65% of population.  Sudan has made strong economic progress, including the unification of its exchange rate.  That is a key ingredient in a country’s recipe toward stabilization, price stability, and productive and equitable resource allocation.  In addition to these and other policy reforms, the Republic of Sudan has cleared its arrears to IDA, with help from the United States Government, enabling its full re-engagement with the World Bank Group after nearly three decades, and paving the way for the country to access nearly $2 billion in IDA grants for poverty reduction and sustainable economic recovery.

By clearing its arrears and working with the IMF, Sudan has also completed a key step for receiving comprehensive external debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative.  I’ve talked about Sudan at length because this is such a breakthrough at a time when Sudan needs the world’s help to support its development progress.  Countries like Sudan – crushed by a burden of over $50 billion of external debt – can’t tackle poverty and respond to the climate emergency until the world finds better ways to tackle unsustainable debt.

While some progress on debt is underway, many of the poorer countries are coping with record debt burdens.  Even before the pandemic, the World Bank report on Global Waves of Debt — which studied the causes and consequences of the four waves of debt accumulation that the global economy has experienced over the past fifty years—found that half of all low-income countries were already in debt distress or at a high risk of it.  The pandemic has only exacerbated the debt burden on people, many of whom would be poor even without having to pay the interest and principle on their governments’ debt.

Every day, high debt-service payments are diverting scarce resources that could be used for urgent needs: for health, education, nutrition – and also climate action.

Since the outbreak of COVID, the World Bank has been the largest provider of net transfers to IDA and least-developed countries.  From April to December 2020, our net transfers to these countries alone were close to $17 billion, of which $5.8 billion were on grant terms, and our new commitments were almost $30 billion.  But much more is needed. 

The G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI)—which I and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva called for almost exactly one year ago—has helped.  It has enabled 43 countries to postpone around $5.7 billion in debt-service payments between May and December of last year, with further savings of up to $7.3 billion expected between then and its current end-date of June.

Yet so far, the relief has been less than anticipated because not all creditors participated.  Large non-Paris Club bilateral creditors have only partially participated in the DSSI and, most troubling of all, bondholders and other private creditors have continued to collect full repayments throughout the crisis.

The recent DSSI experience shows that commercial creditors won’t comply with calls for “voluntary participation” in debt relief initiatives.  As the implementation of the Common Framework commences, G20 countries need to instruct and create incentives for all their public bilateral creditors to participate in debt relief efforts, including national policy banks.  They also need to forcefully encourage the private creditors under their jurisdiction to participate fully in sovereign debt relief efforts for low-income countries.

There are specific measures that should be considered by G7 countries to encourage more participation.  To give just one example, sovereign immunity laws might be amended to include immunity from attachment by commercial creditors who refuse to participate in a Common Framework treatment in which their Government is participating. 

I believe the DSSI should be extended one more time—by six months, through the end of 2021 as many countries are still battling COVID and facing a liquidity squeeze.  But it’s also time to encourage overindebted countries to adopt a debt strategy that allows them to achieve a moderate debt position.  Debt sustainability needs to achieve more than just short-term solvency—the ability to not default, while providing only minimal social and economic priorities.  History tells us that countries with no way out of overhanging burdens of debt don’t grow and don’t achieve lasting reductions in poverty.  The G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments—which goes beyond the DSSI—can make an important difference here.

Interest-rate reductions could play a big role in some of the debt restructurings to be done under the Common Framework.  Some countries are paying interest rates of 6 or 7% on their official bilateral debt—and that simply cannot be justified in today’s conditions.  Over the past two decades, high-income advanced economies have benefited from an extraordinary decline in both short- and long-term interest rates—these have dropped to nearly zero from a range of 4 to 6%.  Shouldn’t the poorest countries also benefit from this “low for long” decline?  Negotiating longer maturity loans could also help.

Through the Common Framework and the DSSI, we can identify unsustainable debt where it exists and help restructure it to moderate levels.  For countries with high risk of debt distress, but still sustainable debt levels, we should consider reprofiling it—by extending maturities, for example.  But all of this will require more participation than we have seen so far from the private sector, and some official bilateral creditors.

As in the climate area, the economic and finance challenges surrounding debt are huge and worthy of your attention and public discussion.  First, what are the tradeoffs between assistance during liquidity crises for near-term debt payments versus longer-term support for sustainability that allows the people to make progress against poverty?  For which countries is it appropriate to delay principle and interest payments but without reducing the stock of debt or the interest rates on it?  For which countries should the total debt burden be reduced given ‘low for long’ outlook?  Second, how can accountability be achieved given the difference in time horizons of those signing debt and investment contracts and those that bear the burden?  For example, how can a system of contracts work when it is strongly in the interest of government officials to accept stringent contract terms for debt even though the long-term payments will be difficult?  Third, how should the international financial system operate when there is no bankruptcy process for sovereign debt?  How can the system resolve the glaring imbalance between creditors, who have the power and the responsibility to fully enforce contracts; and debtor countries, who are often poorer and have less capacity to resolve disagreements? 

Clearly, transparency is going to be a key part of the solution to these problems.  The resistance to debt transparency is intense.  Airtight nondisclosure agreements often protect contracts, leaving their terms – and sometimes even their existence – secret.  Some contracts include almost the reverse of a collective action clause – a clause requiring debtors to exempt the creditor from any comparable treatment, where debt restructuring, for example with the Paris Club, is agreed.  In debt, as in so many areas, sunlight is truly the best remedy.  Given our long-track record in helping countries to address their debt problems, the Bank, together with the Fund, will continue to engage and support countries in their efforts to achieve a moderate debt position.

Topic 3: Inequality

I’ve discussed climate and debt in some detail and some of the economic challenges they present.  I’d like to close with a discussion of inequality.  As I said at the outset, our response to poverty, climate change, and inequality will be defining choices of our age.  Inequality is most apparent in the direct effects of COVID, that hits informal workers and the vulnerable the most; and in the unequal access to vaccines for developing countries.  It is also worsening due to the focus of fiscal and monetary stimulus on support for the formal sector and selected assets at the expensive of debt owed by future generations.  That problem is most applicable to advanced economies, but a similar effect hits the indebted people in the developing countries because sovereign debts and debt rollovers have their biggest positive impact on those signing the contracts – creditors and debtors – whereas the burden of the debt often falls on the poor.

I spoke at length about Reversing the Inequality Pandemic in October 2020 ahead of our Annual Meetings last year.  I explained the work that we are doing to address the challenges posed by inequality, including our financial support through COVID-related emergency health programs and cash transfer programs.

These inequalities raise a third set of economic challenges I’d like to raise to your attention.  First, what’s the fastest, most effective path to better vaccine distribution? It’s important for the vaccination process to start in more countries because vaccinations will take many months due to constraints in delivery capacity.  The World Bank will have arranged vaccine financing for 50 developing countries by mid-year, but the supply issues are unresolved.  Second, as I discussed in the climate section, how does the world finance the necessary investments in global public goods by poorer countries?  Third, is there any pathway to developing countries for the massive fiscal stimulus and run-up in national debt being applied by the advanced economies?  On the one hand, greater demand in the advanced economies will help create markets.  But on the other hand, the loss of investments, skills and schooling during the pandemic has been catastrophic.  The data is clear that poorer countries are not making the gains in living standards that were expected pre-crisis and are falling further behind.  And, fourth, because the asset purchases by advanced economies are so large, long-term and selective, can the purchases be spread out more fairly to improve global capital allocation, benefit smaller businesses and new entrants, and allow borrowers needing short-term financing to have more access?

Let me conclude with this: COVID-19 has brought us to a crossroads.  In our policy choices, as we look to the future, we can avoid errors of the past.  To repair the damage, we will need integrated, long-run strategies that emphasize green, resilient, and inclusive development.  This must be aligned with the need for policies that help countries increase literacy, reduce stunting and malnutrition, ensure clean water and energy access, and provide better health care.  We must help countries improve their readiness for future pandemics.  We need to help them accelerate the development and adoption of digital technologies.  We need to work to improve and expand local supply chains and strengthen biodiversity and ecosystems.

There’s an important role for both the public and the private sector in all of this.  Governments can help to lay the foundations, ensuring financing of health and education and investing in core public goods and basic infrastructure.  Governments can also do much to clear the way by enacting appropriate legislation and creating space for the private sector wherever possible.  They should enact policy reforms to spur private investment—including FDI.  They should help financial institutions resolve non-performing loans as quickly as possible.  Private investment will be key in addressing climate change challenges, debt issues, and inequality – each of which require innovation, which the private sector can bring.  The private sector also needs to accept corporate responsibility – whether that’s applying robust environmental and social standards, paying taxes, or playing its part in debt resolution.  Government and the private sector will need to cooperate in many sectors such as energy, considering joint public-private initiatives with fair burden sharing and good governance.

As I’ve emphasized during this address, cooperation between academics, development practitioners and policy makers also has a key role to play.  The world faces overwhelming challenges.  In some cases, the answers are clear, and the challenge is to communicate these clearly to policy makers.  In other cases, academics – including those at LSE – can help to break new ground, in tackling the unanswered questions – and in doing so help to invent a greener, more resilient, and inclusive model of prosperity for the 21 st century.  The World Bank Group can be a key champion in helping to address climate change, debt, and inequality bringing to the table public and private sector solutions, as well as the unique combination of analytics, financial support, and convening power.

Today, we have a historic opportunity to change course—to improve development outcomes for countries, to overcome the rising dangers of climate change, systemic inequality, social instability, and conflict.  In our efforts to rebuild, we can generate a recovery that ensures a broad and lasting rise in prosperity especially for the poorest and most marginalized.  It’s an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up.

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The urgent message coming from boys

Your kid can’t name three branches of government? He’s not alone. 

‘We have the most motivated people, the best athletes. How far can we take this?’

Lawyer and social activist Bryan Stevenson addressed an audience at the JFK Jr. Forum Tuesday that included newly elected members of the House of Representatives in town for the Kennedy School’s bipartisan governmental insights program.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Yes, you can change the world, says Bryan Stevenson

Brett Milano

Harvard Correspondent

Doing so is both a responsibility and a possibility, he tells Kennedy School audience

When lawyer and social activist Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, spoke at Harvard Kennedy School Tuesday evening, his topic was nothing less than changing the world, something that he urged the capacity crowd to think of as both a responsibility and a possibility.

The audience for Stevenson’s Edwin L. Godkin Lecture, “Justice and the Power of Narrative,” included newly elected members of the House of Representatives in town for the Kennedy School’s bipartisan governmental insights program.

“I see you as people interested in solving problems,” Stevenson, M.P.P./J.D. ’85, told the audience at the JFK Jr. Forum, as he recalled his own experiences at Harvard. “This is surreal because I went up and down these same stairs so many times as a student, not sure I was in the right place. To see you students still at it is incredibly exciting.”

Stevenson began by citing a few sobering statistics. The Real Justice PAC projects that one in three newborn black males, and one in six Latino males, will go to prison in their lifetimes, and the percentage of women in jails has increased markedly. “We just seem to be comfortable with that statistic, and almost nobody was talking about this in the midterms,” he said. Yet he promised to use his hour at Harvard to speak of solutions, rather than problems.

Stevenson’s  Equal Justice Initiative is the nonprofit organization behind the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, which is dedicated to the victims of white supremacy in this country through history.

If someone really wants to change the world, Stevenson said, there are four guidelines to keep in mind. The first is that you need to commit yourself to, and stay “proximate” to, the poor and marginalized in society. “You can’t change the world by staying on Harvard’s campus,” he said. “When you get close enough to the poor that you can wrap your arms around them, that’s when you’re in a position to make a statement about their humanity.”

“When you get close enough to the poor that you can wrap your arms around them, that’s when you’re in a position to make a statement about their humanity.” Bryan Stevenson

Stevenson cited one of his early career experiences, working on death row at a Georgia prison. At one point, he had a long talk with a condemned prisoner, who was then accosted by guards because the talk had run overtime. “They put the shackles around his ankles and slammed him against the door, and the man did one thing I will never forget: He threw his head back and started singing a hymn. You could hear the chains clanking as they pushed him down the hallway, and you could hear him singing about higher ground.”

This experience, Stevenson said, was what brought him to Harvard. “I realized my journey was tied to his journey. I came to Harvard and you could not get me out of the Law School library. If I have ever helped anybody, it is because I got proximate to a condemned man, and I heard him sing.”

The second requirement, he said, is a willingness to change the narratives that underline society. “We have mass incarceration in this country because of a misguided war on drugs. We said that addicts were criminals instead of saying they had a health problem. That’s what I call the politics of fear and anger.”

Another lingering narrative, he said, is the one that created slavery. “We still live in a time when racial difference is everywhere. I hate to tell the black and brown students here that it doesn’t matter that you have a Harvard degree. You will still be going to places in this country where you will be considered dangerous because of your color.”

Finally, he said, students and world-changers have the twin responsibilities to stay hopeful and to do things they find uncomfortable and inconvenient. “I tried to research my way out of that one,” he said. “I tried to find an example where justice prevailed, equality triumphed, and nobody did anything. But there weren’t any.”

He cited another story as reason for hope. He once represented a boy who had accidentally shot his mother’s abusive boyfriend. The boy was tried as an adult and sent to prison, where he was raped and beaten. “We got that little boy to a family that embraced him, and now he’s getting a master’s in engineering.”

But until more people work on changing the narrative, he said, such victories may be the exception to the rule. “I’ve had my moments of great joy, but also anguish and difficulty. That’s because we still live in a society that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.”

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Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

Naval Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, delivered a memorable speech at the University-wide Commencement on May 17. See the full transcript.

View 10 Life Lessons from Admiral McRaven .

The following are the remarks by Naval Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University-wide Commencement at The University of Texas at Austin on May 17:

President Powers, Provost Fenves, Deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and most importantly, the class of 2014. Congratulations on your achievement.

It’s been almost 37 years to the day that I graduated from UT. I remember a lot of things about that day. I remember I had throbbing headache from a party the night before. I remember I had a serious girlfriend, whom I later married — that’s important to remember by the way — and I remember that I was getting commissioned in the Navy that day.

But of all the things I remember, I don’t have a clue who the commencement speaker was that evening, and I certainly don’t remember anything they said. So, acknowledging that fact, if I can’t make this commencement speech memorable, I will at least try to make it short.

The University’s slogan is, “What starts here changes the world.” I have to admit — I kinda like it. “What starts here changes the world.”

Tonight there are almost 8,000 students graduating from UT. That great paragon of analytical rigor, Ask.Com, says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime. That’s a lot of folks. But, if every one of you changed the lives of just 10 people — and each one of those folks changed the lives of another 10 people — just 10 — then in five generations — 125 years — the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.

800 million people — think of it — over twice the population of the United States. Go one more generation and you can change the entire population of the world — eight billion people.

If you think it’s hard to change the lives of 10 people — change their lives forever — you’re wrong. I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan: A young Army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad and the 10 soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush. In Kandahar province, Afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the Female Engagement Team senses something isn’t right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500-pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.

But, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, but their children yet unborn were also saved. And their children’s children were saved. Generations were saved by one decision, by one person.

But changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it. So, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is — what will the world look like after you change it?

Well, I am confident that it will look much, much better. But if you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world. And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform. It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation or your social status.

Our struggles in this world are similar, and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward — changing ourselves and the world around us — will apply equally to all.

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harrassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships. To me basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.

So, here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack — that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

During SEAL training the students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students — three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy. Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surfzone and paddle several miles down the coast. In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.

For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle. You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.

If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.

Over a few weeks of difficult training my SEAL class, which started with 150 men, was down to just 35. There were now six boat crews of seven men each. I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the the little guys — the munchkin crew we called them — no one was over about five-foot-five.

The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the midwest. They out-paddled, out-ran and out-swam all the other boat crews. The big men in the other boat crews would always make good-natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim. But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation and the world, always had the last laugh — swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status. 

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough. Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges. But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle — it just wasn’t good enough. The instructors would find “something” wrong.

For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand. The effect was known as a “sugar cookie.” You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day — cold, wet and sandy.

There were many a student who just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right, it was unappreciated. Those students didn’t make it through training. Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It’s just the way life is sometimes.

If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

Every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events — long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics — something designed to test your mettle. Every event had standards — times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those standards your name was posted on a list, and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to a “circus.” A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.

No one wanted a circus.

A circus meant that for that day you didn’t measure up. A circus meant more fatigue — and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult — and more circuses were likely. But at some time during SEAL training, everyone — everyone — made the circus list.

But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Over time those students — who did two hours of extra calisthenics — got stronger and stronger. The pain of the circuses built inner strength, built physical resiliency.

Life is filled with circuses. You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.

But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.

At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot high wall, a 30-foot cargo net and a barbed wire crawl, to name a few. But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three-level 30-foot tower at one end and a one-level tower at the other. In between was a 200-foot-long rope. You had to climb the three-tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end. 

The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977. The record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life head first. Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.

It was a dangerous move — seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training. Without hesitation the student slid down the rope perilously fast. Instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.

If you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.

During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island which lies off the coast of San Diego. The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass SEAL training there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim.

Before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente. They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark — at least not recently. But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position — stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you — then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout, and he will turn and swim away.

There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.

So, if you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.

As Navy SEALs one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training. The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles — underwater — using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.

During the entire swim, even well below the surface, there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you. But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight, it blocks the surrounding street lamps, it blocks all ambient light.

To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel — the centerline and the deepest part of the ship. This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship — where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.

Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm, composed — when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.

If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment, and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slues, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors. As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud. 

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit — just five men — and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up — eight more hours of bone-chilling cold.

The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything. And then, one voice began to echo through the night, one voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing. We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singingbut the singing persisted. And somehow the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.

Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see. All you have to do to quit is ring the bell. 

Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT — and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training. Just ring the bell.

If you want to change the world don’t ever, ever ring the bell.

To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away from starting to change the world — for the better. It will not be easy. 

But, YOU are the class of 2014, the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.

Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if take you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up — if you do these things, then the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today.

And what started here will indeed have changed the world — for the better.

Thank you very much. Hook ’em horns.

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Speech about Change in the World [1,2,3,5 Minutes]

This tutorial will cover the speech in two different contexts;

• 1 Speech about Change in the World (changes that already occur)
• 4 Speeches about Change in the World (How we can change the world )

You can select speech context according to your requirements.

Short Speech about Change in the World

The world has changed a lot in the last few years with the emergence of new technologies.

The change in the world has been rapid and it is not slowing down. The pace of change is increasing and it will only get faster in the coming years.

The world is changing in many ways. Some of the changes are happening for the better, others for the worse. The reason for these changes is not always clear and it is hard to predict what will happen in the future.

The world we live in has undergone a lot of changes over time. Some of these changes have been positive, while others have been negative. These changes are not always clear and it is hard to predict what will happen in the future.

The world is changing and it is happening faster than ever. The advent of technology has brought about a revolution in the way we live our lives. With the help of AI, we can now automate a lot of tasks that used to require human labor in the past.

The rapid changes in technology have transformed people’s lives and they are now able to create content at scale. It has also helped them to generate more content with ease, which was not possible before.

In recent years, many people have asked what will happen to humans when they are replaced by machines? How long will it take for machines to replace humans completely? Will there be a time when we can live without human intervention? Will there be a time when we are no longer needed?

The 21st century has seen a huge change in the world. It is not just about the technological advancements and innovations but also about how humans are changing as a whole. The impact of these changes cannot be ignored, which brings us to the topic of this paper – what can we expect from our future?

The changes in technology have brought about many innovations which have changed our lives and society as a whole. The advancement of technology has made it possible for people to communicate with one another from across the globe, opening up opportunities for people to work together towards common goals.

In the past, society has always been based on a certain set of rules and morals. With the advancement of technology, society is changing, and new ideas are being explored.

Our world is changing rapidly with the invention of new technologies, but that doesn’t mean that we should give up our old ways. We need to keep both old and new values in mind and work together for a better future for everyone.

Quotes of some internationally famous personalities for Speech on Speech about Change in the World

• Mahatma Gandhi : “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
• Nelson Mandela : “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
• Malala Yousafzai : “We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.”
• Martin Luther King Jr. : “The time is always right to do what is right.”
• Barack Obama : “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
• Mother Teresa : “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
• Desmond Tutu : “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
• Dalai Lama : “World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion.”
• Elie Wiesel : “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
• Oprah Winfrey : “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.”

Short 1 Minute Speech about Change in the World

Social media has made it easy to share our thoughts and opinions. We can change the world by sharing our knowledge, insights and experiences with others.

The social media platforms are a great way for people to share their thoughts, opinions, and ideas. However, the platforms are also an easy way for people to spread hate speech and propaganda.

It is important that we take action against these types of content on social media platforms before it goes viral. It is also important that we try to educate those who are spreading these types of content about why these ideas are wrong or why they should be changed in order to make them more productive in society.

We can Change the World by spreading positivity.

Positive thinking has been scientifically proven to improve your health, happiness, and well-being. It also helps you to achieve more in your life.

The Change the World by spreading positivity is a campaign that encourages people to spread kindness and positivity in their everyday lives. The campaign was initiated by the founder of the charity organization Big World Small World, David Bornstein.

2 Minutes Speech about Change in the World (Bringing Change)

The world is changing at a very fast pace, and it is very difficult to keep up with the changes.

The future of our society looks uncertain and chaotic. It would be great if we could change the world for the better by using our creativity, emotions, and knowledge.

We can Change the World by being more mindful of what we consume. We can also Change the World by being more aware of how we consume media and what messages are being delivered to us as consumers.

It’s not easy to change the world. We need a lot of people to come together and work towards a common goal.

But there are ways we can make our voices heard. We can start by making small changes in our daily lives, like recycling and turning off the lights when we leave a room.

The world is becoming more and more competitive and it is hard to keep up with the pace. It seems like everyone is always on the move. But there is still hope in humanity.

We can change the world by spreading positivity. We can live a life where we are not constantly thinking about what we have lost or what we need to do to get ahead in life.

3 Minutes Speech about Change in the World (Bringing Change)

The world is changing so rapidly that it can be difficult to keep up. There are many new technologies that have yet to be discovered and used in the world.

We are entering a time of change where we will see more change than ever before. It is important for us to stay optimistic and hopeful about our future because it will only get better from here on out.

There are many ways in which we can change the world. We can change it by being a good people, by donating to charity, or by making a difference in society.

Changing the world starts with changing ourselves and our own lives. It is important that we improve our skills and knowledge so that we can help others who may be struggling with the same problems that we have faced in life

The way we feel about the world has a direct impact on our lives and the future of humanity. The more positive we are, the better we feel. We should always be conscious of how our actions have an impact on others around us.

This is why spreading positivity is such a powerful tool for change in today’s world. There are so many ways to spread positivity, but some people might not know what it entails or how to do it themselves. This article will provide you with some great ideas on how you can spread positivity in your everyday life and make a difference in someone else’s life too!

5 Minutes Speech about Change in the World (Bringing Change)

Wisdom is a valuable and important feature of a human being. A wise person has the ability to make good decisions, understand and learn from past experiences, and have a deep understanding of the world around him/her. Wisdom is not something that can be measured or acquired overnight. Earning wisdom is a continuous process and requires a sufficient amount of time. Earning wisdom requires openness, patience, and hard work with previous experiences. Especially we must have the willingness to learn and grow.

One of the most important ways to cultivate wisdom is through education and learning. We can seek out new experiences and knowledge, and challenge ourselves to think critically and deeply about the world around us. Earning wisdom involves being open your mind to different perspectives and listening to others with an open mind, as this can help us to gain new insights and understanding.

Another key aspect of earning wisdom is the ability to reflect and learn from our mistakes. We all make mistakes in life, but it is how we handle them and learn from them that can help us to become wiser. It is important to take responsibility for our actions instead of blaming others. We must try to understand the root causes of our mistakes so that we can avoid these mistakes in the future.

Wisdom is about making good choices and living a fulfilling life. It is about finding balance and harmony in our lives and being able to navigate the challenges and opportunities that come our way. So let us all strive and hard work with our best actions to cultivate wisdom in our own lives, and be a source of wisdom for others as well.

Examples of sentences that can be used in starting of this speech

Examples of sentences that can be used in closing of this speech, speeches in english.

• Speech on women’s empowerment
• Speech on social media
• Speech on environment
• Speech on gender equality
• Speech on poverty
• Speech on Global Warming
• Speech on Environmental Pollution
• Speech on Earth Day
• Speech on Discipline
• Speech on Human Rights
• Speech on Education
• Motivational speech for students
• 2-minute Self-introduction speech examples
• Speech on Mahatma Gandhi
• Speech on freedom fighters
• Speech on APJ Abdul Kalam
• Speech about friendship
• Speech about Technology
• Speech on Parents
• Speech on Health
• Speech on Health and Fitness
• Speech on Health and Hygiene
• Speech on Mental health
• Speech on Yoga
• Speech on Doctor
• Speech about Life
• Speech on sports
• Speech on Racism
• Speech on Population or overpopulation
• Speech on Overcoming Fear
• Speech about Family
• Speech on Mobile Phones
• Speech on water conservation
• Speech on Honesty
• Speech on Culture
• Speech on Unity in diversity
• Speech on Peace
• Speech on Time
• Speech on Success
• Speech on Leadership
• Speech on Nature
• Speech on Career
• Speech about Music
• Speech on Democracy
• Speech on Noise Pollution
• Speech on Air Pollution
• Speech on Gratitude
• Speech on Time management
• Speech on Dance
• Speech on Climate Change
• Speech on Artificial Intelligence
• Speech on Cyber security
• Speech on Teamwork
• Speech on Goal Setting
• Speech on Plastic Waste Management
• Speech on Feminism
• Speech on Bhagat Singh
• Speech on Books
• Speech on Laughter is the Best Medicine
• Speech on Swami Vivekananda
• Speech on Road Safety
• Speech on Cyber Crime
• Speech on Energy Conservation
• Speech on Online Education
• Speech on Quaid-e-Azam
• Speech on Allama Iqbal
• Speech about Rainy Day
• Speech about Teachers’ day
• Speech about Graduation
• Speech about Love
• Speech about Football
• Speech about Money
• Speech about Anxiety
• Speech about Politics
• Speech about Nelson Mandela
• Speech about Kindness
• Speech about Cleanliness
• Speech about Deforestation
• Speech about Agriculture
• speech about Cricket
• Speech about Unemployment
• Speech about Birthday
• Speech about Patience
• Speech about the Value of Time
• Speech about Positive Thinking
• Speech about Knowledge is Power
• Speech about Games
• Speech about Indian Culture
• Speech about Appreciation
• Speech about Farming
• Speech about Debut
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• Speech about Hardwork
• Speech about Thank you / Thankfulness / being thankful
• Speeches about Communication
• Speech about Dreams and ambitions 
• Speech about Confidence
• Speech about traveling and Tourism
• Speech about Corruption
• Speech about the millennial generation
• Speech about Success and Failure
• Speech about Environmental Awareness
• Speech about Life Goals
• Speech about Stress
• Speech about the Life of a Student
• Speech about Social Issues
• Speech about Mom
• Speech about God
• Speech about Plants
• Speech about Fashion
• Speech about Basketball
• Speech about Business
• Speech about Smile
• Speech about Animals
• Speech about Passion
• Speech about Youth Empowerment
• Speech about Youth Leadership
• Speech about Responsibility
• Speech about Plastic Pollution
• Speech about Courage
• Speech about Homework
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More From Forbes

Can a speech change the world.

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“What exactly do you mean, ‘the only reason to give a speech is to change the world?’” That comment greeted me recently from a reader of this blog. My first reaction was to laugh, because generally speaking lofty statements of ambition are not meant to be taken literally – and most adults know that.

But we live in an era of authenticity and rampant BS-detecting, and anyone who makes public claims needs to be ready to defend them. So, on second thought, I delved deeper into the comment, and what lies behind it, because it is important to be real and also because I began my first book with the comment.

The phrase did not, apparently, come from President Kennedy, though many people have suggested that to me with certainty. Of course, it’s difficult to prove a negative, but I’ve scanned the Kennedy canon and found no evidence that he ever wrote, said, or thought the phrase.

It was told to me by a speechwriter and reporter who got his start reporting first hand the D-Day landing in Normandy that heralded the beginning of the end of WWII. I met him when we briefly both worked as speechwriters for the same company, he at the end of his career, me at the beginning of mine. He took me to lunch on a regular basis and regaled me with stories about WWII, getting the facts right, and changing the world. When I got the assignment at the company to write my first speech, one for an executive who was heading to Australia and a public speech about the company’s intentions on that continent, my reporter-mentor said to me, “Don’t screw it up, Nick. You know the only reason to give a speech is to change the world. Make it worth it.”

I met the challenge with a highly ordinary speech about the rosy relations between the US and Australia and the bright prospects for the company and Australian business. No controversies.

And no changing the world. My mentor was kind, and understanding, but I felt like I had let him down, and the speechwriters’ guild, somehow. And so the saying stuck with me, because my first outing had failed.

So how do you change the world with a speech? My contention (and my answer to the inquiry from my skeptical reader) is that a speech has one job and one job only: to change the minds of the people in front of you, your audience. And so your task is to take that audience on a decision-making journey, from Point A (pre-speech) to Point B (post-speech), where Point B is a different state of mind. If you do that successfully, you have changed the world, because you’ve changed the audience’s minds in front of you, and that means the world has changed.

How do you accomplish this feat? By persuading the audience that the point of view you’re proposing is worthy of note, worthy of exchanging for their previous point of view on the subject. By telling the audience something that it doesn’t know already. By inspiring them to think differently, dream differently, and ultimately act differently. Speeches that simply dump information on an unsuspecting audience are a waste of time if their primary purpose is to demonstrate the expertise of the speaking. But a speech that shares the mysteries of a body of knowledge in a way that opens an audience’s minds to new thinking – that’s a speech that changes the world.

That’s the only reason to give a speech. And yes, I do mean something specific by the phrase. I mean that, to change the world, your job as a speaker is to tell your listeners something new, change their thinking on a subject you care about, and inspire them to new action. Isn’t that reason enough to give a speech?

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