Charlie Chaplin - Speech to humanity

Charlie Chaplin in "The Great Dictator" (1940), final speech

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be a ruler of the world, because that's not my thing. I don't want to rule, nor conquer anyone, but help everyone wherever I can. The Jews, the Gentiles, the colored, the whites. Each man should help the other, only in this way we can improve the world. We should share in the happiness of the other and not detest one another. Hatred and contempt never bring us closer. In this world there is room enough for everyone, and Mother Earth is rich enough to feed each of us.

Life can be so joyful and wonderful. We just have to learn to live it again. Greed has spilled the good in man, and jealousy has poisoned souls and led us to ruin and blood guilt in the paradise step. We have developed the speed but inwardly we have stopped. We let machines work for us and they also think for us. Wisdom has made us haughty, and our knowledge cold and hard. We speak too much and feel too little. But humanity comes first and only then the machines. Before wisdom and knowledge comes tolerance and kindness. Without humanity and charity our existence is not worth living. Aeroplanes and radio have brought us closer together. These inventions have built a bridge from person to person. They require an all-embracing brotherhood so that we all become one. Millions of people in the world can hear my voice right now. Millions of desperate people, victims of a system that has made it its mission to torture innocent people and put them in chains. To all those who hear me now I call out: You must not despair! Even the bitter suffering that has come upon us is transitory. The men who trample on humanity today will not always be there. Their cruelty dies with them, and also their hatred. The freedom that they have taken from men will then be given back to them. Even if it costs blood and tears, no sacrifice is too great for freedom.

Soldiers do not entrust you to barbarians, to brutes who despise you and to whom your life is worth nothing, you are only slaves for them. You have to do this, to believe this, to feel this. You are drilled, fed, treated like cattle, and are nothing but cannon fodder. You are far too good for these honored subjects. These machine people, with machine heads, and machine hearts. You are not robots, you are not animals, you are humans! Keep humanity in your hearts and do not hate, only those who are not loved hate, only those who are not loved. Soldiers do not fight for slavery, fight for freedom!

In the seventeenth chapter of Luke the Evangelist it says: God dwells in every man. So not only in one or in a group of people. Never forget that God is in all of you, and you alone as a people have power. The power to make cannons, but also the power to give happiness. You as a people have it in your hand to make this life uniquely precious, to permeate it with a wonderful spirit of freedom. Therefore in the name of democracy: Let us use this power! Let us stand together! Let us fight for a new world, for a decent world! That gives everyone equal chances, that gives the young a future and the old security. The oppressors promised this too, that's why they could take power. That was a lie, like everything else they promised you, these criminals. Dictators want freedom only for themselves, the people should remain enslaved. Let us break these chains! Let us fight for a better world! Let us fight for freedom in the world, that is a goal worth fighting for. Down with oppression, hatred and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of cleanliness. In which reason wins, in which progress and science are a blessing to us all. Comrades, in the name of democracy, let us fight for this!