Just because someone says something is so, it does not make it true.
Shortly before he was executed, Citizen Maximilien Robespierre, the terror of terrors, gave a speech which, these days, beggars belief.
The man who tore the monarchy from the heart of France in the days following the French Revolution of 1789 used his incredible powers of oratory to construct a terrifying reality.
But there’s this speech towards the end: a sign that the reality he was trying to construct was thinning and losing definition.
Robespierre was most put out when Jacques-Rene Hebert began closing Catholic churches and encouraging France to go pagan and worship the god of Reason. It was the guillotine for the atheist, but what to put in his place?
Robespierre had just the thing: the Festival of the Supreme Being.
His speech on the day of the Festival being was intended to be what we would term these days as key note: to set the tone for years to come. A speech with a central or determining principle.
“The day forever fortunate has arrived,” he told his countrymen, “which the French people have consecrated to the Supreme Being. Never has the world which He created offered to Him a spectacle so worthy of His notice. He has watched tyranny, crime, and imposture reign on the earth.
“He sees at this moment a whole nation, grappling with all the oppressions of the human race, suspend the course of its heroic labors to elevate its thoughts and vows toward the great Being who has given it the mission it has undertaken and the strength to accomplish it.”
But just because he declared a crackpot post-revolutionary devotional day, did not make his words true. Robespierre’s effort to determine the future lasted only a few months. Roughly as long as his head stayed attached to his body..
The truly great key note speeches are given with utter integrity at a time when humanity stands at a fork in the road.
Like Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech.
It is an extraordinary piece of rhetoric from 1946, dwarfing any other speech I can think of: an eloquent cry from the heart of a man who has seen war on an unimaginable scale, and who is staring at the dark shadows of conflict once more, created by that Iron Curtain he names so aptly.
“Last time I saw it all coming,” he told Westminster College in Wisconsin on accepting an honorary degree, “and I cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. ….There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool.
“We surely, ladies and gentlemen, I put it to you, surely, we must not let it happen again.”
Don’t appease Russia, he cautioned: match the Soviet might. Today’s historians say that attitude prevented a third 20th century world war.
Two keynote speeches; two speeches intended to define the world as it stood: one facile and brittle, the other impassioned and underpinned by the darkest and most profound of experiences.
Never in the history of mankind have so many speeches jostled for our attention, as in this fast-paced, multi media, 21st century world. The key note speeches which set history sit amongst them, waiting for posterity to mark them with a fine quill pen.
Whose will stand out, I wonder?
Written for Side View’s weekend theme:
Source for key note speech picture here
Kate Shrewsday 
Wonderful what Kate finds in the themes 😉
Indeed, impassioned speech against the flow of experience may not live, but Churchill spoke from the depth of pain experienced by almost all the world. How can that not echo through succeeding generations, unless humanity becomes accustomed to death and horror.
His words are often used, aren’t they, Sidey? I suspect future generations will know them as well, if not better, than we do.
He did think (usually) before he opened his mouth formally
Thank you for this wonderful incisive post!
Hi, Julia! You’re most welcome.
What we are missing is someone who cares about the future of our society rather than his own agrandissement . That person also needs to be free from the blinkers of religion and patriotism.
You’re right, Roger. I wonder how difficult it was to find such a man even in Churchill’s time? Robespierre’s bigotry was of a most complex kind: a sort of zeal for some humanist ideal. His words stirred people but they held less and less water as time went on because their foundation was non existent. Someone who cares about society, not himself: it’s an elusive bedrock.
Hitler’s oratory powers were also brilliant and he was a monster!!
True, like Robespierre: and sorts like Mussolini too. Built on the most terrifying ideaologies, Lisa….
Only Kate can do this for a keynote speech 🙂 Wonderful.
Thanks, Jas 🙂
No one ever really listens or pays much attention to much -global or otherwise. Still believe that action speaks louder than words. Words, media, governments or religion seldom has or not very effectively ignited meaningful action.
An interesting piece. I stumbled and lost my way a couple times.
I must look at my links carefully. Wrote it while I was very tired, Hudson. Action does speak louder than words. It is the emblem of integrity, for sure.
If I ever need to nominate someone to give a key note address . . . it shall be you, Kate. For I’m certain that you’d take the entire audience on a marvelous romp.
I shall take you up on that one of these days, Nancy 😀
You hit the right notes, Kate. Winston Churchill was a powerful speaker … as was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Another man of action, Judy. Someone who could lift America up. Their action shows in their words, somehow.
Churchill backed up his speeches with action, as have other great orators who are also great leaders. Today we have many great orators, but leadership and appropriate action do not necessarily follow. This was very thought-provoking.
It brings us back, doesn’t it, MJ, to ask: are there any good men out there? Men who will lead and act, as well as speak?
Too right, Kate!
Bravo, Kate! A great take on this theme, as well as a great deal to ponder.
Thanks, Penny. I long to hear a key note speech which has that substance behind it, and not just spin.
Beautifully done, Kate. As a schoolgirl there were many times Churchill was held up to us as an example of a great statesman. And his speeches are at least familiar to me in context from hearing them quoted so frequently. Leaders today are more concerned with walking the thin line of the middle…they lack conviction and passion. I’m afraid the speeches that once brought us together are now simply fodder for polarization. It’s a shame! Debra
It is, Debra: though fate does sometimes send us a leader out of the blue, from a direction we do not expect. Usually, it just takes the occasion to demand it.
Last night I watched the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics (along with millions of others, though not on the same sofa, I should add). I was struck by the contrast between speeches given by Lord Coe and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, and reminded of their corresponding speeches at the opening ceremony.
Both Seb Coe’s addresses were sincere but largely forgettable; Rogge, seemingly dour, was to me both generous and moving, all the more remarkable in that English wasn’t his first language. I suspect these count as key note speeches!
I think you are quite right, Chris. The same thing struck me.
tis scary that some of the best speakers commandeer a following that can be blind to the mores and intention of said speaker…as if the ears get turned on but the logic/reason circuits disconnect. Thinking, of course, of Hitler and Mussolini, not Churchill. ~
I suppose a great orator has the mower to move but also, in the wrong circumstances, to manipulate, Angela. It is frightening what a speech can move a crowd to do.
Great oratorical powers and the ‘cult of personality’ have changed the course of history over centuries! Brilliant take Kate, you never disappoint 🙂
Thanks, Madhu 🙂