Great Speech

I just wanted to take a moment and share this amazing speech with you. I haven't seen the movie, but this is the final speech delivered by Charlie Chaplin in the film The Great Dictator. 

I have listened to it now three consecutive times, and cried on each one.

I would like to hear a real politician say this: to actually admit that what the world needs is love and compassion, that we don't need luxury to be happy, that we don't need to hate our neighbors, that we must love everyone. I would like to hear a politician talk sincerely about despair and human pain, about hopelessness, and about how love and compassion are the only console for this. True love and true compassion.

Here is a quote from the Bible that is amazing for one very particular reason: it speaks about love without mentioning one single time either God, Jesus or any other biblical character of importance. It is very simple and direct, and it summarizes perfectly what the rest of the book is about. It is chapter 13 from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians:

"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated,

it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,

it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

For we know partially and we prophesy partially,

but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love" 

I think it is very relevant to quote from the Bible, to remember how the most influential book in the history of Western civilization, a book that has been quoted over and over to justify countless atrocities towards humanity, is actually about love and compassion. This should remind us of how people with power take our dearest symbols, our greatest and deepest messages, and just distort them, prostitute them, rape them and mutilate them so that they serve their own egoistical ends.