名人英语演讲稿

tribute to diana

致戴安娜——查尔斯·斯宾塞

在全世界，戴安娜是同情心、责任心、风度和美丽的化身，是无私和人道的象征，是维护真正被践踏的权益的旗手，是一个超越国界的英国女孩，是一个带有自然的高贵气质的人，是一个不分阶层的人。

this is the text of earl spencers tribute to his sister at her funeral. there is some very deep, powerful and heartfelt sentiment. would that those at whom it is aimed would take heed. the versions posted on several news services had minor errors. this is precisely as it was deliverd.

i stand before you today the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning before a world in shock.

we are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to diana but rather in our need to do so.

for such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they, too, lost someone close to them in the early hours of sunday morning. it is a more remarkable tribute to diana than i can ever hope to offer her today.

today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, even though god granted you but half a life. we will all feel cheated, always, that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all.

only now you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.

we have all despaired at our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.

there is a temptation to rush to canonize your memory. there is no need to do so. you stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humor with the laugh that bent you double, your joy for life transmitted wherever you took your smile, and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes, your boundless energy which you could barely contain.

but your greatest gift was your intuition, and it was a gift you used wisely. this is what underpinned all your wonderful attributes. and if we look to analyze what it was about you that had such a wide appeal, we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives.

without your god-given sensitivity, we would be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of aids and hiv sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of land mines. diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected.

the world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for her vulnerability, whilst admiring her for her honesty. the last time i saw diana was on july the first, her birthday, in london, when typically she was not taking time to celebrate her special day with friends but was guest of honor at a fund-raising charity evening.

she sparkled of course, but i would rather cherish the days i spent with her in march when she came to visit me and my children in our home in south africa. i am proud of the fact that apart from when she was on public display meeting president mandela, we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of her.

that meant a lot to her.

these were days i will always treasure. it was as if wed been transported back to our childhood, when we spent such an enormous amount of time together, the two youngest in the family.

fundamentally she hadnt changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents homes with me at weekends. it is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre life imaginable after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.

there is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time. she talked

endlessly of getting away from england, mainly because of the treatment she received at the hands of the newspapers.

i dont think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. it is baffling. my own, and only, explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum.

it is a point to remember that of all the ironies about diana, perhaps the greatest was this; that a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.

she would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys william and harry from a similar fate. and i do this here, diana, on your behalf. we will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.

beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, i pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men, so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.

we fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born, and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role. but we, like you, recognize the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible, to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. i know you would have expected nothing less from us.

william and harry, we all care desperately for you today. we are all chewed up with sadness at the loss of a woman who wasnt even our mother. how great your suffering is we cannot even imagine.

i would like to end by thanking god for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time; for taking diana at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life.

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it is such an honor and pleasure for me to be back at yale, especially on the occasion of the 300th anniversary. i have had so many memories of my time here, and as nick was speaking i thought about how i ended up at yale law school. and it tells a little bit about how much progress we’ve made.

what i think most about when i think of yale is not just the politically charged atmosphere and not even just the superb legal education that i received. it was at yale that i began work that has been at the core of what i have cared about ever since. i began working with new haven legal services representing children. and i studied child development, abuse and neglect at the yale new haven hospital and the child study center. i was lucky enough to receive a civil rights internship with marian wright edelman at the children’s defense fund, where i went to work after i graduated. those experiences fueled in me a passion to work for the benefit of children, particularly the most vulnerable.

now, looking back, there is no way that i could have predicted what path my life would have taken. i didn’t sit around the law school, saying, well, you know, i think i’ll graduate and then i’ll go to work at the children’s defense fund, and then the impeachment inquiry, and nixon retired or resigns, i’ll go to arkansas. i didn’t think like that. i was taking each day at a time.

but, i’ve been very fortunate because i’ve always had an idea in my mind about what i thought was important and what gave my life meaning and purpose. a set of values and beliefs that have helped me navigate the shoals, the sometimes very treacherous sea, to illuminate my own true desires, despite that others say about what l should care about and believe in. a passion to succeed at what l thought was important and children have always provided that lone star, that guiding light. because l have that absolute conviction that every child, especially in this, the most blessed of nations that has ever existed on the face of earth, that every child deserves the opportunity to live up to his or her god-given potential.

but you know that belief and conviction-it may make for a personal mission statement, but standing alone, not translated into action, it means very little to anyone else, particularly to those for whom you have those concerns.

when i was thinking about running for the united states senate-which was such an enormous decision to make, one i never could have dreamed that i would have been making when i was

here on campus-i visited a school in new york city and i met a young woman, who was a star athlete.

and it doesn’t mean that once having made that choice you will always succeed. in fact, you won’t. there are setbacks and you will experience difficult disappointments. you will be slowed down and sometimes the breath will just be knocked out of you. but if you carry with you the values and beliefs that you can make a difference in your own life, first and foremost, and then in the lives of others. you can get back up, you can keep going.

but it is also important, as i have found, not to take yourself too seriously, because after all, every one of us here today, none of us is deserving of full credit. i think every day of the blessings my birth gave me without any doing of my own. i chose neither my family nor my country, but they as much as anything i’ve ever done, determined my course.

you have been there trying to serve because you have believed both that it was the right thing to do and because it gave something back to you. you have dared to care.

well, dare to care to fight for equal justice for all, for equal pay for women, against hate crimes and bigotry. dare to care about public schools without qualified teachers or adequate resources. dare to care about protecting our environment. dare to care about the 10 million children in our country who lack health insurance. dare to care about the one and a half million children who have a parent in jail. the seven million people who suffer from hiv/aids. and thank you for caring enough to demand that our nation do more to help those that are suffering throughout this world with hiv/aids, to prevent this pandemic from spreading even further.

and so bring your values and experiences and insights into politics. dare to help make, not just a difference in politics, but create a different politics. some have called you the generation of choice. you’ve been raised with multiple choice tests, multiple channels, multiple websites and multiple lifestyles. you’ve grown up choosing among alternatives that were either not imagined, created or available to people in prior generations.

you’ve been invested with far more personal power to customize your life, to make more free choices about how to live than was ever thought possible. and i think as i look at all the surveys and research that is done, your choices reflect not only freedom, but personal responsibility.

the social indicators, not the headlines, the social indicators tell a positive story: drug use and cheating and arrests being down, been pregnancy and suicides, drunk driving deaths being down.

it is not the vast conspiracy you may have heard about; rather it’s a silent conspiracy of cynicism and indifference and alienation that we see every day, in our popular culture and in our prodigious consumerism.

but as many have said before and as vaclav havel has said to memorably, “it cannot suffice just to invent new machines, new regulations and new institutions. it is necessary to understand differently and more perfectly the true purpose of our existence on this earth and of our deeds.” and i think we are called on to reject, in this time of blessings that we enjoy, those who will tear us apart and tear us down and instead to liberate our god-given spirit, by being willing to dare to dream of a better world.

during my campaign, when times were tough and days were long i used to think about the example of harriet tubman, a heroic new yorker, a 19th century moses, who risked her life to bring hundreds of slaves to freedom. she would say to those who she gathered up in the south where she kept going back year after year from the safety of auburn, new york, that no matter what happens, they had to keep going. if they heard shouts behind them, they had to keep going. if they heard gunfire or dogs, they had to keep going to freedom. well, those aren’t the risks we face. it is more the silence and apathy and indifference that dogs our heels.

thirty-two years ago, i spoke at my own graduation from wellesley, where i did call on my fellow classmates to reject the notion of limitations on our ability to effect change and instead to

embrace the idea that the goal of education should be human liberation and the freedom to practice with all the skill of our being the art of making possible.

thank you and god bless you all.篇三：名人英文励志演讲稿

名人英文励志演讲稿

新一代大学英语四六级领军人物，英语专家、文化学者、出版人、策划人，“振宇英语”创始人，当当网外语图书热门作者。

外语教学与研究出版社、北京航空航天大学出版社、大连理工大学出版社、海豚出版社、首都师范大学出版社、中国宇航出版社等国内一流出版社“振宇英语”丛书主编。外研社荣誉作者、当当网外语图书热门作者。

曾任国家级媒体记者、翻译、电台英语节目主持人、“振宇英语”专栏撰稿人、大学英语系主任、大学英语专业特聘专家教授。

序言

对于英语学习者来说，多听多看多练英语演讲是学地道英语的最佳有效途径之一，也是训练语音语调最有效的辅助手段。你不用担心这些演讲是否有语法问题，也不用担心用词是否准确，表达是否到位。因为一些名人的演讲稿通常是字斟句酌精心完成的。此外，通过演讲学英语还可以潜移默化地帮助自己提升对英文的驾驭能力，增强英语的语感和美感。

本书精选了19篇具有代表性的名人的英语演讲。这些名人或是国家领袖，或是关心民权民生的政治人物，或是创造经济财富的精英，或是用文字抒发情怀的作家记者，或是演艺界的娱乐名人。他们都在自己的领域里作出了杰出的贡献。他们思想深刻，见解独到，注定是站在时代前列的人。

这些名人的演讲充满了智慧，富含启迪。它们或是结合自身经历立足于个人发展的谆谆教诲，像亚马逊ceo杰夫·贝索斯在普林斯顿大学演讲，他讲了自己创业的故事，以此鼓励毕业生：未来掌握在自己的手中，追寻自己的梦

想，慎重选择;或是号召民众面对困难迎难而上，像美国第32任总统富兰克林·罗斯福，他就任于美国经济大萧条时期，国内民生凋敝，萎靡不振，他告诉大家，我们惟一害怕的是害怕本身，展示了带领民众走出低谷的豪情;或者充满人文关怀，如美国著名作家威廉·福克纳，站在人类精神的高度，勉励作家文人心中时时充满爱、怜悯、同情和牺牲的精神;或是显示了追求自由平等的决心，如马钉路德·金和南非总统曼德拉，他们在演讲中都表达了誓死捍卫民-主和自由的决心;或是显示了对家庭的爱，并把这种爱升华为“老吾老，以及人之老;幼吾幼，以及人之幼”，如米歇尔·奥巴马，她在演讲中表达了对家庭的热爱，同时也为丈夫竞选呐喊助威----如果巴拉克·奥巴马当选总统，将会保证每个美国人都能享受卫生保健，确保本国的每个孩子都能得到世界一流的教育。精选出的这些演讲名篇题材涉猎广泛，风格迥异。无论你是被其恢宏的气势所震撼，还是被其精深的意蕴所折服，亦或是为其诙谐幽默而莞尔，都能感受到演讲者所传递的共同心声：一定要奋发向上，积极进取，做出个人应有的成绩，为时代，为国家做贡献。

随书赠送的mp3演讲音频，为演讲者的原声音频。这些声音铿锵有力，或给你启迪，或让你感动，或给你温暖，或激发你前行的信念。同时，也让你更有机会品味最地道的英语表达。此外，在每一篇文章之后，都附有提炼出的演讲中具有指引性、励志性的“经典语录”，方便模仿与背诵。地道实用的英语学得多了积累得多了，你就能很自然地表达出极为纯正的英语，既能提升你的书面语表达能力，也可以提升你的口语表达能力。

英语名人短篇演讲稿