Ahmadinedjad: the unexpected speech of the dictator

I'm sorry but I don't want anymore to be a dictator, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Christian, Jew, Muslim, non-believer. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed technology but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our religion hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than human bombs we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and we all will be lost. Satellites and Internet have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout Iran, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes us torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me and who will be free tomorrow I say "Do not despair". The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and I will die someday and the power I don't give back today to the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the Biblical book of Ezra it is written: "So said Cyrus, the king of Persia, 'All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of the heavens delivered to me, and He commanded me to build Him a House in Jerusalem, which is in Judea. '" 

Not for one man, nor a group of men, but for all men; including you, my people. You all have the power now, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of the beauty of life, let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.

By the promise of these things, we have risen to power, but we lied. We did not fulfil our promise, we never did. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now fight me if I betrayed you to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free our country, to do away with mind barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of spirituality and reason, a world where science and progress will only lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of human dignity, let us all unite!

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up!

The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin, 1940