Robert Menzies: 'I did but see her passing by", Welcome remarks for Queen Elizabeth II - 1963

18 February 1963. Parliament House, Canberra, Australia

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness

It's my very great privilege as Prime Minister, your Prime Minister, Madam of Australia to offer you and His Royal Highness a very, very warm welcome once more to this country.

I know that we had a little arrangement that speeches should be reduced to the minimum,. a matter of , which I think I might safely say Your Majesty warmly approved, but you can't expect, really, in this place of Parliament which is the house of speeches, and with myself and then the Deputy Prime Minister and then the Leader of your Opposition in this country, to let the occasion pass without saying something.

But I assure you, Ma'am, we will reduce it to a minimum.

The first thing that I want to say is to remind everybody of something you said when you were here last, when you referred to the fact that in the constitutional structure of Australia Parliamentary, executive, judicial you are there.

You are, indeed the Head of this House. " Be it enacted by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty" and, therefore Madam, you are among your friends, and in one sense, among your colleagues. We, of course, are also delighted to see His Royal Highness, Prince Phillip, who has been here a few times — not enough but a few times — and who has a standing among us which I don't need to describe because he has been conscious of it so many ' times.

Ma’am, there are a lot of interesting people in the world who like to discuss the Monarchy. There are clever people in the world, at least so I understand, who have discovered that all sorts of things ought to be done to the Monarchy, to democratize the Monarchy, to do something to it, to do something to what we all are proud to say is the most democratic Monarchy in the whole wide world. ( Applause)

We pay no attention to that; when we see you, we see you as our Queen, we see you as our Sovereign Lady, we see you as the successor of monarchs who in this very century, have by their own conduct and their own standards and their own genius, helped to preserve our Monarchy in a world in which crowns have been tumbling and disasters have beset mankind.

And we are proud to think that so far from abrogating any of our liberty, because we are your subjects, we know that we add to our liberty because we are your subjects as are scores and scores of millions of people around the world, and out of all our joint allegiance to you comes an addition to our freedom, not a subtraction from it.

Your Majesty, it’s a proud thought for us to have you here, to remind ourselves that in thiis great structure of Government which has evolved and of which this Parliament is one of the fruits, you — if I may use the expression are the living and lovely centre of our enduring allegiance. (Applause)

Ma'am, I say one thing more and one thing only. You today begin your journey around Australia. It is a journey you have made before. You will be seen in the next few weeks by .hundreds of thousands and, I hope, by millions of your Australian subjects. Mothers will hold their children up to have a look at you as you go by, and they themselves, and their husbands will have a look at you as you go by. This must be to you now something that is almost a task. All I ask you to remember, in this country of yours, is that every man, woman and child who even sees you with a passing glimpse as you go by, will remember it remember it with joy, remember it in the words of the old seventeenth-century poet who wrote those famous words " I did but see her passing by. And yet I love her till I die"

Queen Elizabeth waves to first nations people of the Northern Territory during her 1954 tour. Photo State Library of NSW collection

Malcolm X: 'The most disrespected person in America, is the black woman', Speech to women - 1964

22 May 1962, Los Angeles, California, USA

\Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such extent you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don’t want to be around each other? No… Before you come asking Mr. Muhammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God made you.

We don’t steal, we don’t gamble, we don’t lie and we don’t cheat.

You can’t get into a whiskey bottle without getting past a government seal. You can’t buy a deck of cards without getting past a government seal. Here the white man makes the whiskey then puts you in jail for getting drunk. He sells you the cards and the dice and puts you in jail when he catches you using them.

The most disrespected person in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman. And as Muslims, the honorable Elijah Muhammed teaches us to respect, our women, and to protect our women. And the only time a Muslim gets real violent, is when someone goes to molest his woman. We will kill you, for our women I’m making it plain yes, we will kill you for our women. We believe that if the white man, will do whatever is necessary, to see that his woman get respect and protection, then you and I will never be recognized as men. Until we stand up like men and pays the same penalty over the head of anyone, who puts his filthy hands out, to put it in a direction of our women.

Robert Kennedy: 'What we need in the United States is not division', Death of Martin Luther King' - 1968

4 April 1968, Indanapolis, USA

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some -- some very sad news for all of you -- Could you lower those signs, please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

Here is a version without music