American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"The Lion in Winter" (1968)

Queen Eleanor Lectures her Sons on World Peace

Audio mp3 delivered by Katherine Hepburn

Prince Richard: A knife! He's got a knife!!

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Of course he has a knife. He's always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're barbarians. How clear we make it.

Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war -- not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing.

We are the killers.

We breed wars.

We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten.

For the love of God can't we love one another just a little?

That's how peace begins.

We have so much to love each other for.

We have such possibilities, my children.

We could change the world.