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12 - Anthem - Ayn Rand · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve. It was when I read the first of
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  Speaker 1: the books I found in my house that I saw
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  Speaker 1: the word I. And when I understood this word, the
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  Speaker 1: book fell from my hands, and I wept, I who
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  Speaker 1: had never known tears. I wept in deliverance and in
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  Speaker 1: pity for all mankind. I understood the blessed thing which
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  Speaker 1: I had called my curse. I understood why the best
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  Speaker 1: in me had been my sins and my transgressions, and
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  Speaker 1: why I had never felt guilt in my sins. I
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  Speaker 1: understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill
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  Speaker 1: the spirit of man, nor the sense of truth within him.
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  Speaker 1: I read many books for many days. Then I called
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  Speaker 1: the Golden One, and I told her what I had
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  Speaker 1: read and what I had learned. She looked at me.
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  Speaker 1: In the first words she spoke were I love you.
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  Speaker 1: Then I said, my dearest one, it is not proper
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  Speaker 1: for men to be without names. There was a time
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  Speaker 1: when each man had a name of his own to
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  Speaker 1: distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose
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  Speaker 1: our names. I have read of a man who lived
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  Speaker 1: many thousands of years ago, and of all the names
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  Speaker 1: in these books, his is the one I wished to bear.
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  Speaker 1: He took the light of the gods and brought it
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  Speaker 1: to men, and he taught men to be gods. And
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  Speaker 1: he suffered for his deed, as all bearers of light
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  Speaker 1: must suffer. His name was Prometheus. It shall be your name,
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  Speaker 1: said the Golden One. And I have read of a goddess,
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  Speaker 1: I said, who was the mother of the earth and
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  Speaker 1: of all the gods. Her name was Gaea. Let this
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  Speaker 1: be your name, my Golden One, for you are to
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  Speaker 1: be the mother of a new kind of gods. It
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  Speaker 1: shall be my name, said the Golden One. Now I
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  Speaker 1: look ahead. My future is clear before me. The Saint
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  Speaker 1: of the Pyre had seen the future when he chose
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  Speaker 1: me as his heir, as the heir of all the
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  Speaker 1: saints and all the martyrs who came before him, and
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  Speaker 1: who died for the same cause, for the same word,
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  Speaker 1: no matter what name they gave to their cause and
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  Speaker 1: their truth. I shall live here in my own house.
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  Speaker 1: I shall take my food from the earth by the
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  Speaker 1: toil of my own hands. I shall learn many secrets
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  Speaker 1: from my books. Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild
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  Speaker 1: the achievements of the past and open the way to
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  Speaker 1: carry them further. The achievements which are open to me,
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  Speaker 1: but close forever to my brothers, for their minds are
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  Speaker 1: shackled to the weakest and dullest among them. I have
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  Speaker 1: learned that the power of the sky was known to
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  Speaker 1: men long ago. They called it electricity. It was the
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  Speaker 1: power that moved their greatest invention. It lit this house
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  Speaker 1: with light that came from those globes of glass on
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  Speaker 1: the walls. I have found the engine which produced this light.
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  Speaker 1: I shall learn how to repair it and how to
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  Speaker 1: make it work again. I shall learn how to use
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  Speaker 1: the wires which carry this power. Then I shall build
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  Speaker 1: a barrier of wires around my home and across the
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  Speaker 1: paths which lead to my home, A barrier light as
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  Speaker 1: a cobweb, more impassable than a wall of granite. A
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  Speaker 1: barrier my brothers will never be able to cross, for
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  Speaker 1: they have nothing to fight me with save the brute
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  Speaker 1: force of their numbers. I have my mind. Then, here
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  Speaker 1: on this mountain top, with the world below me and
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  Speaker 1: nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my
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  Speaker 1: own truth. Gay is pregnant with my child. He will
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  Speaker 1: be taught to say I and to bear the pride
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  Speaker 1: of it. He will be taught to walk straight on
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  Speaker 1: his own feet. He will be taught reverence for his
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  Speaker 1: own spirit. When I shall have read all the books
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  Speaker 1: and learned my new way, when my home will be
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  Speaker 1: ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day
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  Speaker 1: for the last time, into the cursed city of my birth.
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  Speaker 1: I shall call to me my friend who has no name,
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  Speaker 1: save international four eight eight one eight, and all those
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  Speaker 1: like him, Fraternity two five five o three, who cries
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  Speaker 1: without reason in solidarity nine six three four seven, who
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  Speaker 1: calls for help in the night, and a few others.
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  Speaker 1: I shall call to me all the men and women
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  Speaker 1: whose spirit has not been killed within them, and who
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  Speaker 1: suffer under the yoke of their brothers. They will follow me,
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  Speaker 1: and I shall lead them to my fortress. And here
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  Speaker 1: in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my chosen friends,
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  Speaker 1: my fellow builders, shall write the first chapter in the
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  Speaker 1: new history of man. These are the last things before me.
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  Speaker 1: And as I stand here at the door of glory,
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  Speaker 1: I look behind me for the last time. I look
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  Speaker 1: upon the history of men which I have learned from
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  Speaker 1: the books, and I wonder it was a long story,
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  Speaker 1: and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of
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  Speaker 1: man's freedom. But what is freedom freedom from what There
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  Speaker 1: is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him,
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  Speaker 1: save other men. To be free, a man must be
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  Speaker 1: free of his brothers. That is freedom, that and nothing else.
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  Speaker 1: At first man was enslaved by the gods, but he
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  Speaker 1: broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings,
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  Speaker 1: but he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth,
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  Speaker 1: by his kin, by his race, but he broke their chains.
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  Speaker 1: He declared to all his brothers that a man has
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  Speaker 1: rights which neither God, nor king, nor other men can
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  Speaker 1: take away from him, no matter what their number. For
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  Speaker 1: his is the right of man. And there is no
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  Speaker 1: right on earth above this right. And he stood on
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  Speaker 1: the threshold of freedom, for which the blood of the
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  Speaker 1: sentries behind him had spilled. But then he gave up
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  Speaker 1: all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning.
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  Speaker 1: What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason
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  Speaker 1: away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees
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  Speaker 1: in shame and submission? The worship of the word We.
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  Speaker 1: When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries collapsed
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  Speaker 1: about them, the structure whose every beam had come from
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  Speaker 1: the thought of some one man, each in his day
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  Speaker 1: down the ages from the depths of some one's spirit,
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  Speaker 1: such as spirit existed, but for its own sake. Those
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  Speaker 1: men who survived, those eager to obey, eager to live
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  Speaker 1: for one another. Since they had nothing else to vindicate them,
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  Speaker 1: those men could neither carry on nor preserve what they
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  Speaker 1: had received. Thus did all thought, all science, all wisdom
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  Speaker 1: perish on earth. Thus did men, men with nothing to
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  Speaker 1: save their great numbers, lose the steel towers, the flying ships,
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  Speaker 1: the power wires, all the things that had not created
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  Speaker 1: and could never keep. Perhaps later some men had been
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  Speaker 1: born with the mind and the courage to recover these
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  Speaker 1: things which were lost. Perhaps these men came before the
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  Speaker 1: counselor of scholars. They answered as I had been answered,
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  Speaker 1: and for the same reasons. But I still wonder how
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  Speaker 1: it was possible, in those graceless years of transition long ago,
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  Speaker 1: that men did not see whither they were going, and
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  Speaker 1: went on in blindness and cowardice to their fate. I wonder,
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  Speaker 1: for it is hard for me to conceive how men
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  Speaker 1: who knew the word I could give it up and
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  Speaker 1: not know what they had lost. But such has been
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  Speaker 1: the story. For I have lived in this city of
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  Speaker 1: the damned, And I know what horror men permitted to
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  Speaker 1: be brought upon them. Perhaps in those days there were
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  Speaker 1: few among men, a few of clear sight and clean soul,
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  Speaker 1: who refused to surrender that word. What agony must have
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  Speaker 1: been theirs before that which they saw coming and could
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  Speaker 1: not stop. Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning,
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  Speaker 1: But men paid no heed to their warning. And they,
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  Speaker 1: those few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished, with
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  Speaker 1: their banners smeared by their own blood. And they chose
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  Speaker 1: to perish, for they knew to them. I send my
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  Speaker 1: salute across the centuries, and my pity theirs is the
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  Speaker 1: banner in my hand. And I wish I had the
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  Speaker 1: power to tell them that the despair of their hearts
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  Speaker 1: was not to be final. The night was not without hope.
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  Speaker 1: For the battle they lost can never be lost. For
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  Speaker 1: that which they died to save can never perish. Through
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  Speaker 1: all the darkness, through all the shame of which men
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  Speaker 1: are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on
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  Speaker 1: this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It
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  Speaker 1: may wear chains, but it will break through, and man
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  Speaker 1: will go on man not men. Here on this mountain,
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  Speaker 1: I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build
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  Speaker 1: our new land and our fort, and it will become
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  Speaker 1: as the heart of the earth, lost and hidden at first,
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  Speaker 1: but beating, beating louder each day, and word of it
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  Speaker 1: will reach every corner of the earth, and the roads
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  Speaker 1: of the world will become as veins which will carry
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  Speaker 1: the best of the world's blood to my threshold. And
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  Speaker 1: all my brothers and the councils of my brothers will
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  Speaker 1: hear of it, but they will be impotent against me.
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  Speaker 1: And the day will come when I shall break the
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  Speaker 1: chains of the earth and raise the cities of the enslaved,
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  Speaker 1: and my home will become the capital of a world
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  Speaker 1: where each man will be free to exist for his
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  Speaker 1: own sake. For the coming of that day, I shall fight,
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  Speaker 1: I and my sons and my chosen friends for the
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  Speaker 1: freedom of man, for his rights, for his life, for
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  Speaker 1: his honor. And here over the portals of my fort,
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  Speaker 1: I shall cut in the stone the Word which is
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  Speaker 1: to be my beacon and my banner, the word which
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  Speaker 1: will not die should we all perish in battle, The
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  Speaker 1: word which can never die on this earth, for it
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  Speaker 1: is the heart of it, and the meaning and the
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  Speaker 1: glory the sacred word Ego, end Chapter twelve, End of
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  Speaker 1: Anthem by an Ran