President Obama's Speech at Hiroshima

President Obama spoke in Hiroshima, Japan on May 27, 2016. He is the first president to speak there since the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on the city to end World War II on August 6, 1945. In the speech the president explores the human capacity for conflict and destruction and calls for a reduction in nuclear weapons around the world. The transcript of the entire speech can be found here.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. unalienable
    incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another
    My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
  2. irreducible
    incapable of being made smaller or simpler
    The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.
  3. interdependence
    a relation between entities that rely on each other
    To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition.
  4. stockpile
    something kept back or saved for future use
    But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.
  5. artifact
    a man-made object
    Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man.
  6. cosmos
    the universe considered as a whole
    Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.
  7. depravity
    moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles
    There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.
  8. fateful
    having momentous consequences; of decisive importance
    And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope.
  9. amplify
    increase in size, volume or significance
    And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
  10. complacency
    the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself
    That memory allows us to fight complacency.
  11. subjugate
    make subservient; force to submit or subdue
    Peoples have been subjugated and liberated.
  12. constraint
    the state of being physically limited
    And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
  13. fervor
    feelings of great warmth and intensity
    On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal.
  14. scarcity
    a small and inadequate amount
    On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal.
  15. domination
    power to defeat
    And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
  16. juncture
    a point in time when a critical decision must be made
    And at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.
  17. aggression
    a disposition to behave forcefully and energetically
    Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done.
  18. capability
    the quality of being able to do something
    And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
  19. arc
    something curved in shape
    We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow.
  20. stark
    severely simple
    Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction.
  21. curb
    the act of restraining power or action or limiting excess
    But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.
  22. capacity
    capability to perform or produce
    How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
  23. span
    the distance or interval between two points
    In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die.
  24. catastrophe
    a sudden violent change in the earth's surface
    We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.
  25. contradiction
    opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas
    Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction.
  26. toll
    a fee levied for the use of roads or bridges
    And at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.
  27. oppression
    the act of subjugating by cruelty
    Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done.
  28. ideal
    a principle or value that one hopes to attain or conform to
    Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens.
  29. endowed
    provided or supplied or equipped with
    My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Created on Tue May 31 11:24:11 EDT 2016 (updated Mon Sep 09 11:57:28 EDT 2019)

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