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JULIUS CAESAR QUOTE USED IN DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL GALA SPEECH
OCTOBER 2, 2002

Introducing her performance of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" at the Democratic National Gala, Barbra Streisand read material which she identified as having been written by William Shakespeare. It had been passed to her by a friend, but she learned the following day that it is, rather, a passage which is widely circulated on the internet as an excerpt from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" but which is, in fact, an anonymous composition, not Shakespeare at all.
She wanted this brought to your attention, with the following note from her:

"The authorship of this is important. But it doesn't detract from the fact that the words themselves are powerful and true and beautifully written. Whoever wrote this is damn talented and should be writing their own play."

For those website visitors who have not read the passage elsewhere, it appears below:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war
in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor,
for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword.
It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no
need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry,
infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of
their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.

How do I know?

For this is what I have done.

And I am Caesar.

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