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Full speech: Joaquin Phoenix breaks down at Oscars 2020

Joaquin Phoenix who has been grabbing different awards for his performance as the Joker won the Oscars too. His acceptance speech was all hearts.

A teary-eyed Joaquin Phoenix got up on the stage and said, “I’m full of so much gratitude right now. I do not feel elevated above any of my fellow nominees or anyone in this room, because we share the same love that’s the love of film. And this form of expression has given me the most extraordinary life. I don’t know where I’d be without it. But I think the greatest gift that it’s given me, and many of us in this room is the opportunity to use our voice for the voiceless. I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the distressing issues that we are facing collectively and I think at times we feel or are made to feel that we champion different causes. But for me, I see commonality. I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice.”

He continued, “We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, control and use and exploit another with impunity. I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”

He also said, “We fear the idea of personal change because we think that we have to sacrifice something, to give something up. But human beings at our best are so inventive and creative and ingenious, and I think that when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and to the environment.”

The actor added, “I have been a scoundrel all my life, I’ve been selfish. I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I’m grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance. I think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other, not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow, when we educate each other and when we guide each other towards redemption, that is the best of humanity.”

He finally concluded, “When he was 17, my brother [River] wrote this lyric. He said: ‘run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.'”

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