We examined the relationship between language and political aggression by examining the words used by world leaders and leaders of ideologically motivated groups when talking about their despised opponent out-groups in their speeches. We searched the archives for records of such speeches, anchoring them to an identified act of aggression or nonaggressive resistance, and analyzed speeches at three points in time prior to those acts. We tested three hypotheses about linguistic differences in speech content separately for groups that committed an act of aggression and those that did not. Support was found for all three hypotheses, indicating that speeches associated with aggression had different linguistic markers than speeches associated with nonaggression. These findings highlighted the function of speech in providing glimpses into the mind-set of the speech makers as their groups ramp up to violence or not.