克林顿就职演说 四号
Clinton ’s speech
This is the heart of our task. With a new vision of government, a new sense of responsibility, a new spirit of community, we will sustain America ’s journey. The promise we sought in a new land, we will find again in a land of new promise. In this new land, education will be every citizen ’s most prized possession. Our school will have the highest standards in the world, igniting the spark of possibility in the eyes of every girl and every boy. And the doors of higher education will open to all. The knowledge and power of information age will be within reach not just of the few but of every classroom, every library, every child. Parents and children will have time not only to work but to read and play together, and the plans they make at their kitchen table will be those of a better home, a better job, the certain chance to go to college. Our streets will echo again with the laughter of our children because no one will try to shoot them or sell them drugs any more. Everyone who can work will work with today ’s prominent underclass part of tomorrow ’s growing middle class. New miracles of medicine at last will reach not only those who can claim care now but the children in hard-working families too long denied. We will stand mighty for peace and freedom and maintain the strong defense against terror and destruction. Our children will sleep free from the threat of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Our land of new promise will be a nation that meets its obligations, a nation that
balances its budget, but never loses the balance of its values, a nation where our grandparents have secure retirement and health care and their grandchildren know we have made the reforms necessary to sustain those benefits for their time.
Fellow citizens, let us build that America, a nation ever moving forward realizing the full potential of all its citizens. Prosperity and power, yes, they are important and we must maintain them. But let us never forget the greatest progress we have made and the greatest progress we have yet to make is in the human heart. In the end all the world ’s wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit.
Fellow citizens we must not waste the precious gift of this time. For all of us are on that same journey of our lives, and our journey too will come to an end. But the journey of our America must go on. And so my fellow Americans, we must be strong for there is much to dare. The demands of our time are great and they are different. Let us meet them with faith and courage, with patience and a grateful, happy heart. Let us shape the hope of this day into the noblest chapter in our history. Yes, let us build our bridge, a bridge wide enough and strong enough for every American to cross over to a blessed land of new promise.
May those generations whose faces we can not yet see, whose names we may never know, say of us here that we led our beloved land into a new
century with the American dream alive for all her children, with the American promise of a more perfect union a reality for all her people, with the America’s bright flame of freedom spreading throughout all the world. From the height of this place and the summit of this century, let us go forth. May God strengthen our hands for the good work ahead and always, always bless our America.