克林顿总统第一次就职演说
克林顿总统第一次就职演说
名人演讲稿
My feow citizens:
Today we ceebrate the mystery of American renewa. This ceremony is hed in the depth of winter, but by the words we speak and the faces we show the word, we force the spring.
A spring reborn in the word's odest democracy, that brings forth the vision and courage to reinvent America. When our founders body decared America's independence to the word, and our purposes to the Amighty, they knew that America, to endure, woud have to change. Not change for change sake, but change to preserve America's ideas: ife, iberty, the pursuit of happiness.
Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeess. Each generation of American's must define what it means to be an American. On behaf of our nation, I saute my predecessor, President Bush, for his haf-century of service to America, and I
thank the miions of men and women whose steadfastness and sacrifice triumphed over depression, fascism and communism.
Today, a generation raised in the shadows of the Cod War assumes new responsibiities in a word warmed by the sunshine of freedom, but threatened sti by ancient hatreds and new pagues. Raised in unrivaed prosperity, we inherit an economy that is sti the word's strongest, but is weakened by business faiures, stagnant wages, increasing inequaity, and deep divisions among our own peope.
When George Washington first took the oath I have just sworn to uphod, news traveed sowy across the and by horseback, and across the ocean by boat. Now the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneousy to biions around the word. Communications and commerce are goba. Investment is mobie. Technoogy is amost magica, and ambition for a better ife is now universa.
We earn our iveihood in America today in peacefu competition with peope a across the Earth. Profound and powerfu forces are shaking and remaking our wor
d, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy. This new word has aready enriched the ives of miions of Americans who are abe to compete and win in it. But when most peope are working harder for ess, when others cannot work at a, when the cost of heath care devastates famiies a
nd threatens to bankrupt our enterprises, great and sma; when the fear of crime robs aw abiding citizens of their freedom; and when miions of poor chidren cannot even imagine the ives we are caing them to ead, we have not made change our friend. We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so. Instead we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence. Though our chaenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever been a restess, questing, hopefu peope, and we must bring to our task today the vision and wi of those who came before us. From our Revoution to the Civi War, to the Great
