我们选择登月
We Choose to Go to the Moon
约翰·菲茨杰拉德·肯尼迪
By John Fitzgerald Kennedy
皮策校长，副校长，州长，托马斯众议员，威利参议员，米勒众议员，韦布先生，贝尔先生，科学家们，尊贵的来宾，女士们先生们：
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
我非常感谢你们的校长授予我名誉客座教授的头衔，我向你们保证，我的第一个演讲将会很简洁。我很高兴来到这里，特别是在这个时候来到这里。
I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I’m particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
我们在这个以知识而闻名的大学中相会，在这个以进步而闻名的城市相会，在这个以实力而闻名的州相会，并且我们需要所有这三者。因为我们处于一个变化与挑战的时期、希望与失望的10年、知识与无知并存的时代。我们获得的知识越多，我们显露出的无知也就越多。
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
尽管显著的事实是，大多数享誉世界的科学家仍在奋斗不息；尽管事实是，我国的科研力量以每12年翻一番的速度增长，总体上超过了人口增长速度的3倍；尽管这样，未知领域、未得到答案和未完成任务的范围之广，仍然远远超出了我们所有人的理解力。
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation’s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
没有人能完全了解我们能走多远，能走多快。但是，如果你愿意，可以把人类有史以来的5万年浓缩成半个世纪的时间跨度，在这个时间跨度下，我们对于最初的40年知之甚少，除了知道在这40年的最后出现了学会用兽皮遮体的人类。在这个标准下，大约10年前，人类从洞穴中走出，建造新的家园。仅仅在5年前人类才学会了写字和使用有轮子的车辆。基督教诞生于不到2年之前。印刷出版今年才出现。在人类历史的整个50年跨度中，在最近不到两个月的时间之前，蒸汽机为我们提供了新的动力。牛顿发现了引力的意义，上个月出现了电灯、电话、汽车和飞机。仅仅在上周我们才发明了青霉素、电视与核动力。如果现在美国新的宇宙飞船能够成功抵达金星，那么我们可以真正算得上在今天午夜抵达别的星球了。
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
这是激动人心的一步。但是这样的一步在消除旧的弊病的同时难免产生新的弊病——新的无知、新的问题、新的危险。毫无疑问，航天事业为我们展现的远景回报高，但成本高、困难也大。
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
因此，不难理解有些状况使我们在原地踏步，继续等待。但是休斯敦市、得克萨斯州、美利坚合众国并不是由那些止步不前和甘为人后的人建立的。这个国家是由不断前进的人征服的，航天事业也是这样。
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward—and so will space.
威廉·布雷德福在1630年普利茅斯湾殖民地建立仪式上说，所有伟大而光荣的行动都伴随着巨大的困难，而克服困难需具备冒险精神和与此相当的勇气。
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
如果说这个人类进步的浓缩历史教育了我们什么，那么就是，在寻求知识和进步的过程中的人类是坚定而不能被阻止的。外层空间探索将会继续，不论我们是否加入它。无论在什么时候，它都是一项重大的冒险，任何一个期望成为世界领袖的国家都不希望在这场空间竞赛中停步。
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
我们的前辈让这个国家掀起了工业革命的第一波浪潮、现代发明的第一波浪潮、核动力的第一波浪潮。而我们这一代并不打算沉没在即将到来的太空时代的尾流中。我们要参与其中——我们要领导潮流。为了全世界注视太空、月球和其他行星的人们，我们发誓，我们不会看到太空竖起代表征服的敌意的旗帜，而应该是代表自由与和平的旗帜。我们发誓，我们不会看到太空布满大规模杀伤性武器，而应该是充满获取知识的工具。
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
然而，我国的誓言只有在我国领先的情况下才能得以履行，而我们正准备这样做。简而言之，我们在科学和工业上的领导地位，我们对于和平和安全的渴望，我们对于自身和他人的责任，所有这一切要求我们做出努力，为了全人类的利益解决这些谜团，成为世界领先的从事航天活动的国家。
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.
