克林頓2007年哈佛大學畢業(yè)紀念日的演講

克林頓2007年哈佛大學畢業(yè)紀念日的演講 英文版

June 1, 2007

Thank you very much, Samantha, Stephanie, Chris, all the marshals, all the student speakers. Thanks for the gags and the jokes, and you know, when I got invited to do this, it was humbling in some ways. They asked Bill Gates to be the Commencement speaker. He's got more money than I do and he went to Harvard.

And I brought my friend Glenn Hutchins here with me, who's at his 30th reunion and he had something to do with overseeing the endowment and he explained that Gates was really, really, really rich and I was just rich.

And then I thought, well, the students asked me and that's good and besides, I don't have to wear a robe.But I couldn’t figure out why on what is supposed to be a festive and informal day, you would pick a gray-haired 60-year-old to speak.

Following the great tradition of Al Franken, Will Ferrell, Borat or Ali G or whoever he was that day. Conan O'Brien, that Family Guy person. What a tradition. So I did like Talladega Nights, however. Then I was reading all I could find out about the class and I thought well, they don't have any fun today. They already had fun. They had this class-wide Risk tournament around exam time.

And I understood when I heard the followership speech, I understood why you had that. Now you can all run for president. You played Risk. It's an eight-year Risk tournament. Then I thought well, maybe it's because you're about to name Drew Faust your next president, and I think women should run everything now. And then I figure maybe it's just because Robin Williams and Billy Crystal turned you down. But for whatever reason, we're here and I have had a really good time.

You've already heard most of what you need to hear today, I think. But I want to focus for a minute on the fact that these graduating classes since 1968 have invited a few non-comedians. First was Martin Luther King, who was killed in April before. I remember that very well because it was my senior year at Georgetown. He was killed in April, before he could come and give the speech. And Coretta came and gave the speech for him here. And you’ve had Mother Teresa and you've had Bono. What do they all have in common? They are symbols of our common humanity and a rebuke even to humorists' cynicism.

Martin Luther King basically said he lived the way he did because we were all caught in what he called an inescapable web of mutuality. Nelson Mandela, the world's greatest living example of that, I believe, comes from a tribe in South Africa, the Xhosa, who call it ubuntu. In English, I am because you are. That led Mother Teresa from Albania to spend her life with the poorest people on earth in Calcutta. It led Bono from his rock stage to worry about innocent babies dying of AIDS, and poor people with good minds who never got a chance to follow their dreams.

This is a really fascinating time to be a college senior. I was looking at all of you, wishing I could start over again and thinking I'd let you be president if you let me be 21.I'd take a chance on making it all over again if I could do it again.

But I think, just think what an exciting time it is. All this explosion of knowledge. Just in the last couple of weeks before I came here, I read that thanks to the sequencing of the human genome, the ongoing research has identified two markers which seem to be high predictors of diabetes, which, as you heard, is a very important thing to me because it's now predicted that one in three children born in the United States in this decade will develop diabetes.We run the risk that we could be raising a first generation of kids to live shorter lives than their parents. Not because we're hungry, but because we don't eat the right things and we don't exercise. But this is a big deal.

Then right after that, I saw that through our powerful telescopes we have identified a planet orbiting one of the hundred stars closest to our solar system, that appears to have the atmospheric conditions so similar to ours that life could actually be possible there.

Alas, even though it's close to us in terms of the great universe, it's still 20 million light-years away. Unreachable in the lifetime of any young person. So unless there's a budding astrophysicist in the class that wants to get married in a hurry and then commit three generations and take another couple with him, we'll have to wait for them to come to us. It's an exciting time.

It's also exciting because of all the diversity. If you look around this audience, I was thinking, I wonder how different this crowd would have looked if someone like me had been giving this speech 30 years ago. And how much more interesting it is for all of us.

It’s a frustrating time, because for all the opportunity, there’s a lot of inequality. There’s a lot of insecurity and there’s a lot of instability and unsustainability. Half the world’s people still live on less than two bucks a day. A billion on less than a dollar a day. A billion people go to bed hungry tonight. A billion people won’t get a clean glass of water today or any day in their lives. One in four of all the people who die this year will die from AIDS, TB, malaria and infections related to dirty water. Nobody in America dies of any of that except people whose AIDS medicine doesn’t work anymore, or people who decline to follow the prescribed regime.

Now remember a few months ago, everybody I knew was shaking their head when we found out that there was a plot in London to put explosive chemicals in a baby bottle to make it look like formula to evade the airport inspection. And every time I ask somebody, I said did you feel a chill go up and down your spine, they said yeah, they did. Because they can imagine being on the airplane, or in my case, I could imagine my daughter, who has to travel a lot on her job, being on the airplane. But here’s what I want to tell you about that. The inequality is fixable and the insecurity is manageable. We’re going to really have to go some in the 21st century to see political violence claim as many innocent lives as it did in the 20th century. Keep in mind you had what, 12 million people killed in World War I, somewhere between 15 and 20 million in World War II, six million in the Holocaust, six million Jews, three million others. Twenty million in the political purges in the former Soviet Union between the two world wars and one afterward. Two million in Cambodia alone. Millions in tribal wars in Africa. An untold but large number in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I mean, we’re going to have to really get after it, if you expect your generation to claim as many innocents from political violence as was claimed in the 20th century. The difference is you think it could be you this time. Because of the interdependence of the world. So yes, it’s insecure but it’s manageable.

It’s also an unsustainable world because of climate change, resource depletion, and the fact that between now and 2050, the world’s supposed to grow from six and a half to nine billion people, with most of the growth in the countries least able to handle it, under today’s conditions, never mind those. That’s all fixable, too. So is climate change a problem? Is resource depletion a problem? Is poverty and the fact that 130 million kids never go to school and all this disease that I work on a problem? You bet it is. But I believe the most important problem is the way people think about it and each other, and themselves. The world is awash today in political, religious, almost psychological conflicts, which require us to divide up and demonize people who aren’t us. And every one of them in one way or the other is premised on a very simple idea. That our differences are more important than our common humanity. I would argue that Mother Teresa was asked here, Bono was asked here, and Martin Luther King was asked here because this class believed that they were people who thought our common humanity was more important than our differences.

So with this Harvard degree and your incredible minds and your spirits that I’ve gotten a little sense of today, this gives you virtually limitless possibilities. But you have to decide how to think about all this and what to do with your own life in terms of what you really think. I hope that you will share Martin Luther King’s dream, embrace Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation, support Bono’s concern for the poor and follow Mother Teresa’s life into some active service. Ordinary people have more power to do public good than ever before because of the rise of non-governmental organizations, because of the global media culture, because of the Internet, which gives people of modest means the power, if they all agree, to change the world. When former President Bush and I were asked to work on the tsunami, before we did the Katrina work, Americans, many of whom could not find the Maldives or Sri Lanka on a map, gave $1.2 billion to tsunami aid. Thirty percent of our households gave. Half of them gave over the Internet, which means you don’t even have to be rich to change the world if enough people agree with you. But we have to do this. Citizen service is a tradition in our country about as old as Harvard, and certainly older than the government.

Benjamin Franklin organized the first volunteer fire department in Philadelphia 40 years before the Constitution was ratified. When de Tocqueville came here in 1835, he talked among other things about how he was amazed that Americans just were always willing to step up and do something, not wait for someone else to do it. Now we have in America a 1,010,000 non-governmental groups. Not counting 355,000 religious groups, most of whom are involved in some sort of work to help other people. India has a million registered, over a half a million active. China has 280,000 registered and twice that many not registered because they don’t want to be confined. Russia has 400,000, so many that President Putin is trying to restrict them. I wish he wouldn’t do that, but it’s a high-class problem. There were no NGOs in Russia or China when I became president in 1993. All over the world we have people who know that they can do things to change, but again, I will say to all of you, there is no challenge we face, no barrier to having your grandchildren here on this beautiful site 50 years from now, more profound than the ideological and emotional divide which continues to demean our common life and undermine our ability to solve our common problems. The simple idea that our differences are more important than our common humanity.

When the human genome was sequenced, and the most interesting thing to me as a non-scientist – we finished it in my last year I was president, I really rode herd on this thing and kept throwing more money at it – the most interesting thing to me was the discovery that human beings with their three billion genomes are 99.9 percent identical genetically. So if you look around this vast crowd today, at the military caps and the baseball caps and the cowboy hats and the turbans, if you look at all the different colors of skin, all the heights, all the widths, all the everything, it’s all rooted in one-tenth of one percent of our genetic make-up. Don’t you think it’s interesting that not just people you find appalling, but all the rest of us, spend 90 percent of our lives thinking about that one-tenth of one percent? I mean, don’t we all? How much of the laugh lines in the speeches were about that? At least I didn’t go to Yale, right? That Brown gag was hilarious.

But it’s all the same deal, isn’t it? I mean, the intellectual premise is that the only thing that really matters about our lives are the distinctions we can draw. Indeed, one of the crassest elements of modern culture, all these sort of talk shows, and even a lot of political journalism that's sort of focused on this shallow judgmentalism. They try to define everybody down by the worst moment in their lives, and it all is about well, no matter whatever’s wrong with me, I’m not that. And yet, you ask Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Bono to come here. Nelson Mandela’s the most admired person in the world. I got tickled the other night. I wound up in a restaurant in New York with a bunch of friends of mine. And I looked over and two tables away, and there was Rush Limbaugh, who’s said a few mad things about me. So I went up and shook hands with him and said hello and met his dinner guest. And I came just that close to telling him we were 99.9 percent the same. But I didn’t want to ruin the poor man’s dessert, so I let it go.

Now we’re laughing about this but next month, I’m making my annual trek to Africa to see the work of my AIDS and development project, and to celebrate with Nelson Mandela his birthday. He’s 89. Don’t know how many more he’ll have. And when I think that I might be 99.9 percent the same as him, I can’t even fathom it. So I say that to you, do we have all these other problems? Is Darfur a tragedy? Do I wish America would adopt sensible climate change regulation? Do I hate the fact that ideologues in the government doctored scientific reports? Do I disagree with a thousand things that are going on? Absolutely. But it all flows from the idea that we can violate elemental standards of learning and knowledge and reason and even the humanity of our fellow human beings because our differences matter more. That’s what makes you worship power over purpose. Our differences matter more. One of the greatest things that's happened in the last few years is doing all this work with former President Bush. You know, I ought to be doing this. I’m healthy and not totally antiquated. He’s 82 years old, still jumping out of airplanes and still doing stuff like this. And I love the guy. I’m sorry for all the diehard Democrats in the audience. I just do. And life is all about seeing things new every day. And I'll just close with two stories, one from Asia, one from Africa. And I’m telling you all the details don’t matter as much as this.

After George Bush and I did the tsunami, we got so into this disaster work that Kofi Annan asked him to oversee the UN’s efforts in Pakistan after the earthquake, which you acknowledged today, and asked me to stay on as the tsunami coordinator for two years. So on my next to last trip to Aceh in Indonesia, the by far the hardest hit place, a quarter of a million people killed. I went to one of these refugee camps where in the sweltering heat, several thousand people were still living in tents. Highly uncomfortable. And my job was to go there and basically listen to them complain and figure out what to do about it, and how to get them out of there more quickly. So every one of these camps elected a camp leader and when I appeared, I was introduced to my young interpreter, a young Indonesian woman, and to the guy who was the camp leader, and his wife and his son. And they smiled, said hello, and then I looked down at this little boy, and I literally could not breathe. I think he’s the most beautiful child I ever saw. And I said to my young interpreter, I said, I believe that’s the most beautiful boy I ever saw in my life. She said, yes, he’s very beautiful and before the tsunami he had nine brothers and sisters. And now they’re all gone.

So the wife and the son excused themselves. And the father who had lost his nine children proceeded to take me on a two-hour tour of this camp. He had a smile on his face. He never talked about anything but what the people in that camp needed. He gave no hint of what had happened to him and the grief that he bore. We get to the end of the tour. It’s the health clinic in the camp. I look up and there is his wife, a mother who had lost nine of her 10 children, holding a little bitty baby less than a week old, the newest born baby in the camp. And she told me, I’m going to get in trouble for telling this. She told me that in Indonesian culture, when a woman has a baby, she gets to go to bed for 40 days and everyone waits on her hand and foot. She doesn’t get up, nothing happens. And then on the 40th day, the mother gets up out of bed, goes back to work doing her life and they name the baby. So this child was less than a week old. So this mother who had lost her nine children is here holding this baby. And she says to me, this is our newest born baby. And we want you to name him. Little boy. So I looked at her and I said through my interpreter, I said, do you have a name for new beginning? And she explained and the woman said something back and the interpreter said yes, luckily for you, in Indonesian the word for dawn is a boy’s name. And the mother just said to me, we will call this child Dawn and he will symbolize our new beginning. You shouldn’t have to meet people that lose nine of their 10 children, cherish the one they got left, and name a newborn baby Dawn to realize that what we have in common is more important than what divides us.

And I leave you with this thought. When Martin Luther King was invited here in 1968, the country was still awash in racism. The next decade it was awash in sexism, and after that in homophobia. And occasionally those things rear their ugly head along the way, but by and large, nobody in this class is going to carry those chains around through life. But nobody gets out for free, and everyone has temptations. The great temptation for all of you is to believe that the one-tenth of one percent of you which is different and which brought you here and which can bring you great riches or whatever else you want, is really the sum of who you are and that you deserve your good fate, and others deserve their bad one. That is the trap into which you must not fall. Warren Buffett's just about to give away 99 percent of his money because he said most of it he made because of where he was born and when he was born. It was a lucky accident. And his work was rewarded in this time and place more richly than the work of teachers and police officers and nurses and doctors and people who cared for those who deserve to be cared for. So he’s just going to give it away. And still with less than one percent left, have more than he could ever spend. Because he realizes that it wasn’t all due to the one-tenth of one percent, and that his common humanity requires him to give money to those for whom it will mean much more.

In the central highlands in Africa where I work, when people meet each other walking, nearly nobody rides, and people meet each other walking on the trails, and one person says hello, how are you, good morning, the answer is not I’m fine, how are you. The answer translated into English is this: I see you. Think of that. I see you. How many people do all of us pass every day that we never see? You know, we all haul out of here, somebody's going to come in here and fold up 20-something thousand chairs. And clean off whatever mess we leave here. And get ready for tomorrow and then after tomorrow, someone will have to fix that. Many of those people feel that no one ever sees them. I would never have seen the people in Aceh in Indonesia if a terrible misfortune had not struck. And so, I leave you with that thought. Be true to the tradition of the great people who have come here. Spend as much of your time and your heart and your spirit as you possibly can thinking about the 99.9 percent. See everyone and realize that everyone needs new beginnings. Enjoy your good fortune. Enjoy your differences, but realize that our common humanity matters much, much more. God bless you and good luck.

克林頓2007年哈佛大學畢業(yè)紀念日的演講 中文版

2007年6月1日

薩曼莎，斯蒂法妮，克里斯，所有的高級軍官以及所有的學生發(fā)言者，非常感謝你們!謝謝你們演講中帶來的揶揄和笑話!你們可知道，當我受邀到這里來演講時，我有些受寵若驚。他們邀請比爾·蓋茨在畢業(yè)典禮上做主題演講，是因為他的錢比我多而且他上過哈佛。

我偕同我的朋友格倫·哈欽斯于此，這是他第30次故地重游。他負責監(jiān)督捐款事宜，而且他跟我解釋說，比爾·蓋茨是極其富有，而我僅僅算得上富有而已。

之后我想這樣也好，學生們之前也問過我，此外我不必穿禮服。但是我不明白，為什么在這樣一個喜慶而非正式的日子里，你們會邀請一位60歲白發(fā)蒼蒼的老人來演講。

沿襲艾爾·弗蘭肯、威爾·法瑞爾、勃瑞特、阿里·G或者任何和電視劇《搞怪一家人》中科南·奧布賴恩同時代人的優(yōu)良傳統(tǒng)，多么好的一個傳統(tǒng)!所以我確實喜歡《塔拉迪加之夜》。然而，當我閱讀著所有我能找出的關于畢業(yè)班的東西，我認為他們今天沒有什么樂趣可享受。但他們已經(jīng)享受了樂趣，他們在考試臨近時參加了這場班級范圍的冒險比賽。

聽到接下來的演講后，我能理解你們?yōu)槭裁聪硎苓^這種樂趣?，F(xiàn)在你們每一個人都能競選總統(tǒng)。你們參與此“冒險”，這是一場長達八年的冒險比賽。我以為或許是因為你們將要任命德魯·福斯特為你們的下一屆總統(tǒng)，我認為婦女現(xiàn)在應該競選任何職位。然后我估計可能是僅僅因為羅賓·威廉斯和比利·克里斯拒絕了你們，但是無論出于什么原因，我們來到了這里，我確實在此度過了歡樂時光。

我認為今天你們已經(jīng)聽到大多數(shù)你們需要聽到的東西，但是此刻我仍想要重點闡述這樣一個事實，自1968年以來畢業(yè)班已經(jīng)開始邀請一些非喜劇演員來參加典禮。首先是在多年以前的四月被謀殺的馬丁路德·金。那年我在喬治城上大四，所以記憶猶新。在來這里演講之前，他已經(jīng)在四月遇害了，最后科雷塔來到這里代替他做了演講。你們信奉特蕾薩(修女)，你們也崇拜波諾(搖滾歌手)。他們的共性是什么呢?他們是我們普通人性的象征，他們甚至是對幽默大師犬儒主義給予譴責的代表。

總體來說，馬丁路德·金是按照他選擇的方式來生活的，因為我們都深陷于一個他稱之為不可逃脫的相互關聯(lián)的網(wǎng)中。納爾遜·曼德拉就是這個世界上最好的活生生的例子，我認為他來自南非的一個部落，科薩人稱之為特南斯凱。用英語來說，我是因為你們而存在。這令來自阿爾巴尼亞的特蕾薩修女和加爾各答市最貧窮的人們生活在一起;波諾離開了他的搖滾樂舞臺，開始關心那些死于艾滋病的無辜嬰兒，以及那些心懷夢想?yún)s從沒有機會去追尋夢想的窮人。

因此，作為一個大四畢業(yè)生，你們的時光是多么美好!看著你們所有人，我多么期盼能重新開始。如果你們能讓我重回21歲，我愿意讓你們來當總統(tǒng)。如果我能重新做每一件事，我會竭盡全力而為之，使之趨于完美。

我認為僅是個人認為，這是一個多么振奮人心的年代!這是一個知識爆炸的年代!在我來這里的前兩周，我了解到多虧有了人類基因組排序，正在進行的研究才得以鑒定出預示糖尿病高發(fā)的兩大信號。正如你們所知道的那樣，這對我們來說很重要，因為我們現(xiàn)在預測到在未來的十年里，美國每出生的三個孩子中就有一個會患上糖尿病。我們竟冒這樣的風險撫育一代比父母壽命要短的孩子。這不是因為我們受餓，而是因為我們吃錯了東西，以及我們不鍛煉。這是一件相當重要的事情。

此之后我還了解到，通過強大的望遠鏡我們已經(jīng)觀測到，有顆行星繞著最接近于太陽系的一百顆星中的一顆星的軌道運行，似乎那里的大氣狀況和地球的大氣狀況很相似，那里可能存在生命現(xiàn)象。

對于整個宇宙而言，雖然它離我們很近，但是它仍然距離我們兩千萬光年之遠。任何一個年輕人用一生的時間都無法到達。因此，除非這班上有一名嶄露頭角的天文物理學家馬上結婚，并且將此事交付于下三代，并和另一對夫婦一起去那里，否則我們必須等待他們到地球來。多么激動人心的時刻啊!

同樣令我們振奮的是我們民族的多樣性，大家可以環(huán)顧一下周圍的聽眾。我剛才在想，如果30年前有一個人像我今天這樣在這里做演講，這群人不知會有多么的不同!對我們所有的人來說，這種翻天覆地的變化是多么地有趣!

那是個令人泄氣的年代，所有的機會都存在著不平等，存在著許多不安和不穩(wěn)定性。世界上一半的人仍然過著每天不到兩美金的生活。十億人每天收入還不到一美金。十億人每晚食不果腹，十億人現(xiàn)在或在他有生之年都喝不到一瓶干凈的水。而今年死亡人數(shù)中將有四分之一的人是死于艾滋病，肺結核、瘧疾以及由飲用臟水引起的其他傳染病。在美國是沒有人死于這些疾病的，除非是有些人的艾滋病藥品不再有效或他們沒有遵守醫(yī)囑。

記得幾個月以前，據(jù)我所知每個人聽到這個消息的時候都不由得直搖頭。消息是我們發(fā)現(xiàn)在倫敦有一個密謀事件，恐怖分子試圖把易爆化學制品放進嬰兒奶瓶中，使之看起來像嬰兒奶粉配方，以逃避機場人員的檢查。每次我問他們是否感覺到一股寒意穿透了脊背，他們說是的，他們確實有這樣的感覺。因為他們能想象出乘飛機時遇到這樣的情形，或者以我為例，我能想象我的女兒乘飛機時遇到這樣的情形。她因為工作不得不經(jīng)常乘坐飛機。在這里我想告訴你們的是：不平等的情況是可以改善的，不安全性是可以控制的。 我們必須要在21世紀努力解決20世紀那樣帶走許多無辜生命的政治暴力事件。我們應該記住都發(fā)生了哪些事件，在第一次世界大戰(zhàn)中有1200萬人喪生。第二次世界大戰(zhàn)僅某一處就有1500～2000萬人喪生，600萬人死于大屠殺，600萬名猶太人被殺，其他國籍的人有300萬人喪生。前蘇聯(lián)在兩次世界大戰(zhàn)期間和之后的政治大清洗中有2000萬人喪生。200萬人死于柬埔寨獨立戰(zhàn)爭中，上百萬士兵死于非洲部落戰(zhàn)爭中。還有中國“文化大革命”時期，雖然沒有宣布死亡人數(shù)，但是其數(shù)量絕對驚人。我的意思是，我們真的要好好想想這個問題，除非你們期望像20世紀那樣，帶走許多無辜生命的政治暴力事件再次在這一代人中發(fā)生。有所不同的是這次你認為無辜受傷的人可能是你。因為世界是相互依存的，所以世界確實存在著不安全因素，但是我們對此是可以控制的。

由于氣候變化，資源消耗，使得世界再也無法支撐下去了。事實上2007年到2050間，世界人口將會從65億增長到90億，國家更多的物質增長幾乎不能解決這一問題，以現(xiàn)在的情況來看，我們從未注意這些，但所有這些都是客觀存在的問題。因此氣候變化是一個問題嗎?資源消耗是一個問題嗎?我著手處理的貧困及1.3億兒童無法上學和疾病問題是問題嗎?當然，這是一個問題。但我認為最重要的問題是人們看待這些問題的方式，人們看待相互關系的方式以及人們看待他們自己的方式。當今世界正遭受著政治、宗教和心理沖突等問題的洗禮，這就要求我們區(qū)分和同化與我們不同的人。他們中的每一個人，在某種程度上預先達成了一個非常簡單的共識。那就是我們的差異比我們的共性要重要得多。我要強調的是特蕾薩修女受邀來過這里，波諾受邀來過這里，馬丁路德·金受邀來過這里。因為畢業(yè)班的學生都相信，這些人認同我們的共性比我們的差異要重要得多。

你們的精神也感染了我今天的情緒，在座的各位擁有哈佛學位，聰明的才智，這些實際上都給你們增添了無限的優(yōu)勢。你們必須決定如何看待這些優(yōu)勢并就你這一生中該做什么做切實的打算。我希望你們能分享馬丁路德·金的夢想，擁護曼德拉的和解精神，支持波諾關注窮人生活，并且跟隨特蕾薩修女的一生做一些積極的公益事業(yè)。與以往任何時候相比，現(xiàn)在的普通群眾更積極地參與公益活動，這都是因為非政府組織的興起，全球媒體文化的宣傳和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的盛行?；ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)給人們提供便利，使人們適當?shù)匦惺顾麄兊臋嗬愿淖冋麄€世界，前提是他們都愿意行使他們的權利。當前任總統(tǒng)布什和我被要求處理海嘯事務時，在我們處理卡特里娜海嘯工作之前，美國人民已經(jīng)捐助了12億美元用于海嘯救援工作，雖然許多美國人甚至不能在地圖上找到馬爾地夫群島或斯里蘭卡半島。30%的美國家庭參與了捐助活動。他們當中的一半是通過互聯(lián)網(wǎng)捐助的，這就是說，如果有足夠多的人都來支持你，那么你甚至不需要太富有就可以改變這個世界了。但是我們必須要這樣做，公民服務在我們國家是一種傳統(tǒng)，這種傳統(tǒng)和哈佛大學一樣古老，當然要比我們的政府古老得多。

早在憲法生效前40年，本杰明·富蘭克林就在費城組織了第一個志愿消防隊。當托克維爾(法國人)1835年來這里時，他在討論其他事情過程中流露道：讓他感到驚奇的是，美國人總是愿意自己加快步伐去做事，而不是等其他人來做?，F(xiàn)在美國有1,010,000個非政府組織。大約355,000個宗教團體，這些組織中的大部分人都從事某些工作來幫助他人。印度注冊了100萬個這樣的組織，其中有50萬個正在積極地投入工作。中國注冊了280,000個這種組織，兩倍之多的組織還沒有注冊，因為他們不想工作起來受限制。俄羅斯有400,000個這種組織，數(shù)目是如此之多，以至于普京總統(tǒng)曾試圖要限制它們的數(shù)量。我希望他不要那樣做，但這確實是一個高級的難題。在我1993年當選為總統(tǒng)時，俄羅斯或者是中國都沒有非政府組織。全世界人們都知道他們能做一些事情去改變世界。但是我想對你們所有人再次重申，如果我們面前沒有挑戰(zhàn)，在未來的50年也沒有什么東西去妨礙你們的子孫來到這個美麗的地球，這種情況比持續(xù)貶低我們共有生活的意義，以及削弱我們解決共有問題的意識和解決情感上的分歧所造成的影響要深遠得多。因為在這里我們達成的簡單共識是，我們的差異比我們的共性更為重要。

當我們進行人類基因組排序時，作為一個非科學家，我覺得最有意思的事情是，在我當總統(tǒng)的最后一年我們完成了它。我開始真的密切關注這件事，并且一直投入大量資金。我覺得最有趣的事情是，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)有著30億個基因的人類，其基因99.9%是相似的。因此如果你現(xiàn)在看看這巨大的人海，戴著軍帽的，戴著棒球帽的，戴著牛仔帽的和戴著頭巾的，如果你再看看他們所有人的膚色，他們的身高，他們的胖瘦等等，所有這一切的不同，僅僅源于0.1%的基因組成。你會發(fā)現(xiàn)令人震驚的不僅僅是人，還有我們之中剩余的其他人，花費生命中90%的時間去思考那0.1%的差異，這難道不好笑嗎?我的意思是，難道我們不都是這樣的嗎?在演講中有多少逗笑的話是關于這些的?至少我沒去耶魯，不是嗎?布朗袋總是很滑稽的。

那是完全一樣的道理，不是嗎?我是說，擁有智慧的前提是，我們一生中真正重要的是能區(qū)別對待生活中的人和事。的確，那是現(xiàn)代文化最原始要素之一。也是所有訪談節(jié)目，甚至許多膚淺評價的政治新聞的最原始要素之一。他們試圖在人們生活中最壞的時段去抨擊他們，但談到我時就全都是好的，不管我做錯了什么都不是我的錯。邀請馬丁路德·金，特蕾莎修女和波諾來這里也是如此。納爾遜·曼德拉是世界上最受人們欽佩的人。不久前的一天晚上我被逗樂了，我與一群朋友正準備離開紐約的一家餐廳，這時看到距離兩張桌子處坐著林博，他說過一些讓我惱火的事。因此我走過去和他握手，跟他和他的客人問好，其實我過去只想告訴他，我們99.9%都是相同的。但是我不想毀了這個可憐之人的甜點，所以最后我釋懷了什么也沒說。

現(xiàn)下我們覺得這很好笑，但下個月我就要進行每年一次的非洲之行了?？纯窗滩№椖窟M行得如何，并且與納爾遜·曼德拉慶祝他89歲生日，不知道他還剩下多少日子。想到我可能有99.9%與他相同時，我甚至無法想象。因此我問你們，我們有諸多如此類似的其他問題嗎?達爾福爾地區(qū)發(fā)生的是一場悲劇嗎?我希望美國采用明智的氣候變化調控制度嗎?對于政府的理論家修改科學報告，我表示厭惡嗎?對于正在進行的上千件事情，我持反對意見嗎?當然。所有這些都源于我們能違反學習，知識、理智、甚至人性的基本標準，因為人與人之間的差異更為重要，這也促使大家崇拜權力的強度要遠遠高于堅持自己的理想。人與人之間的差異更為重要。近幾年發(fā)生的最偉大的事就是與前任布什總統(tǒng)一起做這項工作。大家知道，我應該做這件事情。我身體健康，思想還跟得上時代。老布什都82歲了，仍然坐飛機飛來飛去做著同樣的事情，我喜歡這個人。對于觀眾里的的民主黨人士，我深表歉意。生活就是每天遇見新鮮的事。接下來，我想講兩個故事來結束這次演講，故事一個發(fā)生在亞洲，一個發(fā)生在非洲。我要說所有的細節(jié)都沒有這兩個故事來的重要。

喬治·布什和我經(jīng)歷海嘯事件之后，我們進行了救災工作。地震過后科菲·安南邀請布什督導聯(lián)合國在巴基斯坦的救援工作，這項工作現(xiàn)在得到了大家的認可，并邀請我擔任了兩年的海嘯救助協(xié)調員。因此我的倒數(shù)第二次旅行去了印度尼西亞的亞齊市，亞齊是目前為止受災最嚴重的地區(qū)，那里有25萬人遇難。我去了一所難民營，那里非常熱，但幾千人仍生活在帳篷里，非常地不舒服。而我的工作就是去那里聽他們訴苦，然后想出解決辦法，怎樣才能更快地使他們離開難民營。因此每個難民營都選舉了一位負責人。我到達時，當?shù)厝讼蛭医榻B了一位年輕的翻譯(一名年輕的印度尼西亞婦女)，難民營的負責人以及他的妻子和兒子。他們笑著向我問好，我低頭看著這個小男孩，非常驚訝，幾乎無法呼吸，我認為他是我所見過最漂亮的小孩。我對翻譯說，我覺得他是我一生中見過最漂亮的小男孩。翻譯說，是的，他確實很漂亮。海嘯前他有九個漂亮的兄弟姐妹，但現(xiàn)在全都沒了。

因此那個負責人的妻子和兒子借口離開了，由這位已經(jīng)失去了九個孩子的父親繼續(xù)帶著我參觀了兩個小時。他臉上帶著微笑，所談的都是災民們的需求，自始至終沒有提及發(fā)生在他自己身上的事以及他所承受的悲痛。最后我們到了門診部，我抬頭看到他的妻子在那里，這位有十個孩子卻失去九個的母親抱著一個小嬰兒，這個嬰兒出生不到一周，是救災營里的新生兒。她說，告訴你這些我會有麻煩的，因為在印度尼西亞文化中，婦女生了小孩要在床上躺40天，家人在床邊侍候，她們躺著什么也不用做。到第40天時，孩子的母親起床回去工作，家人給嬰兒取名。這個孩子出生還不到一周，因此這位失去九個孩子的母親抱著孩子來到這里，她告訴我說，他是我們這里的新生兒，是個小男孩，我們想讓你給他取個名字。我看著她對翻譯說，你們有標志著新開始的名字嗎?翻譯解釋給婦女聽，婦女回答后，翻譯告訴我有。很幸運在印度尼西亞語中，黎明是男孩的名字。而且孩子的母親同意給他取名黎明，標志他們新的開始。你們不必非要接觸到那些失去了十個孩子中的九個，珍愛剩下的那一個的人，以及給新生兒取名黎明這樣的人后，才意識到我們的共同點比分歧更為重要。

故事就說到這里，留給大家一些時間好好思考。1968年馬丁路德·金被邀請到這里時，整個國家仍籠罩著種族歧視。十年后又籠罩著性別歧視，之后又是恐同性戀癥。偶爾這些丑陋的東西又會重新流行起來，但總的說來，在場的沒人準備一生被這些東西束縛著，但也沒人能幸免，我們都面臨著誘惑。你們面臨的最大誘惑是要相信自己是與眾不同的，相信是你的與眾不同使自己來到這里，相信你的與眾不同能給自己帶來巨大的財富或滿足你的任何需求，而且認為這千分之一的差別是你們自己的全部，決定著你們應該有一個好的命運，別人應該有差的命運。你們一定不要落入這個陷阱。沃倫·巴菲特計劃捐出99%的財富，因為他說他賺的錢大多數(shù)是因為他的出生地和出生時間，是一場幸運的意外。而且在這個時代這個地方，他的工作甚至比教師﹑警官﹑護士﹑醫(yī)生和那些關心所有應該受到關愛之人的人們的工作更加賺錢。巴菲特計劃捐出99%的財富，而剩下不到1%的財富也足夠他這輩子花的，因為他意識到他的財富不全源自于這千分之一的差別，是人性讓他捐出99%的財富給那些更需要錢的人。

我曾在非洲中部的高地工作過，那里幾乎沒有交通工具，人們走路碰見時會說你好﹗你好嗎?早上好﹗對方的回答并不是我很好，你呢?回答譯成英語是：我看見你了。想想這句話，我們每天碰見多少以前從沒見過的人?待會我們全部都退場了，有人會進來折疊大約兩萬把椅子，然后清理我們離開時留下的垃圾，為明天或后天做準備。我們不用考慮這些，因為有人會處理的。這些清潔人員大多數(shù)都認為沒人留意他們。要不是發(fā)生了可怕的災難，我也絕不可能見到印度尼西亞亞齊的人們。故事就講到這里，留給你們一些時間好好思考吧。請用心感受偉人演講的真諦，請花盡可能多的時間﹑感情和精力考慮那99.9%的相同之處。關注每個人，要知道每個人都需要新的開始。享受好的命運，喜愛你的與眾不同，但是要認識到我們的共性更為重要。上帝保佑你們﹗祝你們好運﹗