1962年肯尼迪登月演讲

We Choose to Go to the Moon

John Fitzgerald Kennedy，September 12, 1962

Rice Stadium

President Pitzer, Mr.Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

皮茨校长，副总统，州长，众议员托马斯，参议员维利，众议员米勒，韦伯先生，比尔先生，科学家们，尊敬的来宾，女士们先生们：

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.

我十分感激你们的校长授予我名誉客座教授的头衔，并且我向各位保证我的第一个演讲会十分简洁。

我很高兴来到这里，特别是在这个时候来到这里。

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.

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.

我们在这个以知识闻名的大学，在这个以进步闻名的城市，在这个以实力闻名的州府相会。并且我们需要它们全部三者，因为我们正处于一个变化与挑战的时刻，希望与恐惧交织的十年，知识与愚昧并存的时代。

我们获取的知识越多，我们显露出的无知也就越多。

尽管显著的事实表明：享誉世界的科学家们仍在艰苦工作，尽管我国的科研力量以每12年翻一倍的速度增长、总体超过了人口增长速度的三倍。尽管如此，宇宙中未知之域、未解之谜和未竟之事的范围之广，仍然远远超出了我们所有人的理解能力。

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 advanc