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Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.
实力永远意味着责任和危险。
Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown.
先辈们曾面临某些我们这个时代不复存在的危险。
We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee.
我们现在面临的则是其他危险，这些危险的出现是先人所无法预见的。
Modern life is both complex and intense,
现代生活既复杂又紧张，
and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being.
我们的社会和政治肌体的每一根纤维，都能感觉到过去半个世纪里工业的异常发展所引起的巨大变化。
Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic.
人们以前从来没有尝试过诸如在民主共和国的形式下管理一个大陆的事务这般庞大而艰巨的实验。
The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy,
创造了奇迹般的物质幸福，并将我们的活力、
self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers.
自立能力和个人能动性发展到很高程度的那些条件，也带来了与工业中心巨大的财富积累不可分开的烦恼与焦虑，
Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind.
许多事情取决于我们的实验成功与否，这不仅关系到我们自己的幸福，而且关系到人类的幸福。
If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations,
倘若我们失败了，就会动摇全世界自由的自治政府的事业的基础，
and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.
因此，对于我们自己，对于当今世界，对于尚未出生的后代，我们负有重大责任。
There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously,
我们没有什么理由畏惧未来，但是有充分理由认真地面对未来，
neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending,
既不对自己隐瞒摆在面前的问题的严重性，也不怕以百折不挠的意志处理这些问题，
unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
正确予以解决。
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded
然而，要知道，虽然这些是新问题，虽然摆在我们面前的任务不同于摆在创建并维护这个共和国的先辈面前的任务，
and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced,
但是，如果要很好地履行我们的责任，那么，
if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged.
承担这些任务和正视这些问题所必须发扬的精神依然根本没有改变。
We know that self-government is difficult.
我们知道，自治是困难的。
We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which
我们知道，我们力求以组成本民族的自由人所自由表达的意愿来正确地管理自己的事务，
seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it.
没有哪一个民族需要像我们所需要的这样高尚的特性。
But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past.
但我们相信，我们会背离先人们在辉煌的过去所创立的事业。
They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy.
他们干了他们的工作，他们为我们留下了我们如今所享受的辉煌的遗产。
We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children.
我们也坚信，我们一定不会浪费这份遗产，而且要进一步充实增加，留给我们的孩子，留给孩子们的后代。
To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life,
为此，我们不仅必须在重大危机中，而且要在日常事务中，
the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal,
都表现出注重实际的智慧、勇敢、刚毅和忍耐，尤其是献身于崇高理想的力量等优秀品质，
which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.
而这些品质曾使亚伯拉罕·林肯时代维护这个共和国的人们名垂青史。
