My fellow-citizens, 同胞们：
No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. 世界上没有哪个民族比我们更有理由心怀感激。我怀着崇敬之情说这番话，并非夸耀我们自身的力量，而是感激造物主赐予我们的种种条件，使我们能够获得如此巨大的福祉与幸福。作为一个民族，我们有幸在一片新大陆上奠定国家生活的基础。我们是时代的继承者，却不必像古老国家那样，承受逝去文明遗留下来的沉重负担。
We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. 我们不必为生存而与外族争斗；然而我们的生活仍然需要活力与努力，否则那些刚毅坚韧的美德就会枯萎凋零。
Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul. 在这样的条件下，如果我们失败了，那只能怪我们自己。我们过去所取得的成功，以及我们坚信未来将带来的成功，不应使我们产生虚荣之心，而应使我们深刻而持久地认识到生活所赋予我们的一切；充分认识到我们肩负的责任；并坚定决心证明，在自由政府之下，一个伟大的民族无论是在物质方面还是精神方面都能得到最好的发展。
Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. 我们已经得到了许多，人们理所当然也会对我们提出更多要求。我们对他人负有责任，对自己也负有责任，两者都不可推卸。我们已经成为一个伟大的国家，国家的强盛使我们必然同世界其他国家发生联系，因此我们的行为必须配得上这些责任。对于所有其他国家，无论大小，我们都应抱持热忱而真诚的友好态度。
We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. 我们不仅要在言语上，更要在行动上表明，我们真诚希望通过以公正和慷慨的精神承认他们的所有权利来赢得他们的好感。但无论对国家还是对个人来说，公正和慷慨在强者身上比在弱者身上更有分量。在始终小心避免伤害他人的同时，我们必须同样坚持不被他人伤害。
We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression. 我们渴望和平，但我们渴望的是公正的和平、正义的和平。我们渴望和平是因为我们认为这是正确的，而不是因为我们害怕。任何一个行事勇敢公正的弱小国家都不应有理由害怕我们，任何一个强大的国家都不应能够将我们作为傲慢侵略的对象。
Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. 我们与世界其他强国的关系很重要，但更重要的是我们彼此之间的关系。在建国以来一个世纪又四分之一的时间里，这个国家的财富、人口和力量不断增长；与此同时，任何走向强盛的国家都会面对的各种问题也必然随之增加。权力总是既意味着责任，也意味着危险。
Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, 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. 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. 我们的祖先面临过某些危险，而我们已经摆脱了这些危险。我们现在面临着其他危险，这些危险是他们根本无法预见的。现代生活既复杂又紧张，近半个世纪非凡的工业发展所带来的巨大变化，在我们社会和政治生活的每一个方面都能感受到。人类从未尝试过如此庞大而艰巨的实验，即在民主共和国的形式下管理一个大陆的事务。
The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. 那些促成我们物质繁荣的条件，那些高度发展了我们的能量、自力更生和个人主动性的条件，也带来了工业中心积累大量财富所不可避免的忧虑和不安。
Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. 我们实验的成功至关重要，不仅关系到我们自身的福祉，也关系到人类的福祉。
If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright. 如果我们失败了，全世界自由自治的事业将动摇其根基，因此我们肩负着沉重的责任，对我们自己，对今天的世界，以及对尚未出生的世代。我们没有理由害怕未来，但我们完全有理由严肃地面对它，既不回避摆在我们面前的问题的严重性，也不畏惧以坚定不屈的决心正确解决这些问题。
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. 然而，尽管问题是新的，尽管摆在我们面前的任务与那些创建和维护这个共和国的先辈们所面临的任务不同，但如果我们要很好地履行职责，承担这些任务和面对这些问题所必需的精神本质上是不变的。我们知道自治是困难的。我们知道，没有哪个民族像那些试图通过自由公民自由表达的意愿来正确管理其事务的民族那样，需要如此高尚的品格。
But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. 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. 但我们相信，我们不会辜负伟大先辈的英名。他们完成了自己的使命，为我们留下了如今享有的辉煌遗产。轮到我们时，我们也坚信，能够把这份遗产完整保存并发扬光大，再传给我们的子孙后代。
To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, 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. 要做到这一点，我们必须不仅在重大危机中，而且在日常生活中，展现出实用智慧、勇气、坚韧和耐力等品质，最重要的是对崇高理想的奉献精神。正是这些品质使在华盛顿时代创建这个共和国的人们伟大，使在亚伯拉罕·林肯时代维护这个共和国的人们伟大。