美国前总统克林顿夫人-希拉里精彩演讲汇总

第一篇：美国前总统克林顿夫人-希拉里精彩演讲汇总

希拉里退出竞选

演讲稿节选:

So I want to say to my supporters: When you hear people saying or think to yourself, “If only, or, ”What if," I say, please, don't go there.我要告诉我的支持者：如果你听到别人说，或者你自己曾经这样想，“如果某件事没有发生”，或者“要是出现了另一种情况”……那么我会说，请不要这样设想。

Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been.We have to work together for what still can be.And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president.为往事叹息，会阻碍我们前进。生命短暂，时间宝贵，沉湎于空想的代价实在太大。面对现实，我们必须团结起来。这就是我全力支持奥巴马参议员当选下一任总统的原因。她对自己参选的意义，总结得非常漂亮。

When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions.Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief? Well, I think we answered that one.当选举刚开始的时候，到处都有人在问：一个女人真的能够领导国家吗？我想，我们已经对这个问题做出了回答。

As we gather here today in this historic, magnificent building, the 50th woman to leave this Earth is orbiting overhead.If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House.当我们今天在这里集会的时候，第50位妇女正在我们的头顶，绕地球飞行。如果我们能够将50个妇女送入太空，那么总有一天，我们也会将一个妇女送入白宫。

Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it...虽然这一次，我们无法打破那最高、最坚硬的玻璃天花板，但是由于你们，它出现了1800万道裂缝……

...and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.光明从未像现在这样明亮，让我们充满希望，确信下一次这条道路将变得更容易一些。希拉里对奥巴马赞美之词，简直无以复加。谁能想到几个星期前，两人还在互相攻击。希拉里对着电视公开说“Shame on you, Barack Obama”。不能不让人感叹政治家的灵活。

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.我们的战斗还将继续，我们的目标还没有完成，让我们继续用我们的能力、我们的热情、我们的力量、我们能做的一切，帮助巴拉克·奥巴马，让他成为美国的下一任总统。

Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run.I endorse him and throw my full support behind him.今天，当我停止自己的竞选活动，我向他祝贺胜利，为他的优异表现喝彩。我完全支持他，我将尽全力支持他。And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.我要求你们所有人加入我，像支持我那样地，全力支持巴拉克·奥巴马。

I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates.I've had a front-row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit.我在竞选中，曾经同他面对面辩论了22次。我对他很了解，我亲眼看到了他的力量和决心，他的优雅和勇气。

希拉里的结束词堪称经典。

Now, being human, we are imperfect.That's why we need each other, to catch each other when we falter, to encourage each other when we lose heart.Some may lead, some may follow, but none of us can go it alone.作为人类，我们没有人是完美无缺的。这就是为什么我们彼此需要。当跌倒的时候，我们彼此扶持。当灰心的时候，我们互相鼓励。一些人会成为领导者，另一些人将紧紧跟随，但是没有人能够独自完成这一切。

竞选纽约参议员的演讲

NEW YORK SENATE RACE SPEECH

By HILARY CLINTON You know, you know, we started this great effort on a sunny July morning in Pinders Corner on Pat and Liz Moynihan's beautiful farm and 62 counties, 16 months, 3 debates, 2 opponents, and 6 black pantsuits later, because of you, here we are。

You came out and said that issues and ideals matter, jobs matter, downstate and upstate, health care matters, education matters, the environment matters, social security matters, a woman's right to choose matters.It all matters and I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you, New York!Thank you for opening up your minds and your hearts, for seeing the possibility of what we could do together for our children and for our future here in this state and in our nation.I am profoundly grateful to all of you for giving me the chance to serve you.I willabout overcrowded or crumbling schools, about the struggle to care for growing children and aging parents, about the continuing challenge of providing equal opportunity for all and about children moving away from their home towns because good jobs are so hard to find in upstate New York.Now I've worked on issues like these for a long time, some of them for 30 years, and I am determined to make a difference for all of you.You see, I believe our nation owes every responsible citizen and every responsible family the tools that they need to make the most of their own lives.That's the basic bargain.I'll do my best to honor in the United States Senate.And to those of you who did not support me, I want you to know that I will work in the Senate for you and for all New Yorkers.And to those of you who worked so hard and never lost faith even in the toughest times, I offer you my undying gratitude.竞选纽约参议员的演讲

希拉里.克林顿大家知道，我们是在七月的一个阳光灿烂的早上，从帕特和丽兹·莫伊尼汉的美丽农场的宾德角开始迈出了这艰难的一步，然后辗转六十二个县，历经过十六个月、三场辩论，打败了两个竞争对手，穿破六套黑色便服。终于在你们的支持下，我们站在了这里。

你们说的这些事情和观念非常重要--全州的就业问题是重要的，保健是重要的，教育是重要的，环境是重要的，社会保险是重要的，还有妇女选择权是重要的。这些全都重要，而我只想衷心道一声：谢谢你，纽约！

感谢你们敞开心扉，感谢你们看到了这可能性--我们将一起为后代、为我们纽约以至全国的将来而共同努力。我对你们每个人都深怀谢意，感谢你们给了我一个为大家服务的机会。

我将以参议员丹尼尔·帕特里克·莫伊尼汉为榜样，尽自己最大的努力不负众望。我希望你们每个人、诸位纽约市民和美国观众，和我一起共同感谢他这50年来为纽约和美国做出了巨大贡献。莫伊尼汉议员：我代表纽约和美国，感谢你。

今晚我发誓，我将跨越两党的界限为全纽约的家庭创造繁荣进步。今天，我们是作为民主党人和共和党人来投票选举；明天，我们将作为纽约人重新开始。

能生活在我国最丰富多彩、最生气勃勃的一个州，我们是多么的幸运。大家知道，从布朗克斯以南到纽约最南端，从布鲁克林到布法罗，从蒙特哥到麦锡纳，从世界最高的摩天大楼到令人叹为观止的山脉，我遇见了一些人，他们的容貌和故事，我永远也不会忘记。六十二个县的成千上万的纽约人把我迎进了你们的学校、你们的风味小餐馆、你们的工厂、你们的起居室和前廊。你们教导着我，你们测试着我，你们把面临的难题和关心的问题告诉我--学校的拥挤和喧闹，养育孩子和赡养年迈双亲的艰辛，寻求人人同等待遇的挑战，还有在纽约州北部地区因为就业机会难寻，孩子们都离开故乡、移往他处的问题。长期以来，我一直在为这些问题而奔忙，有些问题甚至已经忙了有30年，我决心让这些问题得到改观。

大家知道，我们国家有义务让每个负责任的公民和家庭的生活更上一层楼。这是最起码的，作为一名参议员，我将尽自己最大的努力来实现它。

对于那些在过去没有支持我的人们，我想告诉你们，我将在参议院为你们、为全体纽约人而工作。对于那些勤奋工作、甚至在最艰难的时期也不放弃信念的人们，我永远感谢你们。英文原稿

You know, you know, we started this great effort on a sunny July morning in Pindars Corner on Pat and Liz Moynihan’s beautiful farm and 62 counties, 16 months, 3 debates, 2 opponents, and 6 black 3)pantsuits later, because of you, here we are.You came out and said that issues and ideals matter.Jobs matter, downstate and upstate.Health care matters, education matters, the environment matters, Social Security matters, a woman’s right to choose matters.It all matters and I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you, New York!

Thank you for opening up your minds and your hearts, for seeing the possibility of what we could do together for our children and for our future here in this state and in our nation.I am profoundly grateful to all of you for giving me the chance to serve you.I will, I will do everything I can to be worthy of your faith and trust and to honor the powerful example of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.I would like all of you and the countless New Yorkers and Americans watching to join me in honoring him for his 4)incredible half century of service to New York and our nation.Senator Moynihan, on behalf of New York and America, thank you.I promise you tonight that I will reach across party lines to bring progress for all of New York’s families.Today we voted as Democrats and Republicans.Tomorrow we begin again as New Yorkers.And how fortunate we are indeed to live in the most 5)diverse, 6)dynamic and beautiful state in the entire union.You know, from the South Bronx to the Southern Tier, from Brooklyn to Buffalo, from Montauk to Massena, from the 7)world’s tallest skyscrapers to breathtaking mountain ranges, I’ve met people whose faces and stories I will never forget.Thousands of New Yorkers from all 62 counties welcomed me into your schools, your local 8)diners, your factory floors, your living rooms and front 9)porches.You taught me, you tested me and you shared with me your challenges and concerns-about overcrowded or crumbling schools, about the struggle to care for growing children and aging parents, about the continuing challenge of providing equal opportunity for all and about children moving away from their home towns because good jobs are so hard to find in upstate New York.Now I’ve worked on issues like these for a long time, some of them for 30 years, and I am determined to make a difference for all of you.You see, I believe our nation 10)owes every responsible citizen and every responsible family the tools that they need to make the most of their own lives.That’s the basic bargain.I’ll do my best to honor in the United States Senate.And to those of you who did not support me, I want you to know that I will work in the Senate for you and for all New Yorkers.And to those of you who worked so hard and never lost faith even in the toughest times, I offer you my 11)undying gratitude.中文翻译：

大家知道，我们是在七月的一个阳光灿烂的早上，从帕特和丽兹·莫伊尼汉夫妇位于频德角的美丽农场开始迈出了这艰难的一步，然后辗转六十二个县，历经过十六个月、三场辩论，打败了两个竞争对手，穿破六套黑色便服。如今，在你们的支持下，我们终于胜利了。

你们说，各项议题和观念非常重要--全州的就业问题是重要的，医疗保健是重要的，教育是重要的，环境是重要的，社会保险是重要的，还有妇女选择权是重要的。这些全都重要，而我只想衷心道一声：谢谢你，纽约！

感谢你们开放思想，不存成见，感谢你们相信我们携手为子孙后代、为我州，以至全国的未来而共同努力的美好前景。我对你们每个人都深怀谢意，感谢你们给了我一个为大家服务的机会。

我将以参议员丹尼尔·帕特里克·莫伊尼汉为榜样，尽自己最大的努力不负众望。我恳请你们所有人、诸位正在收看直播的纽约市民和美国人民，同我一起向他致敬，感谢他这半个世纪以来为纽约和美国做出的巨大贡献。莫伊尼汉议员：我代表纽约和美国人民，感谢你。

今晚我发誓，我将跨越两党的界线为全纽约州的所有家庭创造繁荣与进步。今天，我们以民主党人和共和党人的身份投票；明天，我们将作为纽约人重新开始。

能生活在我国多元文化最丰富多彩、最生气勃勃、最美丽的一个州，我们是多么的幸运。大家知道，从南布朗克斯到纽约最南端，从布鲁克林到布法罗，从蒙特哥到马塞纳，从世界上最高的摩天大楼到令人叹为观止的绵延山脉，我认识了不少人，我永远也不会忘记他们的容貌和故事。纽约六十二个县成千上万的纽约人把我迎进了你们的学校、你们的风味小餐馆、你们的车间、你们的起居室和前廊。你们教导着我，你们考验着我，你们把面临的难题和关心的问题告诉我--拥挤的校园和破旧的校舍，养育孩子和赡养年迈双亲的艰辛，寻求人人同等待遇的挑战，还有在纽约州北部地区因为就业机会难寻，孩子们都离开故乡、移往他处的问题。长期以来，我一直在为这些问题奔忙，有些问题甚至我已经为之奋斗了30年之久，我决心让这些问题得到改观。

大家知道，我们国家有义务让每个有责任感的公民和家庭的生活更上一层楼。这是最起码的，作为一名参议员，我将尽自己最大的努力来实现它。

对于那些在过去没有支持我的人们，我想告诉你们，我将在参议院为你们、为全体纽约人而工作。对于那些勤奋工作、甚至在最艰难的时期也不放弃信念的人们，我永远感谢你们。

注释：

1、纽约州在美国东北部，纽约市是美国第一大城市和最大的海港，也是美国人口最多的城市。美国的立法机构——美国国会（United States Congress）包括众议院（House of Representatives）和参议院（Senate）。美国议员选举实行直接选举制，参议员由各州选民直接选举，每个州可选出两名国会参议员，每个参议员任期为六年。

2、county [5kaunti] n.县（请注意，美国的县是比市更大一级的行政区划单位)

3、pantsuit [5pAnsju:t] n.女裤套装

4、incredible [in5kredbl] a.惊人的，不可思议的；难以置信的5、diverse [dai5vE:z] a.各种各样的，相异的6、dynamic [dai5nAmik] a.有生气的，精力充沛的

7、“The world’s tallest skyscrapers”是指位于纽约的世界最高建筑：世界贸易中心（world Trade Center）和帝国大厦（Empire State Building），“breath taking mountain ranges”是指阿巴拉契亚山脉（Appalachian Mountains）。

8、diner [5dainE] n.（路边）小饭店，小餐馆

9、porch [pC:tF] n.走廊，游廊；门廊，入口处

10、owe [Eu] vt.应给予，对„„有义务

11、undying [QndaiiN] a.不朽的，永恒的

第二篇：美国前总统克林顿感恩节英语演讲稿

美国前总统克林顿感恩节英语演讲稿

1998 US Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation

Thanksgiving Day is one of America's most beloved and widely celebrated holidays.Whether

descendants of the original colonists or new citizens, Americans join with family and friends to give thanks to a provident God for the blessings of freedom, peace, and plenty.We are a Nation of people who have come from many countries, cultures, and creeds.The colonial Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621, when the Pilgrims of the Old World mingled in fellowship and

celebration with the American Indians of the New World, foreshadowed the challenge and opportunity that such diversity has always offered us: to live together in peace with respect and appreciation for our differences and to draw on one another's strengths in the work of building a great and unified Nation.And so at Thanksgiving we must also remember to be thankful for the many contributions each

generation of Americans has made to preserve our blessings.We are thankful for the brave patriots who have fought and died to defend our freedom and uphold our belief in human dignity.We are thankful for the men and women who have worked this land throughout the decades, from the stony farms of New England to the broad wheat fields of the Great Plains to the fertile vineyards of California, sharing our country's bounty with their fellow Americans and people around the world.We are thankful for the leaders and visionaries who have challenged us through the years to fulfill America's promise for all our people, to make real in our society our fundamental ideals of freedom, equality, and justice.We are thankful for the countless quiet heroes and heroines who work hard each day, raise their families with love and care, and still find time and energy to make their communities better places in which to live.Each of us has reason to be proud of our part in building America, and each of us has reason to be grateful to our fellow Americans for the success of these efforts.Now, therefore, I, William J.Clinton, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 26, 1998, as a National Day of Thanksgiving.I encourage all the people of the United States to assemble

in their homes, places of worship, or community centers to share the spirit of goodwill and prayer;to express heartfelt thanks to God for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us;and to reach out in true gratitude and friendship to our brothers and sisters across this land who, together, comprise our great American family.In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 17th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1998, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-third.

第三篇：希拉里克林顿讲话

希拉里·克林顿:我的一部分阻力的

周二下午，前民主党总统候选人希拉里克林顿确认自己是特朗普的广泛抵抗运动的一员。

“我正在积极公民和阻力的一部分,”她对女性的雷鸣般的掌声说女性在纽约国际2017午餐。

在台上采访期间,宣布自己的一部分阻力之前,克林顿说,她花了几十年的学习需要什么来帮助推动美国人,包括那些没有投票给她。她说她不想诉诸情绪一样,特朗普和曾希望认真交流了卫生保健、外交政策、可再生能源、人工智能等等在竞选期间。

克林顿回忆说，特朗普实际上取笑了她，准备为他们的第一次总统辩论做准备。

“我说,‘是的,我是准备辩论。这是我准备做的另一件事。克林顿说:“我准备做总统。”“这不是什么大抓。我明白这一点。但是，你知道，我不能做任何事，除了我自己。” 克林顿说，真正的变革是通过建立过去的进步来实现的——而不是发誓要抛弃整个体系。

早些时候的谈话,CNN的首席国际记者克里斯蒂安·阿曼普尔问克林顿她想象它可能实际上意味着全世界的女性如果她成为美国第一位女总统。

希拉里克林顿在纽约谈到了“抵抗”。(照片:丹McDermid /路透社)“哦,我认为这是一个非常大的交易,”克林顿说。“我认为部分在国内有重要消息可以发送到我们自己的女儿,孙女、孙子和儿子。但我认为，尤其是在国际上。”

克林顿说她的伟大特权环游世界会议上各种各样的人:从宫殿的领导人的女性生活在农村地区妇女互助国际试图帮助的人。

“仍有如此多的不公平,不公平,那么多的不尊重和歧视妇女和女孩,”她说。“我们已经取得了进展?是的，我们有。但我们做得够不够了吗?不，我们没有。”

克林顿说，妇女的权利在那些最有可能促进和保护恐怖主义的地方消失了，这些地方滋生了反对男女平等的意识形态。“妇女权益是21世纪的未竟事业。没有更重要的、更大的问题需要解决。”

克林顿还说，她对自己的选举失利负有“绝对的个人责任”，她说她和她的竞选团队都犯了错误。

“我是候选人。我是参加投票的人。我非常清楚我们面临的挑战、问题和不足，”克林顿说。“但是我想说这个。我参加了很多竞选活动，我为我们的竞选活动感到非常自豪。”

5月2日，希拉里克林顿参加了妇女国际午宴。(照片:丹McDermid /路透社)尽管采取了“绝对的个人责任,”克林顿还说她是“赢得”直到两件事情发生了:美国联邦调查局局长詹姆斯喜剧发布一封称该机构重新开放其调查她使用私人邮件服务器作为国务卿和“维基解密”公布入侵活动的邮件。她说喜剧的信件和维基解密的转储”提出的疑惑的人倾向于把票投给我吓跑了。”

“我们犯错误了吗?当然，我们做到了。我犯过错误吗?哦，我的天啊，是的，”她说。“但我相信我们的原因失去了其间的事件在过去10天。

英文参考

Hillary Clinton: I’m ‘part of the resistance’

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton identified herself as a member of the widespread resistance movement to President Trump on Tuesday afternoon.“I’m back to now being an activist citizen and part of the resistance,” she said to thunderous applause at the Women for Women International 2017 annual luncheon in New York.During an onstage interview, just before declaring herself part of the resistance, Clinton said she spent decades learning what it would take to help move the people of the United States forward, including those who did not vote for her.She said that she didn’t want to appeal to emotions the same way that Trump did and had hoped to have serious conversations about health care, foreign policy, renewable energy, artificial intelligence and so on during the campaign.Clinton recalled that Trump had actually made fun of her for preparing for their first presidential debate.“I said, ‘Yes, I did prepare for the debate.And here’s another thing I prepared for.I prepared for being president,’” Clinton said.“It’s not exactly headline grabbing.I understand that.But, you know, I can’t be anything other than who I am.”

Clinton said that real change is made through building upon past progress — not vowing to throw out the whole system.Earlier in the conversation, CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour asked Clinton what she imagines it might have meant for women throughout the world if she had actually become the first female president of the United States.“Oh, I think it would’ve been a really big deal,” Clinton said.“I think that partly here at home there were important messages that could’ve sent to our own daughters, granddaughters, grandsons and sons.But I think especially internationally.”

Clinton said she had the great privilege of traveling the world meeting a wide variety of people: from leaders in palaces to the kinds of women living in rural areas whom Women for Women International is trying to help.“There is still so much inequity, so much unfairness, so much disrespect and discrimination toward women and girls,” she said.“So have we made progress? Yes we have.But have we made enough? No we haven’t.”

Clinton said that women’s rights are being lost in the same places that are most likely to foster and protect terrorism, places that harbor ideologies hostile to equality between the sexes.“Women’s rights is the unfinished business of the 21st century.There is no more important, larger issue that has to be addressed.”

Clinton also said that she takes “absolute personal responsibility” for her election loss, saying that she and her campaign both made mistakes.“I was the candidate.I was the person who was on the ballot.I was very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we have,” Clinton said.“But I will say this.I’ve been in a lot of campaigns, and I’m very proud of the campaign we ran.”

Despite taking “absolute personal responsibility,” Clinton also said she was “on the way to winning” until two things happened: FBI director James Comey released a letter saying the agency was reopening its investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state and WikiLeaks published hacked campaign emails.She said the combination of Comey’s letter and WikiLeaks’ dump “raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off.”

“Did we make mistakes? Of course we did.Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes,” she said.“But the reason I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days.”

第四篇：美国国务卿希拉里.克林顿2010年三八国际妇女节讲话

美国国务卿希拉里.克林顿2010年三八国际妇女节讲话

U.S.Secretary of State Bill Clinton speech, 2010 March Eighth International Women's Day 美国国务卿克林顿2010年三八国际妇女节讲话

March 8th is International Women’s Day—a day to reflect on the progress the world has made in advancing women’s rights, and to recognize what work remains to be done.三月八日是国际妇女节。在这个日子，我们回顾全世界在促进妇女权利方面取得的进展，并确定有待完成的工作。

This year marks an anniversary very close to my heart.Fifteen years ago, along with women and men from around the world I attended the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.The message from that conference rang loudly and clearly, and still echoes across cultures and continents: Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.今年的三八国际妇女节是一个是我倍感亲切的周年纪念日。15年前，我与来自全世界的男女代表一起出席了在北京召开的联合国第四届世界妇女大会。那次会议发出了一个明确无误的最强音，至今仍在各种文化中和各大洲发出回响：人权即是妇女的权利，妇女的权利即是人权。

One hundred and eighty-nine countries represented at Beijing adopted a Platform for Action that pledged to increase women’s access to education, healthcare, jobs, and credit, and to protect their right to live free from violence.We have made great progress, but there is a long way to go.Women are still the majority of the world’s poor, unhealthy, underfed, and uneducated.They rarely cause violent conflicts but too often bear their consequences.Women are absent from negotiations about

peace and security to end those conflicts.Their voices simply are not being heard.在北京出席会议的189个国家的代表通过了一项《行动纲领》，保证要增加妇女获得教育、医疗、就业和信贷的机会，并保护她们在生活中免遭暴力的权利。我们已经取得巨大的进展，但仍然有很长的路要走。在世界上的贫穷、患病、挨饿和未受过教育人群中，妇女仍然占大多数。她们中很少有人引起暴力冲突，但却经常承担暴力冲突带来的各种后果。在为结束这些冲突而举行的有关和平与安全问题的各种协商中，没有妇女参加。没有人听取她们的意见。

Today, the United States is making women a cornerstone of foreign policy because we think it’s the right thing to do, but we also believe it’s the smart thing to do as well.Investing in the potential of the world’s women and girls is one of the surest ways to achieve global economic progress, political stability, and greater prosperity for women — and men — the world over.今天，美国正在把妇女工作作为外交政策的基石，因为我们认为这是正确之举，但我们同时也认为这是智慧之举。通过投资发挥世界女性的潜力是实现全球经济发展、政治稳定和全世界妇女及男性带来更大繁荣的最有保障的方式之一。

So on this International Women’s Day, let us rededicate ourselves to advancing and protecting the rights of women and girls, and to join together to ensure that no one is left behind in the 21st century.因此，值此国际妇女节之际，让我们继续献身于促进与保护妇女和女童的权利，团结一致，以确保在21世纪没有任何人掉队。

第五篇：美国前总统克林顿在哈佛大学2007年毕业纪念日上的演讲

June 6, 2007

Remarks of former U.S.President Bill Clinton Harvard College Class Day 2007, Harvard Yard 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 [LAUGHTER] 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 [LAUGHTER].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 [LAUGHTER], Borat or Ali G or whoever he was that day [LAUGHTER].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 [LAUGHTER].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 [LAUGHTER].And then I figure maybe it's just because Robin Williams and Billy Crystal turned you down [LAUGHTER].But for whatever reason, we're here and I have had a really good time [LAUGHTER].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 [APPLAUSE], 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 [LAUGHTER].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.In the United States in the last decade, we have had six years of economic growth, an all-time high in the stock market, a 40-year high in corporate profits.Workers are doing better every year with productivity, but median wages are stagnant.And there’s actually been in all this so-called recovery a 4 percent increase in the percentage of people working full-time falling below the poverty line, and a 4 percent increase in the percentage of people working, who with their families, have lost their health insurance.It’s an unequal time.It’s an uncertain, insecure time because we’re all vulnerable to terror, to weapons of mass destruction, to global pandemics like avian influenza.We all make fun of the modern media and culture all the time, but I thought it was interesting in my little house in Chappaqua, where I stay home alone rooting for the candidate [LAUGHTER], I watch the evening news in the last few months, and it’s interesting.Somehow, clawing its way through the stories of the latest crime endeavor in our neighborhood and whether Britney Spears’ hair has grown out or not, I have learned that there were chickens in Romania, India and Indonesia identified with avian influenza and that every chicken within three square miles, those unfortunate ones, was eradicated.On the evening news, competing with Britney Spears and crime.Why? That’s a good thing because of the shared insecurity we feel.You all saw it this week in all of the stories about the terrorist attack being thwarted in Kennedy airport.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 [APPLAUSE].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? [LAUGHTER] That Brown gag was hilarious.[LAUGHTER] 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 [LAUGHTER], 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.[LAUGHTER] But I didn’t want to ruin the poor man’s dessert, so I let it go.[LAUGHTER] 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.[LAUGHTER] 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.[LAUGHTER] 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.[APPLAUSE] 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.