奧巴馬總統(tǒng)在2021年＂總統(tǒng)自由勛章＂頒發(fā)儀式英語演講稿

1、精編word文檔 下載可編輯the president: good morning! (applause.) good morning,everybody! everybody,please have aseat. have a seat.well, on behalf of michelle andmyself, welcome to the white house. thisis one of myfavorite events every year, especially special this year, as ilook at this extraordinary group of

2、individuals and our opportunity to honorthem with our nations highest civilian honor - thepresidential medal offreedom.and this year, its just a littlemore special because this marks the 5th anniversary ofpresident kennedyestablishing this award. were honored,by the way, today to have with us oneof

3、my favorite people - ethel kennedy -and a pretty good basketball player, presidentkennedys grandson, jack. (applause.)this medal has been bestowed onmore than 5 deserving people. tonight,im lookingforward to joining some of these honorees, as well as members ofthe kennedy family, as we paytribute to

4、 these 5 years of excellence. and this morning, were honored to add 16 newnamesto this distinguished list.today, we salute fiercecompetitors who became true champions. in the sweltering heat of achicago summer, ernie banks walked into thecubs locker room and didnt like what he saw. everybody was sit

5、ting around, heads down, depressed, he recalled. so ernie piped up andsaid, boy, what agreat day! lets play two! (laughter.) thats mr. cub - a man who cameup through the negro leagues, making$7 a day, and became the first black player to suit up forthe cubs and one ofthe greatest hitters of all time

6、. and inthe process, ernie became known asmuch for his 512 home runs as for his cheerand his optimism and his eternal faith thatsomeday the cubs would go all theway. (laughter.)and thats serious belief. (laughter.) that is something that even a white sox fan like mecan respect. (laughter.) but he is

7、 just a wonderful man and a great icon of my hometown.speaking of sports, dean smith isone of the winningest coaches in college basketballhistory, but his successesgo far beyond xs and os. even as he won78 percent of his games, hegraduated 96 percent of his players. the first coach to use multiple d

8、efenses in agame, hewas the pioneer who popularized the idea of pointing to the passer- after a basket, playersshould point to the teammate who passed them theball. and with his first national titleon theline, he did have the good sense to give the ball to a 19-year-old kidnamed michael jordan. (lau

9、ghter.) although they used to joke that the onlyperson who ever held michael under 2 wasdean smith. (laughter.)while coach smith couldnt joinus today due to an illness that hes facing withextraordinary courage, we alsohonor his courage in helping to change our country - herecruited the firstblack sc

10、holarship athlete to north carolina and helped to integratearestaurant and a neighborhood in chapel hill. thats the kind of character that he representedon and off the court.we salute innovators who pushedthe limits of science, changing how we see the world -and ourselves. and growing up, sally ride

11、 read about thespace program in the newspaperalmost every day, and she thought this was thecoolest thing around. when she was aphdcandidate at stanford she saw an ad for astronauts in the student newspaperand she seizedthe opportunity. as thefirst american woman in space, sally didnt just break thes

12、tratospheric glassceiling, she blasted through it. andwhen she came back to earth, shedevoted her life to helping girls excel infields like math, science and engineering. young girlsneed to see role models, she said, you cant be what youcant see. today, our daughters -includingmalia and sasha - can

13、set their sights a little bit higher because sally rideshowedthem the way.now, all of us have moments whenwe look back and wonder, what the heck was ithinking i have that - (laughter) - quite abit. psychologist daniel kahneman hasmade thatsimple question his lifes work. in a storied career in israel

14、 and america, he basically inventedthestudy of human decision-making. heshelped us to understand everything from behavioraleconomics to does living incalifornia make people happy its aninteresting question. hesalso beencalled an expert on irrational behavior - so im sure that he could shed somelight

15、 onwashington. (laughter.)but what truly sets daniel apartis his curiosity. guided by his beliefthat people areendlessly complicated and interesting, at 79 hes stilldiscovering new insights into how wethink and learn, not just so we understandeach other, but so we can work and live togethermore effe

16、ctively.dr. mario molinas love of sciencestarted as a young boy in mexico city, in a homemadelaboratory in a bathroomat home. and that passion for discoveryled mario to become one ofthe most respected chemists of his era. he was awarded the nobel peace prize - orthe nobelprize, rather, not only for

17、his path-breaking research, but also forhis insistence that when weignore dangerous carbon emissions we riskdestroying the ozone layer and endangering ourplanet. and thanks to marios work, the world cametogether to address a common threat, andtoday, inspired by his example, wereworking to leave our

18、planet safer and cleaner for futuregenerations.we also have to salute musicians,who bring such joy to our lives. lorettalynn was 19 thefirst time she won the big - she won big at the localfair. her canned vegetables broughthome17 blue ribbons - (laughter) - and made her canner of the year.(laughter.

19、) now, thatsimpressive. (laughter.)for a girl from butcher hollow,kentucky, that was fame. fortunately forall of us, shedecided to try her hand at things other than canning. her first guitar cost $17, and with itthiscoal miners daughter gave voice to a generation, singing what no one wanted totalk a

20、boutand saying what no one wanted to think about. and now, over 5 years after she cut herfirstrecord - and canned her first vegetables - (laughter) - loretta lynnstill reigns as the rule-breaking, record-setting queen of country music.as a young man in cuba, arturosandoval loved jazz so much it land

21、ed him in jail. it wasthe cold war, and the only radiostation where he could hear jazz was the voice of america,which was dangerousto listen to. but arturo listenedanyway. later, he defected to theunitedstates knowing he might never see his parents or beloved homeland again. withoutfreedom, he said,

22、 there is nolife. and today, arturo is an americancitizen and one of the mostcelebrated trumpet players in the world. there isnt any place on earth where thepeopledont know about jazz, he says, and thats true in part becausemusicians like him havesacrificed so much to play it.we salute pioneers who

23、pushed ournation towards greater justice and equality. a baptistminister, c.t. vivian was one of dr. martin luther king, jr.sclosest advisors. martin taught us,hesays, that its in the action that we find out who we really are. and time and again,reverend vivian was amongthe first to be in the action

24、: in 1947,joining a sit-in to integrate anillinois restaurant; one of the first freedomriders; in selma, on the courthouse steps toregister blacks to vote, for whichhe was beaten, bloodied and jailed. rosaparks said of him, even after things had supposedly been taken care of and wehad our rights, he

25、 was still outthere, inspiring the next generation,including me, helping kids go to college with a programthat would becomeupward bound. and at 89 years old,reverend vivian is still out there, still inthe action, pushing us closer toour founding ideals.now, early in the morning the dayof the march o

26、n washington, the national mall was farfrom full and some in thepress were beginning to wonder if the event would be a failure. butthe marchs chief organizer, bayardrustin, didnt panic. as the story goes,he looked down at apiece of paper, looked back up, and reassured reportersthat everything was ri

27、ght on schedule.the only thing those reporters didnt know was that the paper he washolding was blank. (laughter.) he didnt know how it was going to work out,but bayard had an unshakableoptimism, nerves of steel, and, most importantly,a faith that if the cause is just and people areorganized, nothing

28、 can standin our way.so, for decades, this greatleader, often at dr. kings side, was denied his rightful place inhistorybecause he was openly gay. no medal canchange that, but today, we honor bayardrustins memory by taking our place inhis march towards true equality, no matter who we areor who we lo

29、ve. (applause.)speaking of game-changers,disrupters, there was a young girl names gloria steinem whoarrived in new yorkto make her mark as a journalist, and magazines only wanted to writearticleslike how to cook without really cooking for men. (laughter.) gloria noticed things likethat. (laughter.)

30、shes been called a championnoticer. shes alert to all the ways,large andsmall, that women had been and, in some cases, continue to be treatedunfairly just becausetheyre women.as a writer, a speaker, anactivist, she awakened a vast and often skeptical public toproblems likedomestic violence, the lack

31、 of affordable child care, unfair hiringpractices. andbecause of her work,across america and around the world, more women are afforded the respectandopportunities that they deserve. but shealso changed how women thought aboutthemselves. and gloria continues to pour her heart intoteaching and mentori

32、ng. her one pieceofadvice to young girls is - i love this - do not listen to my advice. listen to the voice insideyou and follow that.when patricia walds law firmasked if shed come back after having her first child, she saidshed like sometime off to focus on her family - devoted almost 1 years to ra

33、isingfivechildren. but patricia never lost theitch to practice law. so while herhusband watched thekids at home, shed hit the library on weekends. at the age 4, she went back to thecourtroomto show the young kids a thing or two. as the first female judge on the d.c. circuit,patricia was a topcandida

34、te for attorney general. afterleaving the bench, her idea of retirementwas to go to the hague to presideover the trials of war criminals. patricia says she hopesenough women will become judges that its notworth celebrating anymore. but today,wecelebrate her. and along with gloria,she shows there are

35、 all kinds of paths listening to yourown voice.we salute communicators whoshined a light on stories no one else was telling. a veteran ofworld war ii and more than adozen pacific battles, ben bradlee brought the same intensityand dedication tojournalism. since joining the washingtonpost 65 years ago

36、, he transformedthat newspaper into one of the finest in theworld. with ben in charge, the postpublished thepentagon papers, revealing the true history of americasinvolvement in vietnam; exposedwatergate; unleashed a new era of investigativejournalism, holding americas leadersaccountable and remindi

37、ng us that ourfreedom as a nation rests on our freedom of the press.when ben retired, senator daniel patrickmoynihan put the admiration of many into a poem: o rare ben bradlee/his reign has ceased/buthis nation stands/its strength increased.and i also indicated to ben hecan pull off those shirts and

38、 i cant. (laughter.) he alwayslooks socool in them. (laughter.)early in oprah winfreys career,her bosses told her she should change her name to susie. (laughter.) i have to pause here to say i got the same advice. (laughter and applause.) theydidnt say i should be named susie,but they suggested i sh

39、ould change my name. (laughter.)people can relate tosusie, thats what they said. it turnedout, surprisingly, that people couldrelate to oprah just fine.in more than 4,5 episodes ofher show, her message was always, you can. you can doand you can be and you can grow and it can be better. and she was l

40、iving proof, rising fromachildhood of poverty and abuse to the pinnacle of the entertainmentuniverse. but even with4 emmys, thedistinction of being the first black female billionaire, oprahs greateststrengthhas always been her ability to help us discover the best inourselves. michelle and icountours

41、elves among her many devoted fans and friends. as one of those fans wrote, i didntknow ihad a light in me until oprah told me it was there. what a great gift.and, finally, we salute publicservants whove strengthened our nation. daniel inouye wasa humble man and didnt wear his medal of honor veryofte

42、n. instead, he liked to wear apinrepresenting the good conduct medal he earned as a teenage private. to behave yourselftakes special effort, hesaid, and i did not want to dishonor my family. danny always honoredhis family and hiscountry, even when his country didnt always honor him.after being class

43、ified as an enemyalien, danny joined a japanese american unit thatbecame one of the mostdecorated in world war ii. and as thesecond-longest serving senatorin american history, he showed a generation ofyoung people - including one kid with a funnyname growing up in hawaii whonoticed that there was so

44、mebody during some of those hearingsin washingtonthat didnt look like everybody else, which meant maybe i had a chance todosomething important, too. he taught allof us that no matter what you look like or where youcome from, this countryhas a place for everybody whos willing to serve and work hard.a

45、 proud hoosier, dick lugar hasserved america for more than half a century, from a youngnavy lieutenant to arespected leader in the united states senate. ill always be thankful to dickfor taking me - a new, junior senator- under his wing, including travels together to reviewsome of his visionarywork,

46、 the destruction of cold war arsenals in the former soviet union -something that doesnt get a lot of publicnotice, but was absolutely critical to making us saferin the wake of the coldwar.now, i should say, traveling withdick you get close to unexploded landmines, mortar shells,test tubes filledwith

47、 anthrax and the plague. (laughter.) his legacy, though, is the thousandsofmissiles and bombers and submarines and warheads that no longer threaten usbecause of hisextraordinary work. andour nation and our world are safer because of this statesman. and in atime ofunrelenting partisanship, dick lugar

48、s decency, his commitment tobipartisanproblem-solving, stand as a model of what public service ought to be.now, last, but never least, wehonor a leader who we still remember with suchextraordinary fondness. he still remembers as a child waving goodbyeto his mom - tears inher eyes - as she went off t

49、o nursing school so shecould provide for her family. and ithinklifting up families like his own became the story of bill clintonslife. he remembered what hismom had todo on behalf of him and he wanted to make sure that he made life better andeasierfor so many people all across the country that were

50、struggling in thosesame ways and had thosesame hopes and dreams. so as a governor, he transformed education so more kids couldpursuethose dreams. as president, he provedthat, with the right choices, you could grow theeconomy, lift people out ofpoverty. we could shrink our deficitsand still invest in

51、 our families,our health, our schools, science,technology. in other words, we can gofarther when we look outfor each other.and as weve all seen, aspresident, he was just getting started. he doesnt stop. hes helpedleadrelief efforts after the asian tsunami, hurricane katrina, the haiti earthquake. hi

52、sfoundation and global initiative havehelped to save or improve the lives of literally hundredsof millions ofpeople. and, of course, i am mostgrateful for his patience during the endlesstravels of my secretary ofstate. (laughter.)so im grateful, bill, as wellfor the advice and counsel that youve off

53、ered me on and offthe golfcourse. (laughter.) and most importantly, for your lifesavingwork around the world,which represents whats the very best in america. so thank you so much, president clinton. (applause.)so these are the recipients ofthe 219 presidential medal of freedom. these are the menand

54、women who in their extraordinary lives remind usall of the beauty of the human spirit,the values that define us as americans,the potential that lives inside of all of us. i could notbe more happy and more honored to participate in thisceremony here today.with that, what i would like todo is invite o

55、ur honorees to just sit there and let all of usstand and giveyou a big round of applause. (applause.)i guess we should actually givethem the medals, though. (laughter.) where are my -herewe go. lee, you want to hit itmilitary aide: presidential medal of freedom recipients.ernie banks. (applause.) wi

56、th an unmatched enthusiasm for americas pastime, erniebanks slugged,sprinted and smiled his way into the record books. known to fans as mr. cub,he played anextraordinary 19 seasons with the chicago cubs, during which he was named to11all-star teams, hit over 5 home runs, and won back-to-back most va

57、luableplayer honors.ernie banks was electedto the baseball hall of fame in 1977, and he will forever be known asone ofthe finest power hitters and most dynamic players of all time. (applause.)benjamin crowninshieldbradlee. (applause.) a titan of journalism, benjamincrowninshieldbradlee is one of the

58、 most respected newsmen of his generation. after servingour nation in world war ii, benbradlee went on to defend liberty here at home. testing thelimits of a freepress during his tenure as executive editor of the washington post, heoversawcoverage of the watergate scandal and successfully challenged the federalgovernmentover the right to pu