皮策校长、副校长、州长、国会议员托马斯、参议员威利、众议员米勒、韦伯先生、贝尔先生、科学家们、尊敬的来宾们、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.

　　我很感激你们的校长授予我荣誉客座教授的头衔，我向你们保证，我的第一场演讲会跟简短。我很高兴来到这里，尤其是在这样一个场合。

　　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.

　　我们在这样一所以知识著名的大学，一座以进步闻名的城市，一个以实力著称的国家见面。我们站在这里是这三者的需要，以为我们的见面是在一个充满变化和挑战的时间，是在一个希望和害怕并存的十年，是在一个知识和无知并存的时代。我们学到的还是越多，认识到的无知就越多。

　　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.

　　世界上大部分已知的健在并在职的科学家仍在奋斗不息，这个国家的科研力量每12年便成倍增长，这比我国人口增长总数的三倍还要多。尽管如此，世上的未知领域、未解之谜和未完成的任务的范围之广，仍远远超出了我们所有人的理解能力。