【正文】 此資料由網絡收集而來，如有侵權請告知上傳者立即刪除。資料共分享，我們負責傳遞知識。伯恩斯在華盛頓大學圣路易斯分校2020畢業(yè)典禮上的英語演講稿　　Chancellor Wrighton, members of the Board of Trustees and the Administration, distinguished faculty, Class of 1965, hardworking staff, my fellow honorees, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, graduating students, good morning. I am deeply honored that you have asked me here to say a few words at this momentous occasion, that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day at this remarkable institution.
　　It had been my intention this morning to parcel out some good advice at the end of theseremarks amp。ndash。 the amp。quot。goodnessamp。quot。 of that being of course subjective in the extreme amp。ndash。 but then Irealized that this is the land of Mark Twain, and I came to the conclusion that anymentary today ought to be framed in the sublime shadow of this quote of his: amp。quot。Itamp。39。s notthat the world is full of fools, itamp。39。s just that lightening isnamp。39。t distributed right.amp。quot。 ……。 More on later.
　　I am in the business of history. It is my job to try to discern some patterns and themes fromthe past to help us interpret our dizzyingly confusing and sometimes dismaying a knowledge of that past, how can we possibly know where we are and, mostimportant, where we are going? Over the years Iamp。39。ve e to understand an important fact, Ithink: that we are not condemned to repeat, as the clichamp。eacute。 goes and we are fond of quoting,what we donamp。39。t remember. Thatamp。39。s a clever, even poetic phrase, but not even close to the are there cycles of history, as the academic munity periodically promotes. The Bible,Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think: amp。quot。What has been will be again. What has beendone will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.amp。quot。
　　What that means is that human nature never changes. Or almost never changes. We havecontinually superimposed our plex and contradictory nature over the random course ofhuman events. All of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, ourpuritanism and our prurience parade before our eyes, generation after generation aftergeneration. This often gives us the impression that history does repeat itself. It doesnamp。39。t. Itjust rhymes, Mark Twain is supposed to have said……。but he didnamp。39。t (more on him later).
　　Over the many years of practicing, I have e to the realization that history is not a fixedthing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent mencement quotes)that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious andmalleable thing. And each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past thatgives its present, and most important, its future new meaning, new possibilities and new power.
　　Listen. For most of the forty years Iamp。39。ve been making historical documentaries, I have beenhaunted and inspired by a handful of sentences from an extraordinary speech I came acrossearly in my professional life by a neighbor of yours just up the road in Springfield,