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Today we do not seek to impose our vision on others, but we are convinced that certain rights are universal—not American rights or European rights or rights for developed nations, but the birthrights of people everywhere, now enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights—the right to be treated with dignity; the right to express one's opinions, to choose one's own leaders, to associate freely with others, and to worship, or not, freely, however one chooses.
今天，我們并不試圖將自己的見解強加于人，但我們深信，某些權利具有普遍性，它們不是美國的權利或者歐洲的權利或者是發達國家的權利，而是每個人與生俱來的權利。這些權利現在載于《聯合國人權宣言》。這些就是待人以尊嚴、各抒己見、選舉領袖、自由結社、自由選擇信教或不信教的權利。
In the last letter of his life, the author of our Declaration of Independence and our third President, Thomas Jefferson, said then that "all eyes are opening to the rights of man." I believe that in this time, at long last, 172 years after Jefferson wrote those words, all eyes are opening to the rights of men and women everywhere.
《獨立宣言》的作者、我國第三任總統托馬斯·杰克遜在他一生的最后一封信中寫道：“人們正在睜開眼睛關注人權。”在杰克遜寫了這句話172年之后，我相信，人們現在終于睜開眼睛關注著世界各地男女老少應享受的人權。
Over the past two decades, a rising tide of freedom has lifted the lives of millions around the world, sweeping away failed dictatorial systems in the Former Soviet Union, throughout Central Europe; ending a vicious cycle of military coups and civil wars in Latin America; giving more people in Africa the chance to make the most of their hard-won independence. And from the Philippines to South Korea, from Thailand to Mongolia, freedom has reached Asia's shores, powering a surge of growth and productivity.
過去20年以來，一個高漲的自由浪潮解放了成千上百萬的生靈，掃除了前蘇聯和中歐那種失敗的獨裁統治，結束了拉美國家軍事政變和內戰的惡性循環，使更多的非洲人民有機會享受來之不易的獨立。從菲律賓到南朝鮮，從泰國到蒙古，自由之浪已沖到亞洲的海岸，給發展和生產力注入了動力。
