"The Great Society"

Lyndon Baines Johnson: "The GreatSociety" delivered 22 May 1964
President Hatcher, Governor Romney, Senators McNamara and Hart, Congressmen
代 議 員 諸 君

Meader and Staebler, and other members of the fine Michigan delegation, members of the卒

業生

graduating class, my fellow Americans:
男女共学

It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university has been coeducational since 1870,
業績but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school
girl said [and I quote], "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a
非共学のcoeducational school or an educational school." Well, we can find both here at Michigan,
年期が違う

although perhaps at different hours . I came out here today very anxious to meet theMichigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real
ひ け ら か すvalue. It stopped his mother from bragging about him.
喧騒静謐I have come today from the turmoil of your capital to the tranquility of your campus tospeak about the future of your country. The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation andpreserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our successin that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
征 服 す るFor a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called
無制

限の勤

勉

さ

豊かさという秩序

upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create anorderof plenty for all ofour people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to usethat wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of ourAmerican civilization.
自発性義憤Your imagination and your initiative and your indignation will determine whether webuild a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and自由なnew visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity
to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the GreatSociety.
示

す

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty andracial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just thebeginning.

I"The Great Society"

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and toenlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a退屈

落ち着きが無いこと

feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not
生理的欲求

only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and thehunger for community. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place
which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race.
It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantityof their goods.
But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, afinished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where
the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society-- in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.
Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400
million Americans -- four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century
urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes andhighways and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in thenext 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States.
アリストテレス

Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together inorder to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities
衰退奪うtoday. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of thesuburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open
消滅する

歴 史 的 建 造 物

侵 蝕 す るland is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all expansion is eroding these協調

precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with
生じさせる

無関心nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference. And oursociety will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination andinnovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are alreadygoing on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where
future generations will come, not only to live, but to live the good life. And I understandthat if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best tolive the good life.

II"The Great Society"

平和部隊

This is the place where the Peace Corps was started.
It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at
the level of the people.
A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We havealways prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but
America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink，the food we eat,
汚染the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our海岸

過 重 な 負 担 を 負 う

seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.
A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act
to prevent an ugly America.
素晴らしきものFor once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor
取り

戻is destroyed, it can never beすrecaptured . And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit
萎 縮 す る

生命を維持するもの

will wither and his sustenance be wasted.
A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There yourchildren's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set
読み取る

はるか遠くまで

free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that
goal. Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, havenot finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly
54 million -- more than one quarter of all America -- have not even finished high school.
Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not entercollege because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we入学

do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And
high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. And college enrollment will increase by morethan 3 million.
時 代 遅 れ のIn many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated . Most of our
薄給の資

質が無い

qualified teachers are underpaid and many of our paid teachers are unqualified . So we
障 害must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar
to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

III

"The Great Society"But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational
system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for ourteachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours oflabor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the loveof learning and the capacity for creation.
These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many
～ だ と 偽 る

programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those集

めるproblems. But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and thebroadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America.
I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences andmeetings -- on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on otheremerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from thesestudies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.
The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can
緊 迫 し たit rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new連

邦主義首都

concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism , between the National Capital and theleaders of local communities. Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from hisuniversity should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."
解放される

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed , will take us toward a way of life
領域

beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.
For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those
problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before与える

afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands ofmorality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
要 求 す る

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins andthe law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?
Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight ofpoverty?

IV"The Great Society"Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace -- as
死 す べ きneighbors and not as mortal enemies?
Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress isonly the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
臆 病 な非難する

There are those timid souls that say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned toa soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want.
But we need your will and your labor and your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.
Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a
new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision
our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look
うんざりするようなback and say: It was then, after a long andweary

his genius to the full enrichment of his life.
Thank you. Good-bye.

V

有効に使うこと

way, that man turned the exploits of