华盛顿纪念塔内的汉字碑文
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核心提示：我十分感谢这份来自中国的礼物。它直探我们作为人的内心愿望：拥有生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利，也有不受国家干预的言论、异议、结社和信仰等自由。——节选自克林顿总统在北大的演讲。
钦命福建巡抚部院大中丞徐继畬所著《瀛环志略》曰，“按，华盛顿，异人也。起事勇於胜广，割据雄於曹刘。既已提三尺剑，开疆万里，乃不僭位号，不传子孙，而创为推举之法，几於天下为公，骎骎乎三代之遗意。其治国崇让善俗，不尚武功，亦迥与诸国异。余尝见其画像，气貌雄毅绝伦。呜呼！可不谓人杰矣哉。”“米利坚合众国以为国，幅员万里，不设王侯之号，不循世及之规，公器付之公论，创古今未有之局，一何奇也！泰西古今人物，能不以华盛顿为称首哉！”
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克林顿：徐继畬直探美国赖以立国的自由核心理念
从我在华盛顿特区所住的白宫往窗外眺望,我们首任总统乔治·华盛顿的纪念碑高耸入云。这是一座很高的方尖碑，但就在这个大碑邻近有块小石碑，上面刻着：米利坚不设王侯之号，不循世及之规，公器付之公论，创古今未有之局，一何奇也。这些话并非出自美国人，而是由福建巡抚徐继畬所写，1853年中国政府将它勒石为碑作为礼物赠送给我国。
我十分感谢这份来自中国的礼物。它直探我们作为人的内心愿望：拥有生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利，也有不受国家干预的言论、异议、结社和信仰等自由。这些就是我们美国220年前赖以立国的核心理念。这些就是引导我们横跨美洲大陆登上世界舞台的理念。这些就是美国人今天仍然珍惜的理念。
正如我在同江主席的记者会上所说，我们自己为了达到这些理念也还在不断追求。美国的立宪先贤了解我们永远达不到完美境界。他们说，美国的任务就是不断的“组成更完美的结合”，换句话说，我们永远不会完美，但我们总得不断努力改善。
From the windows of the White House, where I live in Washington, D.C., the monument to our first President, George Washington, dominates the skyline. It is a very tall obelisk. But very near this large monument there is a small stone which contains these words: The United States neither established titles of nobility and royalty, nor created a hereditary system. State affairs are put to the vote of public opinion. This created a new political situation, unprecedented from ancient times to the present. How wonderful it is. Those words were not written by an American. They were written by Xu Jiyu, governor of Fujian Province, inscribed as a gift from the government of China to our nation in 1853.
I am very grateful for that gift from China. It goes to the heart of who we are as a people the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the freedom to debate, to dissent, to associate, to worship without interference from the state. These are the ideals that were at the core of our founding over 220 years ago. These are the ideas that led us across our continent and onto the world stage. These are the ideals that Americans cherish today.
As I said in my press conference with President Jiang, we have an ongoing quest ourselves to live up to those ideals. The people who framed our Constitution understood that we would never achieve perfection. They said that the mission of America would always be "to form a more perfect union" – in other words, that we would never be perfect, but we had to keep trying to do better.
——节选自克林顿总统在北大的演讲。