約翰·斯坦貝克諾貝爾文學獎的英文獲獎感言

　　i hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

　　the present universal fear has been the result of a forward surge in our knowledge and manipulation of certain dangerous factors in the physical world.

　　it is true that other phases of understanding have not yet caught up with this great step, but there is no reason to presume that they cannot or will not draw abreast. indeed it is a part of the writer's responsibility to make sure that they do.

　　with humanity's long proud history of standing firm against natural enemies, sometimes in the face of almost certain defeat and extinction, we would be cowardly and stupid to leave the field on the eve of our greatest potential victory.

　　understandably, i have been reading the life of alfred nobel - a solitary man, the books say, a thoughtful man. he perfected the release of explosive forces, capable of creative good or of destructive evil, but lacking choice, ungoverned by conscience or judgment.

　　nobel saw some of the cruel and bloody misuses of his inventions. he may even have foreseen the end result of his probing - access to ultimate violence - to final destruction. some say that he became cynical, but i do not believe this. i think he strove to invent a control, a safety valve. i think he found it finally only in the human mind and the human spirit. to me, his thinking is clearly indicated in the categories of these awards.

　　they are offered for increased and continuing knowledge of man and of his world - for understanding and communication, which are the functions of literature. and they are offered for demonstrations of the capacity for peace - the culmination of all the others.

　　less than fifty years after his death, the door of nature was unlocked and we were offered the dreadful burden of choice.

　　we have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to god.

　　fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world - of all living things.

　　the danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. the test of his perfectibility is at hand.

　　having taken godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.

　　man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope.

　　so that today, st. john the apostle may well be paraphrased: in the end is the word, and the word is man - and the word is with men.