Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Class of 2010
Baccalaureate
May 30, 2010
Baccalaureate
May 30, 2010
As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially "Days of our Lives." My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we'd join the caravan. We'd hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather's car, and off we'd go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.
At that age, I'd take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I'd calculate our gas mileage -- figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I'd been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can't remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I'd come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, "At two minutes per puff, you've taken nine years off your life!"
I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff, you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."
What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
This is a group with many gifts. I'm sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I'm confident that's the case because admission is competitive and if there weren't some signs that you're clever, the dean of admission wouldn't have let you in.
Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans -- plodding as we are -- will astonish ourselves. We'll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we'll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we've synthesized life. In the coming years, we'll not only synthesize it, but we'll engineer it to specifications. I believe you'll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton -- all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most startups don't, and I wasn't sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.
I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job." That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm proud of that choice.
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life -- the life you author from scratch on your own -- begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you're wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it's tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!
我一直相信每一个人都有自己的天赋，每一个人的存在都代表着宇宙空间中的一种唯一，然而令我经常都在深思的是，既然我们都是这样的独特，又为何偏偏要去模仿和畸变成拥有同类“基因”的人呢？为什么我们中的很多人都不愿意去追逐属于自己的理想，或者不能为此奋斗一生呢，抑或者一生都是在自欺欺人的辩解？在Randy的The Last Lecture中我深深的感受到了一个人追逐自己最初理想的意义会变得如此的伟大，充满的是一种人生最大的和最根本的价值。一直在想这样的一个问题，当社会尚且艰难，生活尚且苦难的日子里都有如此多人在追逐属于自己梦想的时候；在一个生活舒适，物质条件优越的年代我们竟然不知所措的迷失掉自己的方向，找不到自己前行的路。这是多么可悲和可笑的一种境况！我们，有了更高的天赋，有了更好的环境，却因为有更多的选择而抹杀了我们自己的梦...这确实让人觉得不可思议！
我相信每个人都有自己最初的梦想，在这样的一个年代，在这样一个至少没有饥寒交迫的时代，我坚信追逐自己理想的人会获得生命尽头最高贵的礼物和人生最大的价值！
记：在一个可以实现最初梦想的时代选择不可以的沉默必将是这个时代最损失的损失，也必将是生活在这个时代的人最遗憾的遗憾...
附中文译稿：
在我还是一个孩子的时候，我的夏天总是在德州祖父母的农场中度过。我帮忙修理风车，为牛接种疫苗，也做其它家务。每天下午，我们都会看肥皂剧，尤其是《我们的岁月》。我的祖父母参加了一个房车俱乐部，那是一群驾驶Airstream拖挂型房车的人们，他们结伴遍游美国和加拿大。每隔几个夏天，我也会加入他们。我们把房车挂在祖父的小汽车后面，然后加入300余名Airstream探险者们组成的浩荡队伍。
我爱我的祖父母，我崇敬他们，也真心期盼这些旅程。那是一次我大概十岁时的旅行，我照例坐在后座的长椅上，祖父开着车，祖母坐在他旁边，吸着烟。我讨厌烟味。
在那样的年纪，我会找任何借口做些估测或者小算术。我会计算油耗还有杂货花销等鸡毛蒜皮的小事。我听过一个有关吸烟的广告。我记不得细节了，但是广告大意是说，每吸一口香烟会减少几分钟的寿命，大概是两分钟。无论如何，我决定为祖母做个算术。我估测了祖母每天要吸几支香烟，每支香烟要吸几口等等，然后心满意足地得出了一个合理的数字。接着，我捅了捅坐在前面的祖母的头，又拍了拍她的肩膀，然后骄傲地宣称，“每天吸两分钟的烟，你就少活九年!”
我清晰地记得接下来发生了什么，而那是我意料之外的。我本期待着小聪明和算术技巧能赢得掌声，但那并没有发生。相反，我的祖母哭泣起来。我的祖父之前一直在默默开车，把车停在了路边，走下车来，打开了我的车门，等着我跟他下车。我惹麻烦了吗?我的祖父是一个智慧而安静的人。他从来没有对我说过严厉的话，难道这会是第一次?还是他会让我回到车上跟祖母道歉?我以前从未遇到过这种状况，因而也无从知晓会有什么后果发生。我们在房车旁停下来。祖父注视着我，沉默片刻，然后轻轻地、平静地说：“杰夫，有一天你会明白，善良比聪明更难。”
选择比天赋更重要
今天我想对你们说的是，天赋和选择不同。聪明是一种天赋，而善良是一种选择。天赋得来很容易——毕竟它们与生俱来。而选择则颇为不易。如果一不小心，你可能被天赋所诱惑，这可能会损害到你做出的选择。
在座各位都拥有许多天赋。我确信你们的天赋之一就是拥有精明能干的头脑。之所以如此确信，是因为入学竞争十分激烈，如果你们不能表现出聪明智慧，便没有资格进入这所学校。
你们的聪明才智必定会派上用场，因为你们将在一片充满奇迹的土地上行进。我们人类，尽管跬步前行，却终将令自己大吃一惊。我们能够想方设法制造清洁能源，也能够一个原子一个原子地组装微型机械，使之穿过细胞壁，然后修复细胞。这个月，有一个异常而不可避免的事情发生了——人类终于合成了生命。在未来几年，我们不仅会合成生命，还会按说明书驱动它们。我相信你们甚至会看到我们理解人类的大脑，儒勒·凡尔纳，马克·吐温，伽利略，牛顿——所有那些充满好奇之心的人都希望能够活到现在。作为文明人，我们会拥有如此之多的天赋，就像是坐在我面前的你们，每一个生命个体都拥有许多独特的天赋。
你们要如何运用这些天赋呢?你们会为自己的天赋感到骄傲，还是会为自己的选择感到骄傲?
追随自己内心的热情
16年前，我萌生了创办亚马逊的想法。彼时我面对的现实是互联网使用量以每年2300%的速度增长，我从未看到或听说过任何增长如此快速的东西。创建涵盖几百万种书籍的网上书店的想法令我兴奋异常，因为这个东西在物理世界里根本无法存在。那时我刚刚30岁，结婚才一年。
我告诉妻子MacKenzie想辞去工作，然后去做这件疯狂的事情，很可能会失败，因为大部分创业公司都是如此，而且我不确定那之后会发生什么。MacKenzie告诉我，我应该放手一搏。在我还是一个男孩儿的时候，我是车库发明家。我曾用水泥填充的轮胎、雨伞和锡箔以及报警器制作了一个自动关门器。我一直想做一个发明家，MacKenzie支持我追随内心的热情。
我当时在纽约一家金融公司工作，同事是一群非常聪明的人，我的老板也很有智慧，我很羡慕他。我告诉我的老板我想开办一家在网上卖书的公司。他带我在中央公园漫步良久，认真地听我讲完，最后说：“听起来真是一个很好的主意，但是对那些目前没有谋到一份好工作的人来说，这个主意会更好。”
这一逻辑对我而言颇有道理，他说服我在最终作出决定之前再考虑48小时。那样想来，这个决定确实很艰难，但是最终，我决定拼一次。我认为自己不会为尝试过后的失败而遗憾，倒是有所决定但完全不付诸行动会一直煎熬着我。在深思熟虑之后，我选择了那条不安全的道路，去追随我内心的热情。我为那个决定感到骄傲。
明天，非常现实地说，你们从零塑造自己人生的时代即将开启。
你们会如何运用自己的天赋?你们又会作出怎样的抉择?
你们是被惯性所引导，还是追随自己内心的热情?
你们会墨守陈规，还是勇于创新?
你们会选择安逸的生活，还是选择一个奉献与冒险的人生?
你们会屈从于批评，还是会坚守信念?
你们会掩饰错误，还是会坦诚道歉?
你们会因害怕拒绝而掩饰内心，还是会在面对爱情时勇往直前?
你们想要波澜不惊，还是想要搏击风浪?
你们会在严峻的现实之下选择放弃，还是会义无反顾地前行?
你们要做愤世嫉俗者，还是踏实的建设者?
你们要不计一切代价地展示聪明，还是选择善良?
我要做一个预测：在你们80岁时某个追忆往昔的时刻，只有你一个人静静对内心诉说着你的人生故事，其中最为充实、最有意义的那段讲述，会被你们作出的一系列决定所填满。最后，是选择塑造了我们的人生。为你自己塑造一个伟大的人生故事。
谢谢，祝你们好运!
