We are What We Choose-JEFF BEZOS 中英对照

(Jeff Bezos the founder and the chief executive officer of

world's largest

e

-

tail

bookstore in the

world,

Amazon

,

gave the commencement speech to

Princeton's Class of 2010

which titled

We Are What We Choose)

Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Class of 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

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,

life!

I

have

a

vivid

memory

of

what

happened

next,

and

it

was

not

what

I

expected.

I

expected

to

be

applauded

for

my

cleverness

and

arithmetic

skills.

figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.

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,

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