亞馬遜總裁在普林斯頓大學畢業典禮的演講

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.

在我還是一個孩子的時候，我的夏天總是在德州祖父母的農場中度過。我幫忙修理風車，爲牛接種疫苗，也做其它家務。每天下午，我們都會看肥皂劇，尤其是《我們的歲月》。我的祖父母參加了一個房車俱樂部，那是一羣駕駛Airstream拖掛型房車的人們，他們結伴遍遊美國和加拿大。每隔幾個夏天，我也會加入他們。我們把房車掛在祖父的小汽車後面，然後加入300餘名Airstream探險者們組成的浩蕩隊伍。我愛我的祖父母，我崇敬他們，也真心期盼這些旅程。那是一次我大概十歲時的旅行，我照例坐在後座的長椅上，祖父開着車，祖母坐在他旁邊，吸着煙。我討厭煙味。

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!"

在那樣的年紀，我會找任何藉口做些估測或者小算術。我會計算油耗還有雜貨花銷等雞毛蒜皮的小事。我聽過一個有關吸菸的廣告。我記不得細節了，但是廣告大意是說，每吸一口香菸會減少幾分鐘的壽命，大概是兩分鐘。無論如何，我決定爲祖母做個算術。我估測了祖母每天要吸幾支香菸，每支香菸要吸幾口等等，然後心滿意足地得出了一個合理的數字。接着，我捅了捅坐在前面的祖母的頭，又拍了拍她的肩膀，然後驕傲地宣稱，“每天吸兩分鐘的煙，你就少活九年!”

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."

我清晰地記得接下來發生了什麼，而那是我意料之外的。我本期待着小聰明和算術技巧能贏得掌聲，但那並沒有發生。相反，我的祖母哭泣起來。我的祖父之前一直在默默開車，把車停在了路邊，走下車來，打開了我的車門，等着我跟他下車。我惹麻煩了嗎?我的祖父是一個智慧而安靜的人。他從來沒有對我說過嚴厲的話，難道這會是第一次?還是他會讓我回到車上跟祖母道歉?我以前從未遇到過這種狀況，因而也無從知曉會有什麼後果發生。我們在房車旁停下來。祖父注視着我，沉默片刻，然後輕輕地、平靜地說：“傑夫，有一天你會明白，善良比聰明更難。”

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.

今天我想對你們說的是，天賦和選擇不同。聰明是一種天賦，而善良是一種選擇。天賦得來很容易——畢竟它們與生俱來。而選擇則頗爲不易。如果一不小心，你可能被天賦所誘惑，這可能會損害到你做出的選擇。在座各位都擁有許多天賦。我確信你們的天賦之一就是擁有精明能幹的頭腦。之所以如此確信，是因爲入學競爭十分激烈，如果你們不能表現出聰明智慧，便沒有資格進入這所學校。

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?

你們的聰明才智必定會派上用場，因爲你們將在一片充滿奇蹟的土地上行進。我們人類，儘管跬步前行，卻終將令自己大吃一驚。我們能夠想方設法制造清潔能源，也能夠一個原子一個原子地組裝微型機械，使之穿過細胞壁，然後修復細胞。這個月，有一個異常而不可避免的事情發生了——人類終於合成了生命。在未來幾年，我們不僅會合成生命，還會按說明書驅動它們。我相信你們甚至會看到我們理解人類的大腦，儒勒·凡爾納，馬克·吐溫，伽利略，牛頓——所有那些充滿好奇之心的人都希望能夠活到現在。作爲文明人，我們會擁有如此之多的天賦，就像是坐在我面前的你們，每一個生命個體都擁有許多獨特的天賦。你們要如何運用這些天賦呢?你們會爲自己的天賦感到驕傲，還是會爲自己的選擇感到驕傲?

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 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.

16年前，我萌生了創辦亞馬遜的想法。彼時我面對的現實是互聯網使用量以每年2300%的速度增長，我從未看到或聽說過任何增長如此快速的東西。創建涵蓋幾百萬種書籍的網上書店的想法令我興奮異常，因爲這個東西在物理世界裏根本無法存在。那時我剛剛30歲，結婚才一年。我告訴妻子MacKenzie想辭去工作，然後去做這件瘋狂的事情，很可能會失敗，因爲大部分創業公司都是如此，而且我不確定那之後會發生什麼。MacKenzie告訴我，我應該放手一搏。在我還是一個男孩兒的時候，我是車庫發明家。我曾用水泥填充的輪胎、雨傘和錫箔以及報警器製作了一個自動關門器。我一直想做一個發明家，MacKenzie支持我追隨內心的熱情。

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.

我當時在紐約一家金融公司工作，同事是一羣非常聰明的人，我的老闆也很有智慧，我很羨慕他。我告訴我的老闆我想開辦一家在網上賣書的公司。他帶我在中央公園漫步良久，認真地聽我講完，最後說：“聽起來真是一個很好的主意，但是對那些目前沒有謀到一份好工作的人來說，這個主意會更好。”這一邏輯對我而言頗有道理，他說服我在最終作出決定之前再考慮48小時。那樣想來，這個決定確實很艱難，但是最終，我決定拼一次。我認爲自己不會爲嘗試過後的失敗而遺憾，倒是有所決定但完全不付諸行動會一直煎熬着我。在深思熟慮之後，我選擇了那條不安全的道路，去追隨我內心的熱情。我爲那個決定感到驕傲。

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?

明天，非常現實地說，你們從零塑造自己人生的時代即將開啓。

你們會如何運用自己的天賦?你們又會作出怎樣的抉擇?

你們是被慣性所引導，還是追隨自己內心的熱情?

你們會墨守陳規，還是勇於創新?

你們會選擇安逸的生活，還是選擇一個奉獻與冒險的人生?

你們會屈從於批評，還是會堅守信念?

你們會掩飾錯誤，還是會坦誠道歉?

你們會因害怕拒絕而掩飾內心，還是會在面對愛情時勇往直前?

你們想要波瀾不驚，還是想要搏擊風浪?

你們會在嚴峻的現實之下選擇放棄，還是會義無反顧地前行?

你們要做憤世嫉俗者，還是踏實的建設者?

你們要不計一切代價地展示聰明，還是選擇善良?

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!

我要做一個預測：在你們80歲時某個追憶往昔的時刻，只有你一個人靜靜對內心訴說着你的人生故事，其中最爲充實、最有意義的那段講述，會被你們作出的一系列決定所填滿。最後，是選擇塑造了我們的人生。爲你自己塑造一個偉大的人生故事。謝謝，祝你們好運！