杰夫·贝索斯，全球最大的互联网书店——亚马逊网络购物中心缔造者，亚马逊CEO，第一位成功的网上零售业者《时代》周刊风云人物。美国《财富》杂志“巨富排行榜”第二；美国《商业周刊》评选的“互联网时代最具影响力的25人”之一。

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—theyre given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if youre not careful， and if you do， itll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

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。

This is a group with many gifts. Im sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. Im confident thats the case because admission is competitive and if there werent some signs that youre clever， the dean of admission wouldnt have let you in.

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。

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. Id 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 couldnt exist in the physical world—was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old， and Id been married for a year.

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？ 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。

I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldnt work since most startups dont， and I wasnt sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie told me I should go for it. As a young boy， Id been a garage inventor. Id invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires， a solar cooker that didnt work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil， baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. Id always wanted to be an inventor， and she wanted me to follow my passion.

我告诉妻子MacKenzie我想辞去工作，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。……