Bezos' Speech at Princeton

Bezos Delivers Graduation Speech at Princeton 2010

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Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos gave the Baccalaureate address to Princeton University's Class of 2010. Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He was introduced by Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman.

Bezos spoke to the Class of 2010 about the difference between choices and gifts. Cleverness, Bezos pointed out, is a gift, while being kind to others is a choice. One's character, he suggested, is reflected not in the gifts one is endowed with at birth but rather by the choices one makes over the course of a lifetime.

"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 "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!

亞馬遜創辦人對普林斯頓畢業生的12分鐘演講

聰明是種天賦，而仁慈卻是 一種選擇！
能有如導師般的家人指引是福氣，找到如益友般的伴侶更是幸運的，福氣來自天生，幸運卻可以創造。

且聽Amazon創辦人怎麼說——亞馬遜創辦人對普林斯頓畢業生的12分鐘演講。

亞馬遜（Amazon）創辦人貝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）受邀到母校普林斯頓大學對畢業生演講。雖然只有短短12分鐘，但卻令在場畢業生印象深刻。
貝佐斯很喜歡外祖父母，夏天常去他們在德州的農場過暑假，幫忙修理風車、幫牛打預防針，下午一起看肥皂劇。
有一年的旅行，他印象特別深刻，學到了人生重要的一課。下面是貝佐斯的演講摘錄，請細細品味：


在我10歲的時候，利用各種機會練習算術，計算汽車每加侖跑多少英里、算買菜買了多少錢……我記得當時曾經聽過一個廣告，每吸一口菸就會減少幾分鐘壽命。

在那個夏天的長途拖車旅行途中，我決定為抽菸的外婆算一算。我計算她大概一天抽幾根香煙、一根煙可以抽多少口，算出我覺得滿意的合理數字後，我從後座把頭伸到前座，拍拍外婆的肩膀，驕傲地公布：「如果每吸一口煙會減少兩分鐘壽命，你已經少活九年了。」

我原本期待外公外婆會稱讚我聰明、數學好：「傑夫，你好聰明，已經能夠算這麼複雜的數學，算得出來一年有幾分鐘，還會除法。」但實際情況並非如此。外婆聽完後就哭了，我坐在後座，不知道該怎麼辦。

外公一路靜靜地開車，後來把車停在高速公路路肩。外公下了車，繞到後座把車門打開，等我下車跟著他走。當時我心想：「我闖禍了嗎？」外公是非常聰明、不多話的人，他從來沒有兇過我一句，但是，這將會是第一次嗎？還是他會要求我回到車上跟外婆道歉？我們站在拖車旁，外公看著我，柔和平靜地說：「傑夫，有一天你會明白，『仁慈』比『聰明』更難。」

我今天想跟大家分享的，就是『天賦』與『選擇』。『聰明』是天賦，『仁慈』是選擇。『天賦』與生俱來，但是『選擇』就難了。如果不小心，你們可能就會被聰明誘使做了傷害仁慈的選擇。你們是一群很有天分的人，頭腦聰明又能幹，這點我毫無懷疑，因為要進入普林斯頓大學是非常競爭的，不聰明是進不來的。

在這充滿創新驚奇的世界，聰明是優勢。但是，你們將如何運用自己的天賦？你們會以天賦為傲，還是以你的選擇為傲？十六年前，我創辦亞馬遜。我無意間發現網路使用一年成長23倍，我從來沒有見過、也沒有聽過任何東西成長得那麼快。我對於建立一家可以賣幾百萬種書的網路書店這概念非常興奮，這種規模在實體世界不可能存在。

那年我正好30歲、剛結婚一年，我告訴太太我想要離職去做網路書店這件瘋狂的事，可能不會成功，因為大部分的創業都失敗了，我也不太確定失敗後會如何。

我太太也是普林斯頓校友，她告訴我，我應該創業。她提醒我，在我小時候就已經是車庫的發明家。我用裝了水泥的輪胎做出自動關門器，用雨傘與錫箔紙做了不太好用的太陽能鍋，還做了烤盤鬧鐘。我一直希望當個發明家，我太太希望我能做自己有熱情的事。

我沒有多想如果試了失敗會不會後悔。如果連試都不試，我想我會一直掛記著這件事。經過考慮後，我選擇較不安全的路、追求熱情。我為自己的選擇感到驕傲。

明天，完全由你們書寫的嶄新的人生新頁，真的要開始了。

● 你將如何發揮你的天賦？你會做什麼選擇？
● 你是照習慣行事，還是你將追求熱情？
● 你會遵循成規，還是要創新獨特？
● 你會選擇安逸的生活，還是選擇奉獻與冒險的人生？
● 你碰到批評會畏縮屈從，還是堅持自己的信念？
● 你犯錯是會哄騙掩飾，還是坦承道歉？
● 你會因為害怕拒絕而不敢敞開心房，或是願意墜入愛河？
● 你會選擇打安全牌，還是會浪漫一點、超過極限冒險？
● 遇到困難，你是會放棄，還是不顧一切繼續前進？
● 你是憤世嫉俗的批評者，還是務實的建設者？
● 你會為展現自己的聰明而傷害別人，還是選擇仁慈？

我敢說，當你們80歲的時候，靜靜回想，在心中對自己說一生的真實故事，其中最鮮明、最有意義的將是你做的一連串選擇。
人生就是由選擇所創造的。
為自己創造一個偉大的人生故事。

祝你們好運。

能有如導師般的家人指引是福氣，找到如益友般的伴侶更是幸運的，福氣來自天生，幸運卻可以創造。


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