9.亚马逊 选择塑造人生

　　But 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.

　　但是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。而选择却颇为艰难。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. 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.

　　在应各位都拥有许多夭赋。我确信你们的天赋之一就是拥有精明能干的头脑。我之所以如此确信，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。

　　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 small machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but inevitable news that we've synthesized life. In the coming years, we'll not only synthesize it, but 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.

　　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前进。我们人类尽管缓步前行，却终将令自己大吃一惊。我们能够想方设法制造各种清洁能源，也能够一个原子一个原子地纽装微型机械，使之穿过细胞壁，然后修复细胞。这个月，有一件非凡的而不可避免的事情发生了，那就是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读懂人类的大脑。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。