历届哈佛大学毕业演讲 历年哈佛大学毕业演讲

求J.K Rowling08年哈佛毕业典礼演讲稿

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

历届哈佛大学毕业演讲 历年哈佛大学毕业演讲

历届哈佛大学毕业演讲 历年哈佛大学毕业演讲

历届哈佛大学毕业演讲 历年哈佛大学毕业演讲

Harvard University Commencement Address

J.K. Rowling

Copyright June 2008

As prepared for delivery

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address he made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I he to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has ed me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inaertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all yoemember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I he wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I he asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I he learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I he come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered toger to celebrate your academic success, I he decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical chos, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, r, was to write novels. Howr, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could nr pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember ling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well he found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would he been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would nr experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I he since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed soming on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to supe that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you he nr known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and ince nr yet inoculated anyone against the capr of the Fates, and I do not for a moment supe that ryone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

Howr, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the erage person's idea of success, so high he you already flown academically.

Ultimay, we all he to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere sn years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is sible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by ry usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and l you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might nr he found the determination to succeed in the one arena I belid I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might nr fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is imsible to live without failing at soming, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not he lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure ge me an inner security that I had nr attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could he learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you he emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, r after, secure in your ability to survive. You will nr truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both he been tested by aersity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I r earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would l my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achiment. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I he learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and rlatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we he nr shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it rmed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This rlation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.

There in my little off I read hastily scribbled letters uggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to rm the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our off included those who had come to give rmation, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to lee behind.

I shall nr forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I he nr heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of ryone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to he nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had r known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who he nr been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who he. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, ses lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join toger in huge numbers to se people they do not know, and will nr meet. My all participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without hing experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, nr troubling to wonder how it would feel to he been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they he any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without r committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of soming I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achi inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times ry day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your ince, your capacity for hard work, the education you he earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your vo on behalf of those who he no vo; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if yoetain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not he your aantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you he ed transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we he the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I he one last hope for you, which is soming that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day he been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who he been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could nr come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that n if yoemember not a single word of mine, yoemember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

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哈佛大学的告别演讲

Good bye and good luck!

by Lawrence H. Summers

President of Harvard University

再见，好运！

哈佛大学 劳伦斯 萨默斯

Today

I speak from this podium a final time as your president. As I depart

I want to thank all of you - students

faculty

alumni and staff - with whom I he been privileged to work over these past years. Some of us he had our disagreements

but I know that which unites us transcends that which divides us. I lee with a full heart

grateful for the opportunity I he had to lead this remarkable institution.

今天，我将以的身份，后一次在这个讲台上演讲。即将离任前，我要感谢诸位学生、教师、校友和员工，而且非常荣幸在过去的5年里能与你们共事。我们中的一些人意见不尽相同， 但是，我知道，我们的共识远远超越分歧。我心满意足的离开哈佛，感激你们给我机会这所杰出的学府。

Since I delivered my inaugural address

56 months ago

I he learned an enormous amount—about higher education

about leadership

and also about myself. Some things look different to me than they did five years ago. The world that today’s Harvard’s graduates are entering is a profoundly different one than the world administrators entered.

自从56个月前我发表上任讲话以来，我学到了很多——关于高等教育，关于艺术，也关于自我完善。在我看来，现在与5年前不同了。今天的哈佛毕业生正在进入的世界和管理人员当年所进入的世界相比已是大相径庭了。

It is a world where opportunities he nr been greater for those who know how to teach children to read

or those who know how to distribute financial risk; nr greater for those who understand the cell and the pixel; nr greater for those who can

and nigate beeen

legal codes

faith traditions

r platforms

political viewpoints.

现今世界，机遇对于这些人来说是空前的：他们知道如何教子女阅读；他们知道如何组合投资；他们懂得基本存储单元和像素概念；他们能掌握各种法典、传统信仰、计算机平台、观点并在其中游刃有余。

It is also a world where some are left further and further behind - those who are not educated

those trapped in poverty and violence

those for whom equal opportunity is just a hollow phrase.

同时，现今世界，一些人越来越落后于时代。这些人没受过教育、深陷于贫穷和、平等机遇对他们而言，仅是一句空话。

Scientific and technological aances are enabling us to prehend the furthest reaches of the co os

the most basic constituents of matter

and the acle of life.

科技进步正在使我们能够探索宇宙的边陲、物质基本的成分及生命的奇迹。

At the same time

today

the actions

and inaction

of human beings imperil not only life on the pla

but the very life of the pla.

与此同时，今天，人类所做的及没能做到的事情，不仅危害到这个星球上的生命，也危害到该星球的寿命。

Globalization is the world aller

faster and richer. Still

9/11

ian flu

and Iran remind us that a aller

faster world is not necessarily a safer world.

全球化正在使地球变得愈来愈小、愈来愈快和愈来愈富有。尽管如此，9/11、禽流感及伊朗提醒我们，更小更快的世界决不意味着其更安全。Our world is bursting with knowledge - but desperay in need of wisdom. Now

when sound bites are getting shorter

when instant messages crowd out essays

and when individual lives grow more frenzied

college graduates capable of deep reflection are what our world needs.

我们正处于一个知识爆炸的世界之中，不过，迫切需要智慧。现在，在（采访的）原声摘要播出变得愈来愈短，即时信息淘汰了杂记文，个人生活变得如痴如狂之际，这个世界还是需要能够深思的大学生。

For all these reasons I belid - and I beli n more strongly today - in the unique and irreplaceable mission of universities.

考虑到这些理由，我过去信仰，而今天甚至更加强烈地信仰大学独特的、无可取代的使命。

Universities are where the wisdom we cannot afford to lose is preserved from generation to generation. Among all human institutions

universities can look beyond present norms to future sibilities

can look through current considerations to emergent opportunities.

大学是人类把不可或缺的智慧世代流传的殿堂。就人类所有公共机构而言，仅仅大学，能够超越当前的准则，注意到未来的可能性；能通过目前的判断，注意到突发的机遇。

And among universities

Harvard stands out. With its great tradition

its iconic reputation

its remarkable neork of 300

000 alumni

Harvard has nr had as much potential as it does now.

哈佛在大学中间，鹤立鸡羣。凭其伟大的传统、因袭声誉及其非凡的300000校友网，哈佛的潜力前所未有。

And yet

great and proud institutions

like great and proud nations at their peak

must surmount a very real risk: that the very strength of their traditions will lead to caution

to an inward focus on prerogative and to a placency that lets the world pass them by.

可是，就像伟大和自豪的在其鼎盛时期一样，它们必须克服一个完全不能掉以轻心的危险因素：它们传统的强势将会导致谨小慎微、追求内部特权及自满，这将使它们不能与时俱进.

And so I say to you that our University today is at an inflection point in its history. At such a moment

there is temptation to elevate fort and consensus over progress and clear direction

but this would be a mistake. The University’s matchless resources - human

physical

financial - demand that we seize this moment with vision and boldness. To do otherwise would be a lost opportunity. We can spur great deeds that history will mark decades and n centuries from now. If Harvard can find the courage to change itself

it can change the world.

今天，哈佛正处于其历史的转折点。此时此刻的自然倾向是，把贪图舒适和随波逐流留凌驾于进步和方向性之上，但，这可能是错误的。大学无与伦比的资源 ——人力、物力、财力——要求我们远见卓识和勇敢地抓住这个时机，否则，将会坐失良机。我们能推动将会被历史永世铭记的伟大的事业。如果哈佛能找到勇气来改变自己，它就能改变世界。

比尔盖茨2005哈佛大学演讲

比尔盖茨在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲（中英对照）

President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust,

members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members

of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

尊敬的Bok，Rudenstine前，即将上任的Faust，哈佛的各位成员，监管理事会的各位理事，各位老师，各位家长，各位同学：

I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree."

有一句话我等了三十年，现在终于可以说了："老爸，我总是跟你说，我会回来拿到我的学位的!"

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job

next year ... and it will be n to finally he a college degree on

my resume.

我要感谢哈佛大学在这个时候给我这个荣誉。明年，我就要换工作了(注：指从微软公司退休)......我终于可以在上写我有一个大学学位，这真是不错啊。

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to

your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has called me

"Harvard's most successful dropout." I guess that makes me

valedictorian of my own special class ... I did the best of ryone who

failed.

我为今天在座的各位同学感到高兴，你们拿到学位可比我简单多了。哈佛的校报称我是"哈佛大学历史上成功的辍学生"。我想这大概使我有资格代表我这一类学生发言......在所有的失败者里，我做得。

比尔盖茨演讲 哈佛大学演讲

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got St Ballmer to

drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence. That's why I was

invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your

orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

但是，我还要提醒大家，我使得St Ballmer(注：微软)也从哈佛商学院退学了。因此，我是个有着恶劣影响力的人。这就是为什么我被邀请来在你们的毕业典礼上演讲。如果我在你们入学欢迎仪式上演讲，那么能够坚持到今天在这里毕业的人也许会少得多吧。

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was

fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn't n signed up

for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier

House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night

discussing things, because ryone knew I didn't worry about getting up

in the morning. That's how I came to be the leader of the anti-social

group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of

all those social people.

对我来说，哈佛的求学经历是一段非凡的经历。校园生活很有趣，我常去旁听我没选修的课。哈佛的课外生活也很棒，我在Radcliffe过着逍遥自在的

日子。每天我的寝室里总有很多人一直待到半夜，讨论着各种事情。因为每个人都知道我从不考虑第二天早起。这使得我变成了校园里那些不安分学生的头头，我们

互相粘在一起，做出一种拒绝所有正常学生的姿态。

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there,

and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered

me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the

sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success.

Radcliffe是个过日子的好地方。那里的女生比男生多，而且大多数男生都是理工科的。这种状况为我创造了的机会，如果你们明白我的意思。可惜的是，我正是在这里学到了人生中悲伤的一课：机会大，并不等于你就会成功。

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I

made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had

begun the world's first personal comrs. I offered to sell

them software.

我在哈佛难忘的回忆之一，发生在1975年1月。那时，我从宿舍楼里给位于Albuquerque的一家公司打了一个电话，那家公司已经在着手制造世界上台个人电脑。我提出想向他们出。

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。