On rare occasions, a commencement speaker can jolt graduates to attention with a personal, even uncomfortable truth from their working lives. Here are six speakers who departed from the usual bromides about “believing in yourself,” and mined their own lives for failure, doubts and blind spots that marked their ascent to the top of their fields.
在毕业典礼上，很少有演讲嘉宾愿意分享那些源自真实工作经历，令人不舒服的人生感悟，能够撼动毕业生心灵的此类演讲更是寥若晨星。但以下这6位商界大佬做到了这一点。他们并没有重复“相信自己”这样的陈词滥调，而是动情地讲述了自身生活经历中那些促使他们成长为业界佼佼者的失败、质疑和盲点。

Jimmy Iovine, University of Southern California, 2013
吉米•艾欧文，南加州大学，2013年

Music producer Jimmy Iovine observed that the successes he had achieved as a music producer didn’t amount to anything when he made the switch to selling Beats headphones. “So who believed that Dr. Dre and I could sell hardware,” he wondered aloud. “No one,” he answered in a speech that underscored the transient nature of success. “I learned even at 50, I had to be a beginner again.”
音乐制作人吉米•艾欧文发现，自己作为音乐制作人所取得的成功，对于改行卖Beats耳机没有任何用处。在演讲中，他大声地说出自己曾经的疑惑：“谁相信说唱巨星Dr. Dre和我会去卖硬件？没有人相信。”他随后着重强调了成功的短暂性：“在50岁的时候，我知道我必须从头做起。”

“Please remember this: Your diploma does not represent the end of your education, but the beginning of your continuing education,” he added.
他补充说：“请记住一点：你的学历并不代表教育的结束，而是继续教育的开始。”

Sheryl Sandberg, Barnard College, 2011
谢莉•桑德伯格，伯纳德学院，2011年

Two years before Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In, the Facebook COO was already sewing the seeds of the movement in an address to Barnard’s graduating class.
在出版畅销书《向前一步》两年之前，Facebook首席运营官谢莉•桑德伯格就已经开始播撒行动的种子。在对伯纳德学院的毕业生演讲时，她说：

“Ask a woman why she did well on something, and she’ll say, ‘I got lucky. All of these great people helped me. I worked really hard.’ Ask a man and he’ll say or think, ‘What a dumb question. I’m awesome.’ So women need to take a page from men and own their own success.”
“询问一个女人为什么她某件事做得好，她可能会告诉你：‘我比较幸运。许多了不起的人帮助了我，而且我也很努力。’如果是男士，他就会说：‘多傻的问题啊，我本来就很了不起的。’所以，女性都应该向男性学习这一点，这样才能获得同样的成功。”

Jeff Bezos, Princeton University, 2010
杰夫•贝佐斯，普林斯顿大学，2010年

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos related a hard bit of advice from his grandfather: “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.” Bezos warned that the gift of creativity was a double-edged sword that could lead to complacency and worse, a know-it-all attitude, a lesson that he candidly admits he learned the hard way.
亚马逊CEO杰夫•贝佐斯提到了祖父给他的一些忠告：“杰夫，总有一天你会明白，做一个善良的人，要比做一个聪明的人更加困难。”贝佐斯警告毕业生们，创造力是一把双刃剑，可能使人自满，甚至导致更加糟糕的结果——令人自以为无所不知，他坦言自己也是在历经艰辛之后才明白了这个道理。

“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.”
“聪明是一种天赋，而善良是一种选择。天赋得来容易——毕竟，它们是与生俱来的，但选择往往很困难。你们如果不够谨慎，就可能被自己的天赋所误导，一旦被误导，就可能危害你的选择。”

卡尔•伊坎，德雷克塞尔大学，2008年
Carl Icahn, Drexel University, 2008

Corporate raider Carl Icahn cut through the uplifting sentiments of commencement addresses with a stern assessment of the nation’s business elite, holding up the average American CEO as the precise opposite of a role model.
毕业典礼演讲意在振奋人心，但公司掠夺者卡尔•伊坎却借此机会对美国的商界领袖进行了一番猛烈抨击。他表示，普通的美国CEO不应该成为学生们学习的榜样。

“With exceptions, we have terrible management in this country,” he said. “The system is dysfunctional. I can tell you how bad our boards are, with exceptions of course. I sit on a lot of boards. I don’t have to watch Saturday Night Live anymore; I just go to the board meetings.”
他说道：“虽然有例外，但美国公司的管理非常糟糕。整个系统功能失调。我可以告诉你们，美国公司的董事会多么差劲，虽然确实存在例外。我在许多家董事会任职。我根本不用去看《周六夜现场》，因为董事会简直比娱乐节目还要热闹。”

Bill Gates, Harvard University, 2007
比尔•盖茨，哈佛大学，2007年

Bill Gates highlighted a blind spot in his education that persisted for decades. “I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries,” he told Harvard’s graduates, recounting how he was stunned when he first encountered the death tolls from curable diseases that had ravaged the world’s poorest communities.
比尔•盖茨强调指出，在他数十年的受教育经历中存在一个盲区。他告诉哈佛大学的毕业生，第一次知道席卷全世界最贫穷社区的可治愈疾病的死亡人数时，他感到万分震惊。他说：“我不知道，发展中国家里有无数的人们生活在无法形容的贫穷和疾病之中。”

“You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort.”
“有了这样的了解之后，要是你再弃那些你可以帮助的人们于不顾，你就将受到良心的谴责，只需一点小小的努力，你就可以改变那些人的生活。”

Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005
史蒂夫•乔布斯，斯坦福大学，2005年

Steve Jobs drew a remarkable connection between a calligraphy course that would shape the future of Apple.
史蒂夫•乔布斯谈到了书法课与苹果公司未来之间的关系。

“If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class,” he said, “and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do,”
他说道：“如果我没有退学，我就不会去旁听书法课。而个人电脑可能就不会拥有如此美妙的字体。”

“So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
“因此，你要相信，这些点在未来终将连接起来。你必须信任某种东西——你的胆识、命运、生命、业力等等。这种方式从未让我失望，而且彻底改变了我的生活。”