导读：比尔·盖茨（1955— ），美国企业家、软件工程师、慈善家以及微软公司的董事长。他出生于1955年10月28日，和两个姐姐一起在西雅图长大。盖茨曾就读于在西雅图的公立小学和私立的湖滨中学。在那里，他发现了他在软件方面的兴趣并且在13岁时开始了计算机编程。1973年，盖茨考进了哈佛大学。他是一个商业奇才，独特的眼光使他总是能准确看到IT业的未来，独特的管理手段，使得不断壮大的微软能够保持活力。他的财富更是一个神话，39岁便成为世界首富，并连续13年登上福布斯榜首的位置。他以自己的人生传奇书写了一个不朽的财富神话。本篇为比尔·盖茨在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的著名演讲。
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:
I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job next year ... and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
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 everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve 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.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn't even 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 everyone 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.
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.
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 making the world's first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We're not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn't written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating , sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege —and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back ... I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world — the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries — but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity — reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world's inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you've had a chance to think about how — in this age of accelerating technology — we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause — and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year — none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren't being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism — if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end because people just ... don't ... care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing — not because we didn't care, but because we didn't know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate , determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We're determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don't read much about these deaths. The media covers what's new — and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it's easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it's difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It's hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don't know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action — and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it's something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bed net.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand — and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working — and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century — which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step — after seeing the problem and finding an approach — is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work — so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person's life — then multiply that by millions. Yet this was the most boring panel I've ever been on ever. So boring even I couldn't bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software — but why can't we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can't get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that is a complex question.
Still, I'm optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new — they can help us make the most of our caring — and that's why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age — biotechnology, the computer, the Internet — give us a chance we've never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem — and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don't. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don't have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors — the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure , review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems? Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty ... the prevalence of world hunger ... the scarcity of clean water ... the girls kept out of school ... the children who die from diseases we can cure? Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions — you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here — never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given — in talent, privilege, and opportunity — there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue — a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. 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. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities ... on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.
校长博克，前任校长鲁登斯坦，接任校长福斯特，校董事会的各位董事，校务监督委员会的各位委员，各位老师，各位家长，特别是，诸位毕业生：
我一直等了三十多年，现在终于可以说了：“爸，我老跟你说，我会回来拿到我的学位的！”
感谢哈佛及时地给我这个荣誉。明年，我就要换工作……我终于可以在简历上写我有一个大学学历，这真是太棒了。
我为在座的各位毕业生而鼓掌，你们拿到学位可比我轻松多了。而我，之所以高兴，是因为哈佛的校报称我是“哈佛大学历史上最成功的辍学生”。我想这大概使我有资格代表我这一类特殊的学生在此致辞——在所有的失败者中，我做得最好。
同时，我也想让大家也知道，我就是那个让史蒂夫·鲍尔默也从哈佛商学院退学的家伙；我影响恶劣。这就是我被邀请来在你们的毕业典礼上做演讲的原因。要是我在你们的入学欢迎仪式上演讲，那今天在此的毕业生可能就更少了。
对我来说，哈佛的求学是一段非凡的经历。哈佛的课堂生活令人神往，我以前常常去旁听一些课程，甚至连名都不报。哈佛的课外生活也异彩纷呈，我在拉德克里夫学院的卡瑞尔宿舍楼过着逍遥自在的日子。每天我的寝室里总有一帮人待到半夜，讨论着各种事情，因为他们都知道我从不担心第二天要早起。这就让我慢慢变成了“反社会头目”，我们紧密地团结在一起，并以此来证明，我们抵制一切“世俗的人们”。
拉德克里夫是个适合生活的好地方。那里的女生比男生多，而且大多数男生都是理工科的；这给我创造了最好的机会，如果你们明白我意思的话。可惜的是，我正是在这里学到了人生中悲伤的一课：机会多，并不等于你就会成功。
我在哈佛最难忘的一件事情发生在1975年1月，当时，我从卡瑞尔宿舍楼里给位于阿尔伯克基的一家公司打了个电话，那家公司已经在着手制造世界上第一台个人电脑。我提出想向他们出售软件。
我很担心，他们会发觉我是一个住校的学生，从而挂断电话。但是他们却说：“我们还没准备好，一个月后再看看吧。”这是个好消息，因为那时软件还根本没有写出来呢。就是从那个时候起，我夜以继日地工作，把时间花在这个小小的课外项目上，这标志着了我大学生活的结束，也标志着我与微软的非凡旅程的开始。
我记忆中的哈佛，风华正茂，人才辈出。哈佛的生活让人兴奋，让人胆怯，有时甚至会让人感到泄气，但永远充满了挑战。生活在哈佛是一种莫大的荣幸——虽然我离开得比较早，但是多年在这里生活的经历、在这里结识的朋友、在这里形成的观念，塑造了一个全新的我。
但是，仔细地回想过往，我确实有一大遗憾。
我离开哈佛的时候，根本没有意识到这个世界是多么的不平等——人类在健康、财富和机遇上的鸿沟大得惊人，这一切使无数人陷入了绝望。
就是在哈佛，我吸收到了很多关于政治和经济的新思想。我也接触到了很多科学上的新进展。
但是，人类最大的进步并不在于这些伟大的发现本身，而是在于我们如何应用这些发现去消除社会的不平等现象。无论是建立民主的政治制度，还是健全公共的教育体制，无论是提供良好的医疗保健，还是创造广泛的经济机会——消除社会不公始终是人类最大的成就。
我离开校园的时候，根本不知道在这个国家里，有数百万的年轻人无法获得教育的机会；根本不知道在一些发展中国家，有数百万的人民生活在无以言表的贫困和疾病之中。
几十年了，我才明白。
诸位毕业生，你们来到哈佛的时代与我迥异。较之以前，你们更了解世界的不平等现象。在你们的哈佛求学历程中，我希望你们已经思考过一个问题，那就是：在这个技术加速发展的时代，我们终将如何去应对这种不平等，我们终将如何去解决这种不平等。
为了讨论，试想一下，假如你每周可以抽出一些时间，每月可以捐出一些钱——你希望这些时间和金钱，发挥最大的作用，以拯救人类的生命和改善人类的生活，你会选择什么地方？
对梅林达和我来说，我们所面临的挑战与大家一样：我们该怎么做，才能将我们所拥有的资源发挥到极致，以造福千万的人民。
我与梅林达在讨论这个问题的时候，读到了一篇文章，里面说，在一些贫穷的国家，每年有数百万的儿童死于麻疹、疟疾、肺炎、乙肝和黄热病，而这些疾病在我国早已不成问题。还有一种以前我从未听说过的轮状病毒，这种病毒每年导致50万儿童死亡，但是无一例是在美国。
震惊之余，我们以为：如果几百万儿童正在死亡线上挣扎，他们本可以得救，那么全世界理应研制这些药物，并把药物送到他们手中，以拯救他们的生命作为头等大事。然而，事实并非如此。因为不足一美元的资金问题受到干涉，用于救命的药物，并不能送到患者的手中。
如果你相信每个生命都是平等的话，那么当你获悉有人竟然认为某些生命值得挽救，而另一些生命不值得，厌恶之情油然而生。我们对自己说：“事情不至如此。但如果这的确是事实，那么它就应该是我们着手该解决的当务之急。”
因此，任何人都一样，我们会用同样的方式开始解决问题。我们会问：“这个世界怎么可以眼睁睁看着这些孩子死去？”
答案很简单，但也相当刺耳。在市场经济中，挽救患病的儿童并没有利润，政府也不会提供补助。这些儿童之所以会死亡，是因为他们的父母在市场上没有经济实力，在体制上没有发言权利。
但是，你们和我都有这样的经济实力，你们和我都有这样的发言权利。
如果我们能够建立一种更具有创新的资本制度，我们就可以让市场更好地为穷人服务——如果我们可以拓展市场的领域，更多的人就能够获得利润，或者说至少可以维持生活；那么，就可以帮助那些正受到极不平等待遇的人们。我们还可以向世界各国的政府施压，要求他们将纳税人的钱，花到更符合纳税人价值观的地方。
如果我们能够找到一种能够满足贫苦人民需求的方法，它既可以为商人带来利润，又能够为政治家拉来选票，那么我们可能就找到了一条可持续发展之路，从而消除世界上的不平等现象。这项任务无穷无尽，没有终点；但是有意认识这个挑战，努力迎接这个挑战，勇敢应对这个挑战，都将会改变这个世界。
我一直乐观地认为，我们能这样做。但是，我也遇到过一些声称陷入绝望的怀疑主义者。他们说：“不平等现象是我们生来即有、老也将存的问题——因为人们对这个问题漠不关心。”对此，我不以为然。
我认为，不是我们漠不关心，而是我们束手无策。
此刻身处校园的我们，生命中总有这样或那样的时刻，目睹人类的悲剧，痛彻心扉，但是我们什么也没做——并非我们无动于衷，而是因为我们不知道做什么和怎么做。如果我们知道要如何应对，我们将立即行动。
需要我们去消除的屏障，并非人类的冷漠无情，而是世界的纷繁复杂。
要把关心转为行动，我们需要发现问题，找到方法，评估后果。但是纷繁复杂的世界阻挡了我们的脚步，以上的三个步骤不能得以实施。
即使有了互联网的出现和全天候的新闻播报，要让人们发现问题的真实面貌，仍然是相当艰巨。如果有一架飞机坠毁，政府官员就会立刻召开新闻发布会，他们承诺进行调查，找到原因，防止将来再次发生类似的事故。
但是如果那些官员敢于说真话，他们就会说：“在今天，全世界死于可避免事故中的所有人，只有0.5%的人在这次飞机事故中罹难。我们决心尽一切努力，彻底调查这0.5%的死亡原因。”
显然，更重要的问题不是这次空难，而是其他几百万可避免的死亡事件。
对这些死亡事件，我们知之甚少。媒体总是报告新闻，但是几百万人将要死去并非新闻。新闻是在事件的幕后，这很容易被忽视。即使我们确实目睹了事件的真相或者看到了相关报道，我们也很难持续去关注这些事件。问题是如此之复杂，我们也束手无策，要直面这样的灾难就显得相当困难，所以我们就对此视而不见，置若罔闻。
就算我们能真正发现问题，也不过是迈出了第一步，接着还有第二步：那就是，从这个复杂的世界中走出一条捷径，找到解决问题的办法。
如果我们要让关心落到实处，我们就必须找到解决问题的方法。一旦我们有一个明确可行的方案，那么无论何时，当任何组织和个人来询问“我该怎么提供帮助”的时候，我们就能采取行动。这样，我们就充分发挥全世界人类对他人的关爱之情。但是，纷繁的世界使得我们很难找出一条适合每一位善者的行动方针，这样一来，人类对他人的关爱往往很难奏效。
要从这个复杂的世界中走出一条捷径，找到解决问题的办法，可以分为以下四个步骤：确定目标，找到最高效的方法，发现适用于这个方法的最理想的技术，同时最聪明地利用现有的技术——不管这项技术是复杂如药物，还是简单如蚊帐。
艾滋病就是一个例子。其总目标，毫无疑问是消灭这种疾病。最高效的方法是预防。最理想的技术是发明一种疫苗，只要注射一次，就可终生免疫。所以，政府、制药公司和基金会应该资助疫苗研究。但是，这样的研究工作很可能需要十几年，因此，与此同时，我们必须利用现有的技术——目前最有效的预防方法，就是设法让人们避免那些危险的行为。
要实现让人们避免危险行为这一目标，上述四步依然适用，可以再次循环。这是一种模式。关键问题是，我们永远不要停止思考，永远不能停止行动，永远不能重蹈覆辙，犯下20世纪在应对疟疾和肺结核时的同样错误，那时我们臣服于这个复杂的社会，从而放弃了采取行动。
在发现问题并且找到解决方法之后，就剩下最后一步——评估工作结果，分享成败经验，这样就可以让你的努力去惠及他人。
当然，你必须有一些统计数字。你必须让他人知道，你的项目正为几百万儿童接种疫苗。你也必须让他人知道，这种患病儿童的死亡人数下降了多少。这些都关键，不仅有利于改善项目效果，而且也有利于从商界和政府得到更多的资助。
但是，如果你还想激励其他人参加你的项目，仅有统计数字还不够；你必须传达这项工作的人性因素，这样就会让其他人感受到，拯救一个生命，对那些身处困境中的家庭到底意味着什么。
几年前，我去瑞士达沃斯旁听一个全球健康问题会议，会议的内容是讨论如何挽救几百万条生命。天哪，是几百万！想想吧，拯救一个人的生命已经让人何等激动，现在要把这种激动放大几百万倍……但是，不幸的是，这是我参加过的最最乏味的会议，乏味到我不想再听下去。
那次经历之所以让我难忘，是因为之前我们刚刚发布了一个软件的第13个版本，当时有些人激动得又蹦又叫。我喜欢人们因为软件而激动，那么我们为什么不能够让人们因为能够拯救生命而感到更加激动呢？
除非你能够让人们看到并且感受到行动的影响力，否则你无法让他们激动。如何做到这一点，并非易事。
对此，我依然乐观。没错，不平等现象一直存在，但是有一些新技术，能够带领我们走出世界的纷扰。这些新技术才刚刚出现，它可以帮助我们，将人类的关爱发挥到极致，这就是未来之所以有别于过去的原因所在。
当今世界，技术革新，不断涌现——生物技术、计算机、互联网——给我们展示出前所未有的机会，以消除赤贫，根除一些疾病导致的无谓的死亡。
六十年前，乔治·马歇尔也是在这个地方的毕业典礼上，宣布了一项计划，帮助欧洲国家的战后建设。他说：“我认为，困难在于这个问题太复杂，报纸和电台源源不断地向公众提供各种事实，使得大街上的百姓难于清晰地判断形势。事实上，经过层层传播，想要真正地把握形势，是根本不可能的。”
马歇尔发表演讲后的三十年，我那一届学生毕业，当然我不在其中。那时，新技术刚刚开始萌芽，它们将使得这个世界变得更小、更开放、更透明、距离更近。
低成本个人电脑的出现，使得强大的互联网有机会诞生，它为学习和交流提供了全新的机会。
网络的神奇之处，不仅仅在于它跨越了距离，使得天涯犹若比邻。它还会聚了英才，为共同理想而一起奋斗——这就能促进革新，以惊人的速度发展。
与此同时，世界上有条件上网的人，只是全部人口的六分之一。这意味着，还有许多具有创造性的人才不能参与讨论——那些具有实践经验和相关经历的杰出人才，没有办法磨砺他们的才智，提出他们的想法。
我们需要尽力让更多的人有机会掌握这一新技术，因为这些进步会引发一场革命，人类将因此可以互相帮助。新技术不仅仅能够让政府，还能够让大学、公司、小机构，甚至个人发现问题、找到解决办法、评估他们努力的结果，从而去解决那些马歇尔早在六十年前就谈到过的所有问题——饥饿、贫穷和绝望。
在座的所有哈佛人，你们都是全世界的精英，今天汇集在此。
我们为什么而来？
毫无疑问，哈佛的师生、哈佛的校友和哈佛的资助者已经尽力改善了在座各位的生活，也改善了世界各地人们的生活。但是，我们还能够再做什么呢？哈佛人能够将他们的才智奉献出来吗？哈佛人能够改善那些甚至没有听说过“哈佛”之名的人们的生活吗？
各位院长，各位教授，你们是哈佛知识分子的领袖，请允许我提出一个请求——当你们雇用新任教师、授予终身教职、评估全部课程、决定学位颁发标准的时候，请问你们自己如下的问题：
我们最优秀的人才是否在致力于解决最困难的问题？哈佛是否鼓励其教师去解决世界上最严重的不平等问题？哈佛的学生是否了解全球性的贫困？是否了解世界性的饥荒？是否了解水资源的缺乏？是否了解辍学的女童？是否了解那些死于非恶性疾病的儿童？
那些养尊处优的人们，你们是否了解含辛茹苦的人民？
我并不是在设问，请用你行动的方针来做答。
在我被哈佛大学录取的那一天，我母亲倍感自豪，但她一直敦促我，要为他人谋取更多的福祉。在我结婚典礼的前几天，她特意主持了一个仪式。在这个仪式上，她高声朗读了一封信，是写给梅林达的，关于婚姻方面的问题。那时，我母亲已经因癌症而病入膏肓，但她还是抓住了一线机会，传播她的信念。在信的结尾，她写道：“天赋于斯，大任在肩，得到越多，期望更大。”
在座各位，请想一想吧，你们得到了什么——天才、特权、机遇——既如此，全世界的人都在期望，期望我们做出无穷无尽的贡献。
同这个时代的期望一样，我也要勉励各位毕业生去解决一个问题，一个复杂的问题，那就是去解决这种明显的社会不平等问题，然后把自己变成这方面的专家。如果你们能够以此作为你职业的目标，你将脱颖而出。但是，你不可以仅仅为扩大影响而为。你可以一周花几个小时，从日益壮大的互联网上获得信息，找到志同道合的朋友，发现困难之所在，找到解决困难的捷径。
不要让这个复杂的世界阻碍了你前进的脚步。做一个行动主义者。将解决人类的不平等视为己任，它将成为你生命历程中最辉煌的经历。
诸位毕业生，你们所处的时代是一个神奇的时代。当你们离开哈佛的时候，你们拥有了我们那时未曾拥有的技术，你们认识到了我们那时未曾认识的社会不平等现象。既然认识到了这个问题，如果你弃之不管，你可能就会受到良心的谴责，因为一点小小的努力，你就可以改变那些人的生活。既然你们比我们拥有更大的能力，你们就应该争朝夕，谋长远，持之以恒地做下去。
既知之，怎能无动于衷？
我希望，30年后，你们再回哈佛，回想你们用青春和才智换来的一切。我希望各位，在那个时候，你们不仅仅用自己专业成就来衡量自己；还要用你们如何为消除社会的不平等的努力来衡量自己；还要用你们如何善待那些远隔千山万水的世人来衡量自己。
祝福好运。
