苹果公司CEO库克杜兰大学2019年毕业典礼演讲：“在某些方面我们这一代人已经失败了”

当地时间5月18日，苹果公司CEO蒂姆·库克（Tim Cook）出席美国杜兰大学（Tulane University）2019年毕业典礼并发表演讲。

演讲全文如下（仅供参考）：

Hello Tulane! Thank you President Fitts, Provost Forman, distinguished faculty, other faculty [laughs], and the entire Tulane family, including the workers, ushers, [and] volunteers who prepared this beautiful space. And I feel duty-bound to also recognize the hard-working bartenders at The Boot. Though they're not here with us this morning, I'm sure some of you are reflecting on their contributions as well.

usher

表示“（婚礼、音乐会等的）引座员”，英文解释为“An usher is a person who shows people where to sit, for example at a wedding or at a concert.”

duty-bound

表示“责无旁贷；义不容辞”，英文解释为“having to do sth because it is your duty”举个🌰：

I felt duty-bound to help him.

我觉得帮助他责无旁贷。

bartender

表示“酒吧侍应生，酒吧招待；酒保；调酒师”，英文解释为“A bartender is a person who serves drinks behind a bar.”

The Boot

The Boot is a popular college bar right next to Tulane's campus which has been around for decades.

And just as many of you have New Orleans in your veins, and perhaps your livers, some of us at Apple have New Orleans in our blood as well. When I was a student at Auburn, the Big Easy was our favorite getaway. It's amazing how quickly those 363 miles fly by when you're driving toward a weekend of beignets and beer. And how slowly they go in the opposite direction. Apple's own Lisa Jackson is a proud Tulane alum. Yes. She brought the Green Wave all the way to Cupertino where she heads our environment and public policy work. We're thrilled to have her talent and leadership on our team. 

getaway

表示“短假；假日休闲地；适合度假的地方”，英文解释为“a short holiday/vacation; a place that is suitable for a holiday/vacation”如：a romantic weekend getaway in Hangzhou 在杭州度过的浪漫周末。

前面提到的the Big Easy was our favorite getaway，其中：The Big Easy is a nickname for the American city of New Orleans (新奥尔良), Louisiana.

alum

表示“校友，毕业生”，英文解释为“a former student of a school, college etc”。

Cupertino 库比蒂诺（苹果电脑的全球总公司所在地，位于美国旧金山）

OK, enough about us. Let's talk about you. At moments like this, it always humbles me to watch a community come together to teach, mentor, advise, and finally say with one voice, congratulations to the class of 2019! 

Now there's another very important group: your family and friends. The people who, more than anyone else, loved, supported, and even sacrificed greatly to help you reach this moment. Let's give them a round of applause. This will be my first piece of advice. You might not appreciate until much later in your life how much this moment means to them. Or how that bond of obligation, love, and duty between you matters more than anything else. 

In fact, that's what I really want to talk to you about today. In a world where we obsessively document our own lives, most of us don't pay nearly enough attention to what we owe one another. Now this isn't just about calling your parents more, although I'm sure they'd be grateful if you did that. It's about recognizing that human civilization began when we realized that we could do more together. That the threats and danger outside the flickering firelight got smaller when we got bigger. And that we could create more — more prosperity, more beauty, more wisdom, and a better life — when we acknowledge certain shared truths and acted collectively. 

Maybe I'm biased, but I've always thought the South, and the Gulf Coast in particular, have hung on to this wisdom better than most. [注：Tim Cook grew up in Robertsdale, Alabama, which is about an hour from New Orleans and is similarly close to the Gulf of Mexico.]

In this part of the country, your neighbors check up on you if they haven't heard from you in a while. Good news travels fast because your victories are their victories too. And you can't make it through someone's front door before they offer you a home-cooked meal.

Maybe you haven't thought about it very much, but these values have informed your Tulane education too. Just look at the motto: not for one's self, but for one's own. You've been fortunate to live, learn, and grow in a city where human currents blend into something magical and unexpected. Where unmatched beauty, natural beauty, literary beauty, musical beauty, cultural beauty, seem to spring unexpectedly from the bayou.

The people of New Orleans use two tools to build this city: the unlikely and the impossible. Wherever you go, don't forget the lessons of this place. Life will always find lots of ways to tell you no, that you can't, that you shouldn't, that you'd be better off if you didn't try. But New Orleans teaches us there is nothing more beautiful or more worthwhile than trying. Especially when we do it not in the service of one's self, but one's own. 

For me, it was that search for greater purpose that brought me to Apple in the first place. I had a comfortable job at a company called Compaq that at the time looked like it was going to be on top forever. As it turns out, most of you are probably too young to even remember its name. But in 1998, Steve Jobs convinced me to leave Compaq behind to join a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy. They made computers, but at that moment at least, people weren't interested in buying them. Steve had a plan to change things. And I wanted to be a part of it.

It wasn't just about the iMac, or the iPod, or everything that came after. It was about the values that brought these inventions to life. The idea that putting powerful tools in the hands of everyday people helps unleash creativity and move humanity forward. That we can build things that help us imagine a better world and then make it real. 

There's a saying that if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. At Apple, I learned that's a total crock. You'll work harder than you ever thought possible, but the tools will feel light in your hands. As you go out into the world, don't waste time on problems that have been solved. Don't get hung up on what other people say is practical. Instead, steer your ship into the choppy seas. Look for the rough spots, the problems that seem too big, the complexities that other people are content to work around.

a crock (of sth)

表示“屁话，狗屁；胡说八道”，英文解释为“something that is not true”举个🌰：

"I'm really sorry!" "What a crock - you are not."

“我真的非常抱歉！”“什么屁话，你根本不是真心的。”

choppy

表示“（水面）波浪起伏的，波浪滔滔的”，英文解释为“choppy water has a lot of waves and is not smooth to sail on”举个🌰：

The small boat bobbed about on the choppy water.

小船在波浪起伏的水面上颠簸。

It's in those places that you will find your purpose. It's there that you can make your greatest contribution. Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of being too cautious. Don't assume that by staying put, the ground won't move beneath your feet. The status quo simply won't last. So get to work on building something better.

the status quo

表示“现状”，英文解释为“the state of a situation as it is”，如：  维持/保持现状maintain/preserve/defend the status quo (=not make any changes)。

In some important ways, my generation has failed you in this regard. We spent too much time debating. We've been too focused on the fight and not focused enough on progress. And you don't need to look far to find an example of that failure. Here today, in this very place, in an arena where thousands once found desperate shelter from a 100-year disaster, the kind that seem to be happening more and more frequently, I don't think we can talk about who we are as people and what we owe to one another without talking about climate change.

[applause] Thank you. Thank you.

This problem doesn't get any easier based on whose side wins or loses an election. It's about who has won life's lottery and has the luxury of ignoring this issue and who stands to lose everything. The coastal communities, including some right here in Louisiana, that are already making plans to leave behind the places they've called home for generations and head for higher ground. The fishermen whose nets come up empty. The wildlife preserves with less wildlife to preserve. The marginalized, for whom a natural disaster can mean enduring poverty. 

Just ask Tulane's own Molly Keogh, who's getting her Ph.D. this weekend. Her important new research shows that rising sea levels are devastating areas of Southern Louisiana more dramatically than anyone expected. Tulane graduates, these are people's homes. Their livelihoods. The land where their grandparents were born, lived, and died. 

When we talk about climate change or any issue with human costs, and there are many, I challenge you to look for those who have the most to lose and find the real, true empathy that comes from something shared. That is really what we owe one another. When you do that, the political noise dies down, and you can feel your feet firmly planted on solid ground. After all, we don't build monuments to trolls, and we're not going to start now.

troll

作为名词，原意指“（斯堪的纳维亚地区传说中的）山精，巨人，侏儒”（an imaginary, either very large or very small creature in traditional Scandinavian stories, that has magical powers and lives in mountains or caves）；

另外我们在互联网上所谓的“喷子，键盘侠”也可以用troll来表达，即在因特网上为吸引别人关注或捣乱，故意留下令人生气的帖子的人，英文解释为“someone who leaves an intentionally annoying message on the internet, in order to get attention or cause trouble”。

If you find yourself spending more time fighting than getting to work, stop and ask yourself who benefits from all the chaos. There are some who would like you to believe that the only way that you can be strong is by bulldozing those who disagree or never giving them a chance to say their peace in the first place. That the only way you can build your own accomplishments is by tearing down the other side. 

bulldoze

/ˈbʊldəʊz/

1) 表示“（用推土机）推平，铲平”，英文解释为“to destroy buildings and make an area flat with a bulldozer”举个🌰：

The township was bulldozed in the 1980s.

这个小镇在20世纪80年代被夷为平地。

2) 表示“强迫，胁迫”，英文解释为“to force someone to do something, although they might not want to”举个🌰：

She bulldozed her daughter into buying a new dress.

她逼着她的女儿去买条新裙子。

We forget sometimes that our preexisting beliefs have their own force of gravity. Today, certain algorithms pull toward you the things you already know, believe, or like, and they push away everything else. Push back. It shouldn't be this way. But in 2019, opening your eyes and seeing things in a new way can be a revolutionary act. Summon the courage not just to hear but to listen. Not just to act, but to act together. 

It can sometimes feel like the odds are stacked against you, that it isn't worth it, that the critics are too persistent and the problems are too great. But the solutions to our problems begin on a human scale with building a shared understanding of the work ahead and with undertaking it together. At the very least, we owe it to each other to try. 

The cards/odds are stacked against you

表示“形势对你不利”，英文解释为“you are unlikely to succeed because the conditions are not good for you”

相反：The cards/odds are stacked in your favour.表示“形势对你有利”（you are likely to succeed because the conditions are good and you have an advantage）

类似说法：have the odds/cards stacked against you：形势对你不利（to be very unlikely to succeed because you are not in an good position）

It's worked before. In 1932, the American economy was in a free-fall. Twelve million people were unemployed, and conventional wisdom said the only thing to do was to ride it out, wait, and hope that things would turn around. But the governor of New York, a rising star named Franklin Roosevelt, refused to wait. He challenged the status quo and called for action. He needed people to stop their rosy thinking, face the facts, pull together, and help themselves out of a jam. He said: "The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it and try another. But above all, try something."

ride out

表示“安然渡过（难关）”，英文解释为“to continue to exist during a difficult situation and until it ends, without serious harm”举个🌰：

Many companies did not manage to ride it out.

许多公司没能渡过难关。

rosy

1) 表示“光明的；有希望的；美好的；乐观的”，英文解释为“If you say that a situation looks rosy or that the picture looks rosy, you mean that the situation seems likely to be good or successful.”举个🌰：

Our financial position is rosy.

我们的经济状况良好。

2) 表示“红润的”，英文解释为“having a colour between pink and red”举个🌰：

Your rosy cheeks always make you look so healthy.

你脸色红润，看上去总是那么健康。

This was a speech to college students fearful about their future in an uncertain world. He said: "Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world." The audacious empathy of young people, the spirit that says we should live not just for ourselves, but for our own. That's the way forward. From climate change to immigration, from criminal justice reform to economic opportunity, be motivated by your duty to build a better world. Young people have changed the course of history time and time again. And now it's time to change it once more. 

audacious

表示“大胆的，无畏的”，英文解释为“Someone who is audacious takes risks in order to achieve something.”如：an audacious decision 大胆的决定。

I know, I know the urgency of that truth is with you today. Feel big because no one can make you feel small. Feel brave because the challenges we face are great but you are greater. And feel grateful because someone sacrificed to make this moment possible for you. You have clear eyes and a long life to use them. And here in this stadium, I can feel your courage. 

Call upon your grit. Try something. You may succeed. You may fail. But make it your life's work to remake the world because there is nothing more beautiful or more worthwhile than working to leave something better for humanity. Thank you very much, and congratulations class of 2019!

grit

表示“勇气；毅力”，英文解释为“the courage and determination that makes it possible for sb to continue doing sth difficult or unpleasant”。

推荐阅读

- END -

LearnAndRecord

2015年2月8日

2019年5月19日

第1562天

每天持续行动学外语