I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old， and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story， the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end， we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people， and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park， listened carefully to me， and finally said， "That sounds like a really good idea， but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job." That logic made some sense to me， and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light， it really was a difficult choice， but ultimately， I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration， I took the less safe path to follow my passion， and I'm proud of that choice.
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2，300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast， and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old， and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most startups don't， and I wasn't sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy， I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires， a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil， baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor， and she wanted me to follow my passion.
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 tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we've synthesized life. In the coming years， we'll not only synthesize it， but we'll 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. As a civilization， we will have so many gifts， just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
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.
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.
I have a vivid memory of what happened， and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff， you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates， figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened. Instead， my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying， my grandfather， who had been driving in silence， pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble？ My grandfather was a highly intelligent， quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me， and maybe this was to be the first time？ Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me， and after a bit of silence， he gently and calmly said， "Jeff， one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."
