№ 2010.014 — Princeton University — Commencement address

Jeff Bezos

Field: business

Transcript

Jeff Bezos draws a distinction between gifts (innate talents like cleverness) and choices (such as kindness), illustrating it with a childhood story in which his grandfather told him it is harder to be kind than clever. He recounts his decision to leave a secure job to start Amazon as an example of choosing passion over safety. He urges graduates to recognize that their lives will ultimately be defined by the choices they make rather than their gifts.

Key moments

01 Childhood story of upsetting his grandmother with cigarette math and his grandfather's lesson
02 Distinction between innate gifts and deliberate choices
03 Recounting the decision to leave his job to found Amazon
04 Series of rhetorical questions urging graduates to follow passion and convictions

Transcript

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Provenance

Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB

NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording