第一篇：[高考語文]JK羅琳在哈佛的演講--失敗的附加值和想象力的重要性

失敗的附加值和想象力的重要性 ——JK羅琳在哈佛的演講

福斯特校長，校理事會和校務監督委員會的成員們，各位老師，各位驕傲的父母們，還有最重要的，畢業生們： 首先我要說謝謝，不只是因為哈佛給了我莫大的榮譽，也是因為這幾個禮拜一直思考怎么做這個畢業演講帶來的焦慮和擔憂讓我成功地減了肥。真是喜上加喜！現在我只需要做幾個深呼吸，偷偷看著那面紅色的旗子，然后騙自己說我正在一個受過世界最優秀的教育的哈利波特們的大會上。

做一個畢業演講的責任很大。但是當我回憶了一下我畢業的時候聽到的畢業演講以后，我改變了我的想法。那天來做演講的人是英國著名的哲學家baroness mary warnock。回憶她的演講真的對我寫這個稿子幫助很大，因為我發現我連一個字都不記得了。這個發現讓我大大地松了一口氣，我不再擔心有的人會因為我演講而放棄他們很有前途的經濟、法律或者是政治方面的工作，而為了放縱的快樂成為一名同性戀巫師。

你們看，就算你們以后回憶起我的演講時只能記得這個“同性戀巫師”的笑話，我仍然會覺得自己比baroness mary warnock成功。取得個人成功的第一步——給自己一個可以達到的目標。

實際上，為了想出合適的話題，我把自己弄得心力交瘁。我問過我自己：“我希望我畢業的時候知道什么？”在這畢業之后的二十一年里，我又學到了那些寶貴的知識呢？ 我有兩個答案。在這個美好的日子里，在我們歡聚在一起慶祝你們取得的學術上的成就的時候，我決定要告訴你們失敗的好處。同時，因為你們已經站在了“現實”的門檻上，我打算贊美一下想象力的至關重要性。

這兩個選擇看起來奇怪而又相互矛盾，但請耐心地聽我說完。

回頭看剛畢業的21歲的我，讓今天已經42歲的我感到一些不舒服。21歲，我的生命到現在為止的前一半的時候，我努力地試圖在自己的野心和家人的期望之間取得一個平衡。我一直堅定地相信，我唯一想做的事情，就是寫作。但是我的父母，出生于貧寒家庭，從未上過大學，他們把我過于活躍的想象力看作一種只屬于個人的怪癖，既不能用來償還抵押貸款，又不能用來領福利救濟。他們希望我能夠讀一個實用點兒的專業，我則希望讀英國文學。于是我們都做了妥協——雖然在今天看來這個妥協不能讓任何人滿意——結果是我讀了現代語言。可是當我的父母一離開，我馬上就報了古典文學的名。我不記得有沒有告訴過我的父母我在學古典文學，他們也許是在畢業典禮那天才知道的。在這個星球上的所有的科目當中，我想他們不能找到比希臘神話更沒有用的學科了，因為這個根本無法換來一個寬敞的獨立廁所。

我要申明的是，我完全不是在責備我的父母。只有當你能夠承擔你的責任，掌握自己生活的方向的時候，你才有權力怪你的父母曾經逼著你走了冤枉路。并且，我也不能因為我的父母希望我永遠不會體驗貧窮而批評他們。他們自己是窮人，我也是，因此我們都認為這樣的體驗絕對不是什么高貴的經歷。貧窮總是伴隨著恐懼、壓力甚至抑郁，你會經歷多如牛毛的羞辱和困難。靠自己的努力擺脫貧困確實是一件值得驕傲的事情，但是除了傻瓜以外，沒有人會覺得貧窮是浪漫的。

我像你們這么大年紀的時候，最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。

在那個時候，因為缺乏學習的動機，我花了太多的時間在咖啡館里寫文章，而僅把極少的時間用在課程的學習上。我有通過考試的特異功能。而這個，多年以來，一直是對我和我同齡人成功與否的衡量標準。我不會天真到認為因為你們是年輕聰明，教育水平很高的大學生，你們的生活就是一帆風順的。再有天賦和聰慧的人也會體會到命運的反復無常。我也從來不曾設想過，我們當中會有誰的生活盡如人意。

但是你們畢業于哈佛這個事實說明了你們應該不常嘗試失敗的滋味，對成功的渴望和對失敗的恐懼同時在激勵著你們，事實上，也許你們的失敗的概念和普通人的成功的概念差別不大，因此才能在學術上取得如此的成就。

最終，我們都會有自己的失敗的定義，同時，如果你不留神，世界也會非常急切地給你一整套的標準。我完全有理由說，在我畢業七年以后，我，不管從哪一個衡量標準來說，都是一個徹頭徹尾的失敗者。結束了我短暫的婚姻，失去了工作，成為單親媽媽，處于現代英國社會的最貧窮階層，唯一值得慶幸的是，不是無家可歸。我父母對我的擔憂，我對自己的擔憂，全都變成了現實。不管怎么看，我都是我所知道的最大的失敗。

此刻，我不會站在這里告訴你們失敗是有趣的，我人生中的這個階段灰暗極了，我也并不知道會出現后來的像媒體描述的“童話般的”解決方式。我不知道這樣的黑暗會延伸到哪兒，并且很長一段時間里，出現在盡頭處的光都只是最后破滅的希望。

為什么我會說到失敗的益處呢？那是因為失敗會幫你分清生活中重要的和不重要的事情，并且讓你剔除掉不重要的。我開始認識到最真實的我自己，集中我的全部精力來完成對我來說唯一重要的工作。如果我曾經在別的方面成功過，我不可能下定決心要在這個競技場上取得勝利，盡管我堅信我屬于這里。我自由了，因為我最大的恐懼已經成為了現實，可是我還活著，有一個珍愛的女兒，有一臺老的打字機和一個絕佳的主意。因此，人生低谷的谷底反倒成了我重建我的人生的堅實的基礎。

你也許永遠不會像我一樣失敗，但是人生中的失敗是在所難免的。你總會在什么方面失敗，除非你謹小慎微到什么也不做的程度——但是這樣你也是失敗的，你因為缺席你的人生而失敗。

失敗給了我成功地通過考試從來沒有獲得過的內心的安全感，失敗讓我看清楚了在別的情況下永遠不能看到的我自己，我發現自己有堅強的意志，比我想象的更多的原則，我也發現我擁有比鉆石還珍貴的朋友。

當你發現自己在一次次的失敗中變得更堅強和充滿智慧的時候，就意味著，你已經具備了頑強地生存的能力了。如果沒有挫折的考驗，你永遠不會知道自己有多強，也不會知道你身邊的人會給你多大的支持。這樣的知識才是真正的禮物，因為它是如此的來之不易，也是如此的珍貴，任何別的能力都無法與之相比。

如果我能有一臺時間機器，或者是時空隧道，我會告訴21歲的我自己，如果想要獲得幸福，就必須要明白，生活不是一張寫滿了你所獲得的和你的成就的單子。你的資格證書、你的履歷和你的生活毫無關聯，雖然很多跟你同齡或者年長于你的人都并沒有分清這二者。生活復雜而艱辛，沒有人可以完全控制他，只有認識到了這個，才能夠承受人生的起起落落。你們也許會認為我選擇想象力的重要性作為我的第二個主題是因為想象力在我重新站起來的過程中起到了重要作用，但是事實不完全如此。雖然我會至死不渝地堅信睡前故事的重要價值，我也認為想象力應該有更廣泛的定義，想象力不僅僅是人類獨有的看到比眼睛能看到的更多的東西的能力，也是一切發明和創新的基礎。在它的富于爭議性的諸多功能中，能帶來最多改變的就是，讓我們能夠同情那些我們自己從來沒有經歷過的，別人的經歷。

在寫哈利波特之前，我有一個非常重要的經歷，在我的書里我寫了很多跟它有關的事情。這是我早期的工作之一。雖然常常在午飯時間溜出去寫小說，但是我二十幾歲的時候，是靠在國際特赦組織倫敦總部的研究中心工作養活自己的。

在我的小小的辦公室里，我讀到了很多草草寫就的信件，在極權主義統治之下的人民，冒著坐牢的危險，把這些信偷運出來，以告訴世界他們的遭遇。我看到了很多無緣無故的失蹤的人的照片，他們絕望的家人和朋友把這些照片發到了特赦組織。我讀到了那些被折磨的人的陳述，看到了他們的傷口的照片。也看到了手寫的綁架和強奸案的證人記錄。我那時候的很多同事以前都是政治犯，他們因為有保持獨立于政府之外的思考的勇氣而不得不離開自己的家，被迫流亡。到我們辦公室來的人，通常都是來報信，或者是想要知道他們離開之后，他們被迫拋下的親人有什么遭遇。我永遠也忘不了一名非洲的酷刑的受害者，一個和當時的我差不多大的年輕人，在他的祖國經受了種種折磨之后，患上了嚴重的精神疾病，當他對著一臺攝影機說自己受到的殘酷的虐待的時候，他不能自制地渾身發抖。他比我高一英寸左右，看起來就像一個小孩一樣脆弱。我的任務是護送他去地鐵站，我們分別的時候，這個自己的生活已經支離破碎的年輕人，極度彬彬有禮地握著我的手，祝我有一個幸福的未來。我永遠也忘不了當我走在空蕩蕩的走廊上時，突然從一扇緊閉的門后傳來我聽到過的最慘的充滿了痛苦和絕望的哀嚎。門打開了，一個工作人員探出頭來，讓我趕快去給坐在他旁邊的年輕人拿一杯咖啡。他剛剛得知，作為對他敢發表違反國家意志的言論的報復，他的母親已經被處死了。

在我這段工作經歷里，每一天我都在提醒自己，能夠出生在一個民主的人人都擁有為自己公開辯護的權力的國家，我有多么的幸運。每一天，我都能看到一些邪惡的人類為了得到或者保持自己的權力而對他們的人民所犯下的罪行的證據。因我看到的、聽到的，我開始不斷地做噩夢。同時，我也在特赦組織越來越多地了解到了人性的善。

特赦組織動員了數以千計從來沒有因為自己的信仰受到過折磨或者監禁的人出來為有這樣遭遇的人說話，人類的同情心的力量，讓他們拯救生命，解放囚徒。自身的幸福得到了滿足的普通人民，大規模地聚集起來，拯救那些他們從不認識，也不會相見的人，我的參與只是其中的微不足道的一小部分，但是仍然在我的人生中鼓舞我。和地球上的別的生物不同，人類擁有學習和了解自己沒有經歷過的事情的能力。他們可以從別人的角度來看問題，可以對別人的經歷感同身受。

當然，這樣的能力，就像我的小說想象力一樣，是沒有善惡之分的，人們可以利用這個能力來理解和同情別人，也可以控制和操縱別人。有很多人根本就不使用自己的想象力，他們寧可被自己的認識束縛，也不愿意去試著把自己置身于別的情況中。他們不在乎聽到了什么樣的慘叫或者是籠子里面有什么；只要鞭子不落到自己身上，他們就可以當作沒發生；他們拒絕了解。如果我不知道他們和我一樣惡夢連連，我也許會嫉妒可以這樣生活的人。只愿意生活在狹窄的空間里會導致廣場恐懼癥，這會帶來新的恐懼。不愿意想象的人看到更多的怪物，他們常常是更恐懼的人。更可怕的是，不愿意同情別人的人可能會創造真正的怪獸。就算我們完全不贊同那些邪惡的做法，我們也因為自己的漠不關心而成為了他們的同伙。

我十八歲時在古典文學課上學到的事情還包括當時無法理解的希臘學者普魯塔克說的一句話：“我們對內在修養的追求將會改變外在現實。”

這個論斷已經無數次的在我們的生活當中證明了他的正確性。在一定程度上，它表達了我們和外界的密不可分，揭示了我們只是單純地存在，就會對他人造成影響的事實。

但是哈佛08屆的畢業生們，你們當中有多少人會愿意去了解他人的人生呢？你們的聰明，你們勤奮工作的能力和你們獲得的教育給了你們獨有的地位和責任，雖然你們的國籍不同，但是你們當中的絕大部分都屬于世界上僅存的超能力的一部分，你們投票的方式，生活的方式，抗議的方式，你們自己的壓力給政府造成的影響，都有著遠超出你們范圍的影響力。這是你們的權利，也是你們的負擔。如果你們選擇運用自己的地位和影響來為那些不能發出聲音的人說話，如果你們選擇不只是和有權力的人而是也和沒有權力的人站在一起，如果你們能夠總是站在那些生活不如你的人的角度考慮問題，那樣不只是你們的家人會因為有你們而幸，還有成千上萬的因為你而改善了生活的人會因為有你而幸。我們不需要魔法來改變我們的生活，我們自身就已經擁有了強大的能力：憧憬更美好生活的能力。

在我的演講將要結束的時候，我還有最后的一個希望，21歲的我曾經有幸擁有。在畢業典禮上坐在我身邊的朋友成為了我一輩子的朋友，他們是我的孩子的教父教母，我遇到麻煩的時候幫助我，雖然我把他們的名字用作食死徒的名字，他們仍然沒有告我。在我們的畢業典禮上，我們因為感情，因為我們一起度過的一去不返的時光而緊緊地聯系在了一起，當然，理由還有，我們手里都捏著對方足夠多的照片，足以在誰要競選首相的時候敲他一大筆錢。所以幾天，我也祝你們擁有同樣的友誼。以后，我希望你們就算完全忘了我的演講，也能記住另外一個古羅馬人的講話：

對于小說來說，重要的不是長度而是質量，人生同樣如此。希望你們都有美好的人生。非常感謝。

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination 2008 Harvard University Commencement, June 5, 2008.by J.K.Rowling

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates, 致Faust校長，哈佛集團以及哈佛監事委員會的各位成員，各位教職員工，眾多自豪的家長，以及最為重要的——各位畢業生們：

The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight.A win-win situation!Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.我想要說的第一句話是“謝謝你們”。這份感謝不僅來自于哈佛賦予我如此非同尋常的榮譽，更是由于幾個星期以來每當我想到今天的致詞就會覺得頭暈惡心，因而終于成功的減肥了。這就是“雙贏”啊！現在，我只需要深呼吸幾次，瞄幾眼紅色的橫幅，然后裝模作樣的讓自己相信，我正身處世界上受過最好教育的哈里波特迷的盛大集會之中。

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility;or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock.Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said.This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.在畢業典禮上致詞意味著極大的責任——我這樣想著，直到我開始回想我自己的畢業典禮。那天致詞的是著名的英國哲學家 Baroness Mary Warnock。對于她的演講的回憶也極大地幫助了我完成現在這份，因為，我完全想不起來她說了什么。這個具有解放意義的重大發現讓我無所畏懼的寫下自己的致詞，因為我再也不必擔心會在不經意間對你們造成影響，以至于讓你們為了成為一個快樂巫師的虛幻憧憬，就放棄自己在商業、法律界或政界的遠大前程。看到了吧？就算若干年后你們對我的演講的印象只剩下這個“快樂的巫師”的笑話，那我還是領先了Baroness Mary Warnock一步的。能夠達成的目標是自我改善的第一步。

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.事實上，為了確定今天應該對你們說些什么，我真是絞盡了腦汁。我問自己，在我自己的畢業典禮上，我曾期待知道什么？而自那天開始到現在的21年間，我又學到了那些教訓？

I have come up with two answers.On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure.And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.我想到了兩個答案。在今天這個美妙的時刻，當我們齊聚一堂慶祝你們取得學業成功的時候，我決定跟你們談談失敗帶來的好處。另外，在你們正要一腳踏入所謂“真實的生活”的時候，我還要高聲贊頌想象力的重大意義。

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.這些決定看起來頗為荒誕而矛盾，但是啊，請聽我慢慢道來。

第二篇：jk羅琳2008哈佛畢業典禮演講

JK羅琳JK羅琳2008哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

譯文_Juanz_新浪博客 如果您不僅去幫助強者，而且還會同情并幫扶弱者； 如果你會設身處地為不如你的人著想；

那么，您的存在將不僅是你家族的驕傲，也是無數因你幫助而過上幸福生活的人的驕傲。我們不需要魔法來改變世界，我們已經擁有了需要的所有的力量。我們有能力想象會更好。

我的演講也接近尾聲了。對你們，我有最后一個希望，也是我在21歲時就一直在思考的。畢業那天坐在我身邊的朋友將是我終身的朋友。他們是我的孩子的教父母，是我在遇到麻煩是可以求助的人，是當我用他們的姓名作為食死徒的名字而不會起訴我的朋友（譯者注：食死徒是哈利波特中人物在此指羅琳的朋友不會因為她用他們的名字而遭起訴）。

在我們畢業的時候，我們因無盡的愛而在此相聚。我們有共同的永不再有的經歷。當然，如果我們中的任何人競選首相，那么今天的照片將是極為寶貴的證明。所以，今天我可以給你們的，沒有比同伴的友誼更好的祝福了。

明天，我希望你們即使記不得我的名字，你還記得那些塞內加，他是我在羅馬文學著作中結識的另一位哲學家。在我退出職業生涯后，尋找古老的生活智慧： 生活就像故事一樣，不在乎長度，而在于質量。這才是問題的關鍵。我在此祝大家生活愉快！非常感謝Thank you!

來源：(http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_62b1cafa0100g5gn.html)-JK羅琳2008哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

譯文_Juanz_新浪博客

第三篇：JK羅琳2008哈佛畢業典禮演講

JK羅琳2008哈佛畢業典禮演講---不要害怕失敗中英文對照

members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates, 福斯特主席，哈佛公司和監察委員會的各位成員，各位老師、家長、全體畢業生們：

The first thing I would like to say is “thank you.” Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight.A win-win situation!Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindors' reunion.首先請允許我說一聲謝謝。哈佛不僅給了我無上的榮譽，連日來為這個演講經受的恐懼和緊張，更令我減肥成功。這真是一個雙贏的局面。現在我要做的就是深呼吸幾下，瞇著眼睛看看前面的大紅橫幅，安慰自己正在世界上最大的格蘭芬多（滬江小編：以防有人沒看過《哈利波特》……格蘭芬多是小哈利所在的魔法學院的名字）聚會上。

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility;or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock.Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said.This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.發表畢業演說是一個巨大的責任，至少在我回憶自己當年的畢業典禮前是這么認為的。那天做演講的是英國著名的哲學家 Baroness Mary Warnock，對她演講的回憶，對我寫今天的演講稿，產生了極大的幫助，因為我不記得她說過的任何一句話了。這個發現讓我釋然，讓我不再擔心我可能會無意中影響你放棄在商業，法律或政治上的大好前途，轉而醉心于成為一個快樂的魔法師（gay有快樂和同性戀的意思）。

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.Achievable goals-the first step to self-improvement.你們看，如果在若干年后你們還記得“快樂的魔法師”這個笑話，那就證明我已經超越了Baroness Mary Warnock。建立可實現的目標——這是提高自我的第一步。

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.實際上，我為今天應該和大家談些什么絞盡了腦汁。我問自己什么是我希望早在畢業典禮上就該了解的，而從那時起到現在的 21年間，我又得到了什么重要的啟示。

I have come up with two answers.On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure.And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.我想到了兩個答案。在這美好的一天，當我們一起慶祝你們取得學業成就的時刻，我希望告訴你們失敗有什么樣的益處；在你們即將邁向“現實生活”的道路之際，我還要褒揚想象力的重要性。

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but bear with me.這些似乎是不切實際或自相矛盾的選擇，但請先容我講完。

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become.Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.回顧21歲剛剛畢業時的自己，對于今天42歲的我來說，是一個稍微不太舒服的經歷。可以說，我人生的前一部分，一直掙扎在自己的雄心和身邊的人對我的期望之間。

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels.However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.我一直深信，自己唯一想做的事情，就是寫小說。不過，我的父母，他們都來自貧窮的背景，沒有任何一人上過大學，堅持認為我過度的想象力是一個令人驚訝的個人怪癖，根本不足以讓我支付按揭，或者取得足夠的養老金。

I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but… 我現在明白反諷就像用卡通鐵砧去打擊你，但...They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree;I wanted to study English Literature.A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages.Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.他們希望我去拿個職業學位，而我想去攻讀英國文學。最后，達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學現代語言。可是等到父母一走開，我立刻放棄了德語而報名學習古典文學。

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics;they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day.Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.我不記得將這事告訴了父母，他們可能是在我畢業典禮那一天才發現的。我想，在全世界的所有專業中，他們也許認為，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，根本無法換來一間獨立寬敞的衛生間。

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view.There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction;the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty.They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression;it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.我想澄清一下：我不會因為父母的觀點，而責怪他們。埋怨父母給你指錯方向是有一個時間段的。當你成長到可以控制自我方向的時候，你就要自己承擔責任了。尤其是，我不會因為父母希望我不要過窮日子，而責怪他們。他們一直很貧窮，我后來也一度很窮，所以我很理解他們。貧窮并不是一種高貴的經歷，它帶來恐懼、壓力、有時還有絕望，它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實可以引以自豪，但貧窮本身只有對傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.我在你們這個年齡，最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.我在您們這么大時，明顯缺乏在大學學習的動力，我花了太久時間在咖啡吧寫故事，而在課堂的時間卻很少。我有一個通過考試的訣竅，并且數年間一直讓我在大學生活和同齡人中不落人后。

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartache.Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.我不想愚蠢地假設，因為你們年輕、有天份，并且受過良好的教育，就從來沒有遇到困難或心碎的時刻。擁有才華和智慧，從來不會使人對命運的反復無常有所準備；我也不會假設大家坐在這里冷靜地滿足于自身的優越感。

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.相反，你們是哈佛畢業生的這個事實，意味著你們并不很了解失敗。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。說實話，你們眼中的失敗，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，畢竟你們在學業上已經達到很高的高度了。

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.最終，我們所有人都必須自己決定什么算作失敗，但如果你愿意，世界是相當渴望給你一套標準的。所以我想很公平的講，從任何傳統的標準看，在我畢業僅僅七年后的日子里，我的失敗達到了史詩般空前的規模：短命的婚姻閃電般地破裂，我又失業成了一個艱難的單身母親。除了流浪漢，我是當代英國最窮的人之一，真的一無所有。當年父母和我自己對未來的擔憂，現在都變成了現實。按照慣常的標準來看，我也是我所知道的最失敗的人。

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution.I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.現在，我不打算站在這里告訴你們，失敗是有趣的。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗歲月，我不知道它是否代表童話故事里需要歷經的磨難，更不知道自己還要在黑暗中走多久。很長一段時間里，前面留給我的只是希望，而不是現實。

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.那么為什么我要談論失敗的好處呢？因為失敗意味著剝離掉那些不必要的東西。我因此不再偽裝自己、遠離自我，而重新開始把所有精力放在對我最重要的事情上。如果不是沒有在其他領域成功過，我可能就不會找到，在一個我確信真正屬于的舞臺上取得成功的決心。我獲得了自由，因為最害怕的雖然已經發生了，但我還活著，我仍然有一個我深愛的女兒，我還有一個舊打字機和一個很大的想法。所以困境的谷底，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎。

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable.It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.你們可能永遠沒有達到我經歷的那種失敗程度，但有些失敗，在生活中是不可避免的。生活不可能沒有一點失敗，除非你生活的萬般小心，而那也意味著你沒有真正在生活了。無論怎樣，有些失敗還是注定地要發生。

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected;I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.失敗使我的內心產生一種安全感，這是我從考試中沒有得到過的。失敗讓我看清自己，這也是我通過其他方式無法體會的。我發現，我比自己認為的，要有更強的意志和決心。我還發現，我擁有比寶石更加珍貴的朋友。

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.從挫折中獲得智慧、變得堅強，意味著你比以往任何時候都更有能力生存。只有在逆境來臨的時候，你才會真正認識你自己，了解身邊的人。這種了解是真正的財富，雖然是用痛苦換來的，但比我以前得到的任何資格證書都有用。

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.如果給我一部時間機器，我會告訴21歲的自己，人的幸福在于知道生活不是一份漂亮的成績單，你的資歷、簡歷，都不是你的生活，雖然你會碰到很多與我同齡或更老一點的人今天依然還在混淆兩者。生活是艱辛的，復雜的，超出任何人的控制能力，而謙恭地了解這一點，將使你歷經滄桑后能夠更好的生存。

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so.Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense.Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.對于第二個主題的選擇——想象力的重要性——你們可能會認為是因為它對我重建生活起到了幫助，但事實并非完全如此。雖然我愿誓死捍衛睡前要給孩子講故事的價值觀，我對想象力的理解已經有了更廣泛的含義。想象力不僅僅是人類設想還不存在的事物這種獨特的能力，為所有發明和創新提供源泉，它還是人類改造和揭露現實的能力，使我們同情自己不曾經受的他人苦難。

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs.Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.其中一個影響最大的經歷發生在我寫哈利波特之前，為我隨后寫書提供了很多想法。這些想法成形于我早期的工作經歷，在20 多歲時，盡管我可以在午餐時間里悄悄寫故事，可為了付房租，我做的主要工作是在倫敦總部的大赦國際研究部門。

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them.I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends.I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.在我的小辦公室，我看到了人們匆匆寫的信件，它們是從極權主義政權被偷送出來的。那些人冒著被監禁的危險，告知外面的世界他們那里正在發生的事情。我看到了那些無跡可尋的人的照片，它們是被那些絕望的家人和朋友送來的。我看過拷問受害者的證詞和被害的照片。我打開過手寫的目擊證詞，描述綁架和強奸犯的審判和處決。

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government.Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those who they had left behind.我有很多的同事是前政治犯，他們已離開家園流離失所，或逃亡流放，因為他們敢于懷疑政府、獨立思考。來我們辦公室的訪客，包括那些前來提供信息，或想設法知道那些被迫留下的同志發生了什么事的人。

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland.He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him.He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.我將永遠不會忘記一個非洲酷刑的受害者，一名當時還沒有我大的年輕男子，他因在故鄉的經歷而精神錯亂。在攝像機前講述被殘暴地摧殘的時候，他顫抖失控。他比我高一英尺，卻看上去像一個脆弱的兒童。我被安排隨后護送他到地鐵站，這名生活已被殘酷地打亂的男子，小心翼翼地握著我的手，祝我未來生活幸福。

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her.She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.只要我活著，我還會記得，在一個空蕩蕩的的走廊，突然從背后的門里，傳來我從未聽過的痛苦和恐懼的尖叫。門打開了，調查員探出頭請求我，為坐在她旁邊的青年男子，調一杯熱飲料。她剛剛給他的消息是，為了報復他對國家政權的批評，他的母親已經被捕并執行了槍決。

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.在我20多歲的那段日子，每一天的工作，都在提醒我自己是多么幸運。生活在一個民選政府的國家，依法申述與公開審理，是所有人的權利。

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power.I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.每一天，我都能看到更多有關惡人的證據，他們為了獲得或維持權力，對自己的同胞犯下暴行。我開始做噩夢，真正意義上的噩夢，全都和我所見所聞有關。

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.同時在這里我也了解到更多關于人類的善良，比我以前想象的要多很多。

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners.Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet.My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.大赦動員成千上萬沒有因為個人信仰而受到折磨或監禁的人，去為那些遭受這種不幸的人奔走。人類同理心的力量，引發集體行動，拯救生命，解放囚犯。個人的福祉和安全有保證的普通百姓，攜手合作，大量挽救那些他們素不相識，也許永遠不會見面的人。我用自己微薄的力量參與了這一過程，也獲得了更大的啟發。

Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand, without having experienced.They can think themselves into other people's places.不同于在這個星球上任何其他的動物，人類可以學習和理解未曾經歷過的東西。他們可以將心比心、設身處地的理解他人。

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral.One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.當然，這種能力，就像在我虛構的魔法世界里一樣，在道德上是中立的。一個人可能會利用這種能力去操縱控制，也有人選擇去了解同情。

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages;they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally;they can refuse to know.而很多人選擇不去使用他們的想象力。他們選擇留在自己舒適的世界里，從來不愿花力氣去想想如果生在別處會怎樣。他們可以拒絕去聽別人的尖叫，看一眼囚禁的籠子；他們可以封閉自己的內心，只要痛苦不觸及個人，他們可以拒絕去了解。

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters.They are often more afraid.我可能會受到誘惑，去嫉妒那樣生活的人。但我不認為他們做的噩夢會比我更少。選擇生活在狹窄的空間，可以導致不敢面對開闊的視野，給自己帶來恐懼感。我認為不愿展開想像的人會看到更多的怪獸，他們往往更感到更害怕。

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters.For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.更甚的是，那些選擇不去同情的人，可能會激活真正的怪獸。因為盡管自己沒有犯下罪惡，我們卻通過冷漠與之勾結。

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.我18歲開始從古典文學中汲取許多知識，其中之一當時并不完全理解，那就是希臘作家普魯塔克所說：我們內心獲得的，將改變外在的現實。

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.那是一個驚人的論斷，在我們生活的每一天里被無數次證實。它指明我們與外部世界有無法脫離的聯系，我們以自身的存在接觸著他人的生命。

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.Even your nationality sets you apart.The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower.The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders.That is your privilege, and your burden.但是，哈佛大學的2008屆畢業生們，你們多少人有可能去觸及他人的生命？你們的智慧，你們努力工作的能力，以及你們所受到的教育，給予你們獨特的地位和責任。甚至你們的國籍也讓你們與眾不同，你們絕大部份人屬于這個世界上唯一的超級大國。你們表決的方式，你們生活的方式，你們抗議的方式，你們給政府帶來的壓力，具有超乎尋常的影響力。這是你們的特權，也是你們的責任。

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped to change.We do not need magic to transform the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.如果你選擇利用自己的地位和影響，去為那些沒有發言權的人發出聲音；如果你選擇不僅與強者為伍，還會同情幫扶弱者；如果你會設身處地為不如你的人著想，那么你的存在，將不僅是你家人的驕傲，更是無數因為你的幫助而改變命運的成千上萬人的驕傲。我們不需要改變世界的魔法，我們自己的內心就有這種力量：那就是我們一直在夢想，讓這個世界變得更美好。

I am nearly finished.I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21.The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life.They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of real trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters.At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.我的演講要接近尾聲了。對你們，我有最后一個希望，也是我21歲時就有的。畢業那天坐在我身邊的朋友現在是我終身的摯交，他們是我孩子的教父母，是在我遇到麻煩時愿意伸出援手，在我用他們的名字給哈利波特中的 “食死徒”起名而不會起訴我的朋友。我們在畢業典禮時坐在了一起，因為我們關系親密，擁有共同的永遠無法再來的經歷，當然，也因為假想要是我們中的任何人競選首相，那照片將是極為寶貴的關系證明。

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships.And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: 所以今天我可以給你們的，沒有比擁有知己更好的祝福了。明天，我希望即使你們不記得我說的任何一個字，你們還能記得哲學家塞內加的一句至理明言。我當年沒有順著事業的階梯向上攀爬，轉而與他在古典文學的殿堂相遇，他的古老智慧給了我人生的啟迪：

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.生活就像故事一樣：不在乎長短，而在于質量，這才是最重要的。

I wish you all very good lives.我祝愿你們都有美好的生活。

Thank you very much.非常感謝大家。

第四篇：JK羅琳2008哈佛畢業典禮演講

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.The first thing I would like to say is ??thank you.?ˉ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight.A win-win situation!Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world?ˉs largest Gryffindor reunion.Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility;or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock.Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can?ˉt remember a single word she said.This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ??gay wizard?ˉ joke, I?ˉve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.I have come up with two answers.On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure.And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ??real life?ˉ, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become.Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels.However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree;I wanted to study English Literature.A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages.Hardly had my parents?ˉ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics;they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day.Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view.There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction;the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty.They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression;it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak.Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person?ˉs idea of success, so high have you already flown.Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution.I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable.It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all ¨C in which case, you fail by default.Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected;I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone?ˉs total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so.Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense.Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs.Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International?ˉs headquarters in London.There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them.I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends.I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments.Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland.He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him.He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her.She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country?ˉs regime, his mother had been seized and executed.Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power.I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners.Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet.My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced.They can think themselves into other people?ˉs places.Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral.One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages;they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally;they can refuse to know.I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters.They are often more afraid.What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters.For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people?ˉs lives simply by existing.But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people?ˉs lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.Even your nationality sets you apart.The great majority of you belong to the world?ˉs only remaining superpower.The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders.That is your privilege, and your burden.If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.I am nearly finished.I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21.The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life.They are my children?ˉs godparents, the people to whom I?ˉve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters.At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships.And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.Thank you very much.

第五篇：JK羅琳08哈佛演講

JK羅琳2008哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講。

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates，The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight.A win-win situation!Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility;or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock.Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said.This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.I have come up with two answers.On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure.And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become.Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels.However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree;I wanted to study English Literature.A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages.Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics;they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day.Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view.There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction;the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty.They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression;it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak.Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution.I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable.It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected;I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.so Given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many p eople of my age and older who confuse the two.Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so.Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense.Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs.Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them.I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends.I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government.Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland.He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him.He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her.She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power.I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners.Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet.My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced.They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral.One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages;they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally;they can refuse to know.I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters.They are often more afraid.What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters.For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.Even your nationality sets you apart.The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower.The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders.That is your privilege, and your burden.If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.I am nearly finished.I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21.The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life.They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters.At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships.And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.Thank you very much.