○  苹果CEO库克在乔治·华盛顿大学2015毕业典礼上英语演讲稿  ○

　　Hello GW. Thank you very much, President Knapp, for that kind intro. Alex, trustees, faculty and deans of the university, my fellow honorees, and especially you the class of 2015. Yes.

　　Congratulations to you, to your family, to your friends that are attending today's ceremony.You made it. It's a privilege, a rare privilege of a lifetime to be with you today. And I thinkthank you enough for making me an honorary Colonial.

　　Before I begin today, they asked me to make a standard announcement. You've heard thisbefore. About silencing your phones. Those of you with an iPhone, just place it in silent mode.If you don't have an iPhone, please pass it to the center aisle. Apple has a world‑class recyclingprogram.

　　You know, this is really an amazing place. And for a lot of you, I'm sure that being here inWashington, the very center of our democracy, was a big draw when you were choosing whichschool to go to. This place has a powerful pull. It was here that Dr. Martin Luther Kingchallenged Americans to make real the promises of democracy, to make justice a reality for allof God's children. And it was here that President Ronald Reagan called on us to believe inourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds. I'd like to start this morningby telling you about my first visit here. In the summer of 1977 – yes, I'm a little old – I was 16years old and living in Robertsdale, the small town in southern Alabama that I grew up in. Atthe end of my junior year of high school I'd won essay contest sponsored by the National RuralElectric Association. I can't remember what the essay was about, what I do remember veryclearly is writing it by hand, draft after draft after draft. Typewriters were very expensive andmy family could not afford one.

　　I was one of two kids from Baldwin County that was chosen to go to Washington along withhundreds of other kids across the country. Before we left, the Alabama delegation took a trip toour state capitol in Montgomery for a meeting with the governor. The governor's name wasGeorge C. Wallace. The same George Wallace who in 1963 stood in the schoolhouse door at theUniversity of Alabama to block African Americans from enrolling. Wallace embraced the evils ofsegregation. He pitted whites against blacks, the South against the North, the working classagainst the so‑called elites. Meeting my governor was not an honor for me.

　　My heroes in life were Dr. Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy, who had fought againstthe very things that Wallace stood for. Keep in mind, that I grew up, or, when I grew up, I grewup in a place that where King and Kennedy were not exactly held in high esteem. When I was akid, the South was still coming to grips with its history. My textbooks even said the Civil Warwas about states' rights. They barely mentioned slavery.

　　So I had to figure out for myself what was right and true. It was a search. It was a process. Itdrew on the moral sense that I'd learned from my parents, and in church, and in my own heart,and led me on my own journey of discovery.

　　I found books in the public library that they probably didn't know they had. They all pointed tothe fact that Wallace was wrong. That injustices like segregation had no place in our world. Thatequality is a right.

　　As I said, I was only 16 when I met Governor Wallace, so I shook his hand as we were expectedto do. But shaking his hand felt like a betrayal of my own beliefs. It felt wrong. Like I wasselling a piece of my soul. From Montgomery we flew to Washington.

　　It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. In fact it was the first time that I traveledout of the South. On June 15, 1977, I was one of 900 high schoolers greeted by the newpresident, President Jimmy Carter on the south lawn of the White House, right there on theother side of the ellipse.