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Promoting Positive Values and Attitudes through English Sayings of Wisdom (SOW) SOW Speech Series –
Featured SOW: “Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice”
from the speech by Jeff Bezos3 delivered at Princeton University
A. Watch the speech delivered by Jeff Bezos and answer the following questions. You may use these keywords: Jeff Bezos, What will you be? to find a video of the speech on YouTube.
1. How many personal stories did Jeff Bezos share in his speech? What are they about?
2. Answer the following questions about the two stories.
(i) Why did Jeff Bezos’ grandmother burst into tears after listening to the smoking statistics?
A. She was scared by the statistics and did not want to die early.
B. She was touched by Jeff Bezos’ care and concern for her health.
C. She found what Jeff Bezos said mean and offensive.
D. She regretted being a heavy smoker. A B C D
(ii) In the second story, did Jeff Bezos’ wife and boss support him after hearing his plan to quit a stable and high-paid job to start an online business? Tick () the Yes/No box and support your answer with a reason.
Supported Reason
Jeff Bezos’
wife
Yes No
Jeff Bezos’
boss
Yes No
33 Jeff Bezos is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, which began as an online bookstore in 1994 and has since expanded to a wide variety of other e-commerce products and services.
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(iii) What are the messages behind the stories? Fill in the blanks with the words provided below. Each word can be used ONCE only.
choice clever dreams gifts kind passion
Story Message
His personal experience with his It’s harder but more important to be
grandparents than .
His plan to start his own business
Follow
your .
Use your to pursue
your .
3. What is the overall tone of the speech?
A. arrogant B. critical
C. cynical A B C D
D. reflective
4. Which of the following public speaking techniques did Jeff Bezos use in his speech to engage and appeal to the audience? You can choose more than one answer.
A. asking a series of questions to provoke audience’s thinking and emotional response B. using statistics to support his arguments
C. using self-deprecating humour A B C D
D. sharing personal stories
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B. Read the script of the Jeff Bezos’ speech to answer the questions that follow.
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[1] As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.
[2] At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage—
figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per day, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”
[3] I have a very vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I had expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and my 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 apologise 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.”
[4] 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.
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[5] 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.
[6] 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 inevitable news that we’ve synthesised life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesise 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 civilisation, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
[7] How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?
[8] 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 aluminum foil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.
[9] 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.
[10] Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life—the life you author from scratch on your own—begins.
[11] How will you use your gifts?
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[12] What choices will you make?
[13] Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
[14] Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
[15] Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
[16] Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
[17] Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologise?
[18] Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
[19] Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
[20] When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
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[21] Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
[22] Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
[23] 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. Thank you and good luck!
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1. Why did the speaker share his childhood experience in the first part of his speech?
2. According to paragraphs 2 and 3, are the following statements True (T) or False (F)?
Statement T / F
(i) Jeff Bezos loved making all kinds of estimates as they were extremely useful in saving daily expenses such as gas fees and grocery spending.
(ii) Jeff Bezos wanted to be praised for his intelligence when he was young.
(iii) Jeff Bezos’ grandfather scolded him harshly for the words he said to his grandmother.
3. Identify the literary device used in “Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.” (line 34) A. alliteration
B. irony
C. parallelism A B C D
D. simile
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4. Identify the meaning of the underlined idiomatic expressions. Write the letters in the boxes provided.
Idiomatic expression Meaning
(i) 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. (line 36)
A try doing it for the first time
(ii) Your smarts will come in handy … (line 40) B harming or damaging
(iii) … because you will travel in a land of marvels. (line 40) C from the very beginning
(iv) I decided I had to give it a shot. (line 67) D turn out to be useful
(v) Tomorrow … your life—the life you author from scratch on your own—begins. (lines 71-72)
E a place with
surprising or
wonderful things or people
5. Answer the following questions with reference to paragraphs 11–22.
a. How will you use your gifts?
b. What choices will you make?
c. Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
d. Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
e. Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
f. Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
g. Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologise?
h. Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
i. Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
j. When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
k. Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
l. Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
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(i) Why did Jeff Bezos ask a series of questions (a – l) towards the end of his speech?
(ii) What qualities are related to the questions asked by Jeff Bezos? Choose the best answers from the word box below.
gentle caring creative enterprising
persistent risk-taking supportive
Question Adjective
c. Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
e.g. enterprising
d. Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
e. Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
j. When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
k. Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
l. Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
(iii) Among the twelve questions, which one is the most thought-provoking to you? Choose a question and answer it. Explain your choice and answer with your personal experience.
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6. Which of the following is NOT a message behind Jeff Bezos’ speech?
A. Gifts may help but the choices you make matter more.
B. People should give up what they have and do crazy things.
C. People should follow their passion. A B C D
D. Making the right choices sometimes requires courage and care.
7. Think of one gift or talent you possess. How can you make good use of it?
End
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