Thank you. President Bach, former（在前的） President Rudenstein, incoming（进来的） President Faust, members of the Harvard（哈佛大学(美国)） Corporation（公司）, and the Board of Orverseers, members of the faculty（才能）, parents, and especially the graduates. I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this. Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree. I want to thank Harvard for this honor. I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume（摘要）.

  I applaud（ 鼓掌） the graduates for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. From my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson（绯红色） called me Harvard（哈佛大学(美国)）'s most successful dropout（中途退学）. I guess that makes（使） me valedictorian of my own special class. I did the best of everyone who failed. But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence.

  That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I'd spoken at your orientation（方向）, fewer of you might be here today. Harvard was a phenomenal（ 显著的） experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes that I hadn't even signed up for. And dorm（宿舍） life was terrific（极好的）.

  I lived up at Radcliffe in Courier（导游） House. There were always a lot of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew that I didn't worry about getting up in the morning. That's how I came to be the leader of the anti（反对者 a反对的）-social group. We clung（ 紧紧抓住） to each other as a way of validating（[律]使有效） our rejection（拒绝） of all those social people. Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were math science types.

  The combination（结合） offered me the best odds（奇数）, if you know what I mean. That's where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee（保证） success. One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January, 1975, when I made a call from Courier House to a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico that had begun making the world's first personal computer. I offered to sell them software. I worried they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead, they said, "We're not quite ready. Come see us in a month," which was a good thing because we hadn't written the software yet.

  From that moment, I worked day and night on the extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable（异常的） journey with Microsoft. What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst（中部） of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating（使高兴）, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging（使泄气）, but always challenging（ 具有挑战性的）. It was an amazing privilege（特权）, and though I left early, I was transformed（改变） by my years at Harvard（哈佛大学(美国)）, the friendships I made and the ideas I worked on. But taking a serious look back, I do have one big regret（懊悔）. I left Harvard with no real awareness（意识） of the awful inequities in the world, the appalling（令人震惊的） disparities of health and wealth（ 财富）, an opportunity that condemned（判刑） millions of people to lives of despair.

  I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics（ 经济学） and politics. I got great exposure（暴露） to the advances（进展） being made（使） in the sciences. But humanity（人性）'s greatest advances（进展） are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy（民主）, strong public education, quality health care, or broad（宽的） economic opportunity, reducing inequity is the highest human achievement. I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

  It took me decades to find（找到） out. You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the worlds inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you've had a chance to think about how, in this age of accelerating（加速） technology, we can finally take on these inequities and we can solve them. Imagine, just for the sake（缘故） of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause. And you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives.

  Where would you spend it? For Melinda and I, the challenge is the same. How can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have? During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who are dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria（[内科] 疟疾）, pneumonia（[医] 肺炎）, hepatitis B, yellow fever（发热）. One disease that I had never heard of, Rotavirus, was killing half a million children each year.

  None of them in the United States. We were shocked（震惊的）. We had assumed（假定） that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority（先） to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions（干涉） that could save lives that just weren't being delivered. If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting（反抗） to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not.

  We said to ourselves, this can't be true, but if it is true, it deserves（应受） to be the priority（先） of our giving. So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked, how could the world let these children die? The answer is simple and harsh（严厉的）. The market did not reward（报答） saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize（资助） it. So the children died because their mothers and fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

  But you and I have both. We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism（资本主义）. If we can stretch（伸展） the reach（范围） of market forces so that more people can make（使） a profit, or at least earn a living, serving people who are suffering from the great inequities.