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Too late at eighteen? Sad words. They are growing up old and set in their ways. They have been told to prepare for one career and to stick to it and succeed. They are not told that they have a right to try many paths, to stumble and try something else, and to learn by stumbling. The right to fail is one of the few freedoms not granted in our Bill of Rights. Today it is more acceptable to change marriage partners than to change careers.
18歲就太晚了？真是令人傷心的話。他們的行為方式正變得陳舊呆板。一直有人告訴他們要為某一種職業作準備，要堅持不懈直至成功。沒有人告訴他們，他們有權嘗試多種道路，跌倒后再試試別的途徑，在跌跌撞撞中學習。失敗的權利是我們的《人權法案》沒有授予我們的少數幾項自由之一。如今，更換配偶比更換職業更易被人接受。
"Victory has very narrow meanings and can become a destructive force," writes Bill Bradley in his book, Life on the Run. Bradley was an Ivy Leaguer himself and a Rhodes Scholar — an earlier member of the same elite that is now so preoccupied with success — before starting histen-year career of professional basketball, which has just come to an end. "The taste of defeat," he writes, "has a richness of experience all its own. To me, every day is a struggle tostay in touch with life's subtleties. No one grows without failing."
“勝利具有十分狹隘的意義，它能成為一種破壞力，”比爾·布雷德利在他的《奔忙的人生》一書中寫道。布雷德利本人在開始其剛剛結束的十年職業籃球生涯之前是長春藤聯合會名牌大學的學生，羅茲獎學金獲得者——如今正忙于追求成功的精英族的早期一員。“失敗的滋味，”他寫道，“其本身蘊含著十分豐富的體驗。對我而言，每天都是一場為一刻不脫離生活奧妙而進行的斗爭。沒有人在成長過程中不經歷失敗。”
The fault is not with our children, but with the narrowness of the flowerbed in which we expect them to germinate. We are stunting their growth if we tell them that there is only one "right" way to get through their education or to get through life. America has always been nourished by men and women who are not afraid to go against the grain.
過錯不在我們的孩子們，而在我們期待他們在其中發芽成長的花壇過于狹小。如果我們告訴他們完成教育或度過人生的“正確”道路只有一條，那我們就是在阻礙他們的生長。美國的繁榮始終得益于不怕離經叛道的男女志士。
