我为何还要战斗？
我为什么费劲去对抗？
Why Do I Bother to Battle?
“勇敢的良知与争议捍卫者”
约翰·C·博格（John C. Bogle），先锋集团创始人兼前首席执行官
在耶鲁 CEO 领导力峰会上的演讲
纽约，纽约州，2007 年 12 月 13 日
既然电视编剧还在罢工，我就用我的十大理由——“我为什么还要费心去战斗？”——来缓解你们对《大卫·莱特曼秀》的想念吧。（罢工对我无所谓；我一直自己写稿。）开始：
10\. 见鬼，我也不知道为什么还要费心去战斗。我就是去做了，也不知道怎么停下来。
“Courageous Champions of Conscience and Controversy” Remarks by John C. Bogle, Founder and Former Chief Executive Vanguard Group At the Yale CEO Leadership Summit New York, NY December 13, 2007 With the television writers still on strike, I’ll try to ease your ache for the David Letterman Show by giving you my ten reasons for “Why do I bother to battle?” (The strike matters not to me; I’ve always been my own writer.) Here we go: 10. Damned if I know why I bother to battle. I just do it, and I don’t know how to stop.
9. 因为，在我 78 年的人生中，我除了战斗什么都没做过——小时候送报纸，在好多地方当服务员、售票员、邮件分拣员、实习记者、券商跑腿员，甚至还在保龄球馆摆过球瓶。（那可真是一场西西弗斯式的战斗！）成年后，为个人进步而战，为引人注目而战，为创新而战，为进步而战，为服务社会而战，没错，甚至为权力和被记住的希望而战。（不如承认吧。）这就是我写书的原因。（你的书袋里就有一本《稳赚：指数基金常识小书》。）
9. Because, in all my 78 years of life I’ve never done anything but battle—as a boy, as a newspaper deliverer, waiter (in many venues), ticket seller, mail clerk, cub reporter, runner for a brokerage firm, even a pin setter in a bowling alley. (Now there’s a Sisyphean battle!) And as a man, fighting the battle for personal advancement, for attention, for innovation, for progress, for service to society, and yes, even for power and the hope of being remembered. (Might as well admit it.) That’s why I write books. (You have The Little Book of Common Sense Investing in your book bag.)
8. 因为历史上那些伟大的斗士一直是我的英雄。想想亚历山大·汉密尔顿，想想西奥多·罗斯福，想想伍德罗·威尔逊。得了，想想洛奇·巴尔博亚吧。
8. Because the great battlers of history have always been my heroes. Think Alexander Hamilton. Think Teddy Roosevelt. Think Woodrow Wilson. Heck, think Rocky Balboa.
7. 因为所有那些抗争者，最终都输掉了他们的战斗。而我奋力要成为那个例外。
7. Because all those battlers, finally, lost their battles. I battle to be the exception.
6. 因为在共同基金领域，这个体系里没有其他人在为恢复我们传统的受托人责任和对投资者的高服务承诺而奋斗。总得有人来做这件事。经过排除法，我得到了这个差事。
6. Because, in the mutual fund field, no one else in the system is battling to bring back our traditional values of trusteeship and our high promise of service to investors. Someone’s got to do it. By the process of elimination, I got the job.
5. 因为当一个人在战斗中几乎孤军奋战时，他就更能引起外界对这项使命的关注。如果你自尊心很强（我确实如此），那这本身就是一份不错的额外红利。尤其是那些体制外的人——咱们“街上的普通投资者”，以互联网上的“博格尔帮”为代表——给了我继续前行的力量。
5. Because when the battler stands pretty much alone, he draws a lot more attention to the mission. If you have a large ego (I do), that’s a nice extra dividend. Especially because those who are outside the system—our “man-in-the-street” investors, exemplified by the Bogleheads of the internet—give me the strength to carry on.
4. 唉，说起来有点伤感，我不再打壁球了，在“成人规格”的高尔夫球场打球现在也基本没戏了。所以我还能做些什么呢，只能把那些老的运动战场搬到我们的社会生活中去了。
4. Well, sad to say, I no longer play squash, and playing golf on “grown-up” courses is now pretty much out of the question. So what else could I do but take those old athletic battles to our society at large?
3. 因为我所为之奋斗的——重建我们国家的金融体系，以给予我们的公民/投资者公平待遇——是正确的。数学上正确。哲学上正确。伦理上正确。有谁能够不去费心打这样一场仗呢？
3. Because what I’m battling for—building our nation’s financial system anew, in order to give our citizen/investors a fair shake—is right. Mathematically right. Philosophically right. Ethically right. How could anyone ever not bother to fight such a battle?
2. 因为，即便在战斗中，我也热爱这一行的互动、竞争和智力挑战。借用罗伯特·弗罗斯特的说法，我的战斗是与金融世界的“情人之争”。
2. Because, even as I battle, I love the give-and-take, the competition, and the intellectual challenge of my field. Using Robert Frost’s formulation, my battle is “a lover’s quarrel” with our financial world.
仅仅因为我天性就是个战斗者——天生、养成、成长为一个在人生中自谋出路的人。这样的生活需要那种被拉什莫尔山的伟大雕塑家格曾·博格勒姆的话语所激发的激情：“人生是一场战役。人们不知道一场好的战斗会给灵魂和精神带来怎样的力量。”
1. Simply because I’m a battler by nature—born, bred, and raised to make my own way in life. Such a life demands the kind of passion evoked by the words of the great sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum: “Life is a kind of campaign. People have no idea what strength comes to one’s soul and spirit through a good fight.”
尽管我根本无法相信自己的灵魂与精神会随时间消散，但我仍会继续战斗，直到我的头脑与力量最终开始衰退。只有到那时——我希望那是很多很多个月后的某个夜晚——我才会停下脚步，去回味漫长一生中那些精彩战役的回忆。毕竟，正如索福克勒斯提醒我们的那样：一个人要等到黄昏来临，才能看清这一天的灿烂。
While I simply can’t imagine that my own soul and spirit will ever fade, I’ll continue to fight the battle until my mind and strength at last begin to fade. Only then, I hope many moons from tonight, will I take time to revel in the memories of all the wonderful battles I’ve fought during my long life. After all, as Sophocles reminds us, one must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.
这个美好的夜晚对我来说已告结束。但我生命的暮年尚未降临……至少，还没有。
This lovely evening is now over for me. But the evening of my life is not at hand . . . at least, not yet.