挑战者无畏Challengers Fear Nothing
每一个人都可能会有自己畏惧的东西，但有种人就没有——勇敢的挑战者。
挑战者无畏？
请看：富兰克林为了证明雷电，在几天前刚有人因引电而死的情况下不顾家人的反对，将风筝在一个雷雨之夜放上了天空。他冒着生命危险，证明了雷电是一种普通的天气现象。麦哲伦为了证明地球是球体，克服航海中的重重困难，坚持去做了环球旅行。而他自己，也因参与土著人内战而死在了航海途中。
是什么使他们有了如此之大的勇气冒着生命危险去干那些事情？
是对真理的执着。达尔文宁肯被教会烧死也要坚持人是由猿人进化而来的：伽利略不惜触犯教皇，在比萨斜塔上扔下铅球，证明了物体下落时间与重量成正比。正是有了这些这些肯为真理献身的人们，才有了我们今天这么发达的科技，这么文明的的社会。是对真理的执着，使得人们一次又一次地推翻先前权威们的错误观点，使人类进步。
是对理想的向往。一位美国的小伙子，只是为了童年的一个梦，刻苦学习了有关知识，最终成功穿越撒哈拉大沙漠。也是对梦的向往，使莱特兄弟从小便开始研究如何才能让人类在天空中自由飞翔。使梦想，使人类不断进步，是梦想，使人类能够在天空飞翔，在宇宙中翱游。
当然，光有精神还是不够的。你也需要有足够的相关知识，提前做足功课。这样，你才能在保全自己的前提下，去完成你的梦想。比如说你要去穿越一片森林，你就不能只有坚持走出去的信念，你还要了解这森林，知道*森林俐会有什么突发情况，以及应对他们的的方法。这样，你才可能真正的无畏，放开胆子去做。没有知识的无畏，就好比在黑暗中前行，结果也只能象万户那样毁灭。
也许你会想，我可做不到这么多。其实你错了。柯受良驾车飞跃黄河是挑战，攻读研究生是挑战，找一份好工作也是挑战。挑战其实无处不在。
相信自己，挑战者无畏！
Everyone is likely to have something they fear, but there is one kind of person who has none: the brave challenger.
Challengers fear nothing?
Consider: to prove the nature of lightning, Franklin, mere days after someone had died drawing electricity from the sky, defied his family’s objections and sent a kite up into a stormy night. At the risk of his life, he proved that lightning is an ordinary weather phenomenon. To prove the Earth is a sphere, Magellan overcame hardship after hardship at sea and saw the voyage around the globe through. And he himself died along the way, for getting drawn into a war among the native islanders.
What gave them courage so great that they would risk their lives to do such things?
It is devotion to truth. Darwin would sooner have been burned by the Church than give up his insistence that man evolved from the apes: Galileo, at the cost of offending the Pope, dropped weighted balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and proved how a falling object’s time relates to its weight. It is precisely because of these, these people willing to give themselves for truth, that we have technology as advanced and a society as civilized as today’s. It is devotion to truth that has let people overturn, time and again, the mistaken views of earlier authorities, and so move humanity forward.
It is longing for an ideal. A young American, for nothing more than a childhood dream, studied everything he needed with fierce diligence and in the end crossed the Sahara Desert. It was longing for a dream, too, that set the Wright brothers, from childhood on, to studying how humankind might fly free in the sky. It is dreams that drive humanity ever forward; it is dreams that let humanity fly through the sky and soar across the cosmos.
Of course, spirit alone is not enough. You also need enough of the relevant knowledge, your homework done well in advance. Only then can you chase your dream while keeping yourself whole. Say you mean to cross a forest: you cannot rely only on the conviction to walk out the other side; you must also know the forest, know *what emergencies may arise inside it, and the ways to deal with them. Only then can you be truly fearless and go at it with your whole nerve. Fearlessness without knowledge is like walking forward in the dark, and it can only end in ruin, the way it did for Wan Hu.
Perhaps you’re thinking: I could never manage all that. In fact you’re wrong. Ke Shouliang jumping the Yellow River in a car was a challenge; pursuing a graduate degree is a challenge; landing a good job is a challenge too. Challenges are, in truth, everywhere.
Believe in yourself. Challengers fear nothing!
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