乔布斯2005年在斯坦福大学的演讲稿汇总

第一篇：乔布斯2005年在斯坦福大学的演讲稿汇总

Steve Jobs’ Outstanding Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005 I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.Truth be told, I never graduated from college.this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.That’s it.No big deal.Just three stories.The first story is about connecting the dots.I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.So why did I drop out? It started before I was born.My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy;do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.She refused to sign the final adoption papers.She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.And 17 years later I did go to college.But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition.After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it.I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.It wasn’t all romantic.I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.I loved it.And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.And we designed it all into the Mac.It was the first computer with beautiful typography.If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them.If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward;you can only connect them looking backwards.So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.My second story is about love and loss.I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life.Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20.We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.And then I got fired.How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well.But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out.When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.So at 30 I was out.And very publicly out.What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.I really didn’t know what to do for a few months.I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did.The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.I had been rejected, but I was still in love.And so I decided to start over.I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.Don’t lose faith.I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.You’ve got to find what you love.And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.Don’t settle.As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.So keep looking.Don’t settle.My third story is about death.When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.You are already naked.There is no reason not to follow your heart.About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer.I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.I didn’t even know what a pancreas was.The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die.It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months.It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family.It means to say your goodbyes.I lived with that diagnosis all day.Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.I had the surgery and thankfully I’m fine now.This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades.Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die.Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.And yet death is the destination we all share.No one has ever escaped it.And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.It is Life’s change agent.It clears out the old to make way for the new.Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you truly want to become.Everything else is secondary.When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras.It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry.Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off.Stay Hungry.Stay Foolish.And I have always wished that for myself.And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay Hungry.Stay Foolish.Thank you all very much.

第二篇：乔布斯斯坦福大学演讲稿

乔布斯斯坦福演讲

谢谢大家。很荣幸能和你们，来自世界最好大学之一的毕业生们，一块儿参加毕业典礼。老实说，我大学没有毕业，今天恐怕是我一生中离大学毕业最近的一次了。今天，我想告诉大家来自我生活的三个故事。不是长篇大论，只是三个故事而已。

第一个故事，如何串连生命中的点滴。

我在里得大学读了六个月就退学了，但是在十八个月之后我真正退学之前，我还常去学校。为何我要选择退学呢？这还得从我出生之前说起。我的生母是一个年轻、未婚的大学毕业生，她决定让别人收养我。她有一个很强烈的信仰，认为我应该被一个大学毕业生家庭收养。于是，一对律师夫妇说好了要领养我，然而最后一秒钟，他们改变了主意，决定要个女孩儿。然后我的排在收养人名单中的养父母在一个深夜接到电话，“很意外，我们多了一个男婴，你们要吗？”“当然要！”但是我的生母后来又发现我的养母没有大学毕业，养父连高中都没有毕业。她拒绝在领养书上签字。几个月后，我的养父母保证会让我上大学，她妥协了。

这是我生命的开端。十七年后，我上大学了，但是我很无知地选了一所差不多和斯坦福一样贵的校学，几乎花掉我那蓝领阶层养父母一生的积蓄。六个月后，我觉得不值得。我看不出自己以后要做什么，也不晓得大学会怎样帮我指点津，而我却在花销父母一生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并且相信没有做错。一开始非常吓人，但回忆起来，这却是我一生中作的最好的决定之一。

从我退学的那一刻起，我可以停止一切不感兴趣的必修课，开始旁听那些有意思得多的课。事情并不那么美好。我没有宿舍可住，睡在朋友房间的地上。为了吃饭，我收集五分一个的旧可乐瓶，每个星期天晚步行七英里到哈尔克里什纳庙里改善一下一周的伙食。我喜欢这种生活方式。能够遵循自己的好奇和直觉前行后来被证明是多么的珍贵。让我来给你们举个例子吧。当时的里得大学提供可能是全国最好的书法指导。校园中每一张海报，抽屉上的每一张标签，都是漂亮的手写体。由于我已退学，不用修那些必修课，我决定选一门书法课上上。在这门课上，我学会了“serif”和“sans-serif”两种字体、学会了怎样在不同的字母组合中改变字间距、学会了怎样写出好的字来这是一种科学无法捕捉的微妙，楚楚动人、充满历史底蕴和艺术性，我觉得自己被完全吸引了。

当时我并不指望书法在以后的生活中能有什么实用价值。但是，十年之后，我们在设计第一台

Macintosh 计算机时，它一下子浮现在我眼前。于是，我们把这些东西全都设计进了计算机中。这是第一台有这么漂亮的文字版式的计算机。要不是我当初在大学里偶然选了这 么一门课，Macintosh

计算机绝不会有那么多种印刷字体或间距安排合理的字号。要不是搬了 Macintosh，个人电脑可能不会有这些字体和字号。要不是退了学，我决不会碰巧选了这门书法课，个人电脑也可能不会有现在这些漂亮的版式了。

当然，我在大学里不可能从这一点上看到它与将来的关系。不管你现在学习的对于将来有没有用，兴趣也好，应用也好，十年之后再回头看，两者之间关系就非常、非常清楚了。你们同样不可能从现在这个点上看到将来；只有回头看时，才会发现它们之间的关系。所以你必须相信，那些点点滴滴，会在你未来的生命里，以某种方式串联起来。你必须相信一些东西你的勇气、宿命、生活、因缘，随便什么因为相信这些点滴能够一路连接会给你带来循从本觉的自信，它使你走离平凡，变得与众不同。

第二个故事是关于爱与失的。

我很幸运。很早就发现自己喜欢做的事情。我二十岁的时候就和沃茨在父母的车库里开创了苹果公司。我们工作得很努力，十年后，苹果公司成长为拥有四千名员工，价值二十亿的大公司。我们只是推出了最好的创意Macintosh操作系统，在这之前的一年，也就是我刚过三十岁，我被解雇了。你怎么可能被一个亲手创立的公司解雇？事情是这样的，在公司成长期间，雇佣了一个我们认为非常聪明，可以和我一起经营公司的人。一年后，我们对公司未来的看法产生分歧，董事会站在了他的一边。于是，在我三十岁的时候，我出局了，很公开地出局了。我整个成年生活的焦点没了，这很要命。一开始的几个月我真的不知道该干什么。我觉得我让公司的前一代创建者们失望了，我把传给我的权杖给弄丢了。我与戴维德帕珂德和鲍勃诺埃斯见面，试图为这彻头彻尾的失败道歉。我败得如此之惨以至于我 想要逃离这儿。

有些东西在呼唤我：我还爱着我从事的行业。这次失败一点儿都没有改变这一点。我被逐了，但我仍爱着。我决定重新开始。

当时我没有看出来，但事实证明“被苹果开除”是发生在我身上最好的事。成功的重担被重新起步的轻松替代，任何事情都不再特别看重。这让我感觉如此自由，进入一生中最有创造力的阶段。接下来的五年，我创立了一个叫NeXT的公司，接着又建立Pixar，然后与后来成为我妻子的女人相爱。Pixar出品了世界第一个电脑动画电影：“玩具总动员”，现在它已经是世界最成功的动画制作工作室了。

在一系列的成功运转后，苹果收购了NeXT我又回到了苹果。我们在NeXT开发的技术在苹果的复兴中起了核心作用，另外劳琳和我组建了一个幸福的家庭。

我非常确信，如果我没有被苹果炒掉，这些就都不会发生。这个药的味道太糟了，但是我想病人需要它。有些时候，生活会给你迎头一棒。不要丧失信心。我确信唯一让我一路走下来的是我对自己所做事情的热爱。你必须去找你热爱的东西，对工作如此，对你的爱人也是这样的。工作会占据你生命中很大的一部分，你只有相信自几做的是伟大的工作，你才能怡然自得。如果你还没有找到，那么就继续找，不要停。全心全意地找，当你找到时，你会知道的。就像任何真诚 的关系，随着时间的流逝，只会越来越紧密。所以继续找，不要停。

我的第三个故事关于死亡。

我十七岁的时候读到过一句话“如果你把每一天都当作最后一天过，有一天你会发现你是正确的”。这句话给我留下了深刻的印象。从那以后，过去的三十三年，每天早上我都会对着镜子问自己：“如果今天是我的最后一天，我会不会做我想做的事情呢？”当答案持续否定一些次数后，我知道我需要改变一些东西了。提醒自己就要死了是我遇见的最大的帮助，帮我作了生命中的大决定。因为几乎任何事——所有的荣耀、骄傲、对难堪和失败的恐惧——在死亡面前都会消隐，留下真正重要的

东西。提醒自己就要死亡是我知道的最好的方法，用来避开担心失去某些东西的陷阱。你已经赤

裸裸了，没有理由不听从于自己的心愿。

大约一年前，我被诊断出患了癌症。我早上七点半作了扫描，清楚地显示在我的胰腺有一个肿瘤。我当时都不知道腺是什么东西。医生们告诉我这几乎是无法治愈的，还有三到六个月的时间。我的医生建议我回家，整理一切。在医生的辞典中，这就是“准备死亡”的意思。就是意味着把要对你小孩说十年的话在几个月内说完；意味着把所有东西搞定，尽量让你的家庭活得轻松一点；意味着你要说“永别”了。

我整日都想着那诊断书的事情。后来有天晚上我做了一个活切片检查，他们将一个内窥镜伸进我的喉咙，穿过胃，到达肠道，用一根针在我的胰腺肿瘤上取了几个细胞。我当时是被麻醉的，但是我的妻子告诉我，那些医生在显微镜下看到细胞的时候开始尖叫，因为发现这竟然是一种非常罕见的可用手术治愈的胰腺癌症。我做了手术，现在，我痊愈了。

这是我最接近死亡的时候，我也希望是我未来几十年里最接近死亡的一次。这次死里逃生让我比以往只知道死亡是一个有用而纯粹书面概念的时候更确信地告诉你们，没有人愿意死，即使那些想上天堂的人们也不愿意通过死亡来达到他们的目的。但是死亡是每个人共同的终点，没有人能够逃脱。也应该如此，因为死亡很可能是生命最好的发明。它陈让新。现在，你们就是“新”。但是有一天，不用太久，你们有会慢慢变老，然后死去。抱歉，这很戏剧性，但却是真的。你们的时间是有限的，不要浪费在重复别人的生活上。不要被教条束缚，那意味着会和别人思考的结果一块儿生活。不 要被其他人的喧嚣观点掩盖自己内心真正的声音。你的直觉和内心知道你想要变成什么样子。所有其他东西都是次要的。

我年轻的时候，有一份叫做“完整地球目录”的好杂志，是我们这一代人的圣经之一。它是一个叫斯纠华布兰得住在离这不远的曼罗公园的家伙创立的。他用诗一般的触觉将这份杂志带到世界。那是六十年代后期，个人电脑出现之前，所以这份杂志全是用打字机、剪刀和偏光镜制作的。有点像软皮包装的Google，不过却早了三十五年。它理想主义，全文充斥着灵巧的工具和伟大的想法。斯纠华特和他的小组出版了几期“完整地球目录”，在完成使命之前，他们出版了最后一期。那是七十年代中期，我和你们差不多大。最后一期的封底是一张清晨乡村小路的照片，如果你有冒险精神，可以自己找到这条路。下面有一句话，“求知若渴，虚心若谷”。这是他们的告别语，“求知若渴，虚心若

我常以此勉励自己。现在，在你们即将踏上新旅程的时候，我也希望你们能这样。

求知若渴，虚心若谷。

第三篇：乔布斯斯坦福大学演讲稿

《求知若饥，虚心若愚》（Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish)

今天，很荣幸来到这所世界上最好的学校之一的著名学校，参加毕业典礼。我从来没从大学毕业过，说实话，这是我离大学毕业最近的一刻。今天，我只说3个故事，不谈大道理，3个故事就好。

第1个故事，是关于人生中的点点滴滴如何串连在一起。

我在锐意得学院（Reed College）待了6个月就办休学了。到我退学前，一共休学了18个月。那么，我为什么休学？这得从我出生前讲起。

我的亲生母亲当时是个研究生，年轻的未婚妈妈，她决定让别人收养我。她强烈觉得，应该让已经毕业的人收养我，所以我出生时，她就准备让一对律师夫妇收养我。但是这对夫妻到了最后一刻反悔了，他们想收养女孩。所以我必须等待收养名单上的另一对夫妻，也就是我后来的养父母。有一天半夜，他们接到一个电话，“有一名意外出生的男孩，你们要认养他吗”，他们回答“当然要”。但是我的生母发现，我的养母从来没有大学毕业过，我现在的爸爸则连高中毕业文凭也没有，所以她拒绝在送养文件上做最后签字。直到几个月后，我的养父母保证将来一定会让我上大学，我生母的态度才软化。

17年后，我上大学了。但是当时我无知地选了一所学费几乎跟死蛋孵的一样贵的大学，我那工人阶级的父母将所有积蓄都花在我的学费上。6个月后，我看不出念这个学院的价值何在。那时候，我不知道这辈子要干什么，也不知道念大学能对我有什么帮助，只知道我为了念这个书，花光了我父母这辈子所有积蓄。所以，我决定休学，相信船到桥头自然直。

当时这个决定看来相当可怕，可是现在看来，那是我这辈子做过的最棒的决定之一。我休学之后，我再也不用上我没兴趣的必修课了，我把时间拿去听那些我有兴趣的课。这一点也不浪漫。我没有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家里的地板上，靠着回收空可乐罐的5分钱退费买吃的。每个星期天晚上，我得走7哩路，绕过大半个镇去印度教的Hare Krishna神庙吃顿好料，我喜欢Hare Krishna神庙的好吃的。

我追随着我的好奇心和直觉，我的大部分投入，后来都成了无价之宝。举个例子。当时锐意得学院有着大概是全国最好的书写教育，校园里的每一张海报上每一个抽屉标签上，都是美丽的手写字。因为我休学了，可以不照正常选课程序来，所以我跑去上书写课。我学了serif 与sanserif体，学到在不同字母组合间变更字间距，学到活字印刷伟大的地方。书写的美好、历史感、艺术感是科学所不具备的，我觉得这很迷人。

我没预期过学这些东西能在我的生活中起些什么实际作用，不过10年后，当我在设计第1台麦金塔电脑时，我想起了过去所学的东西，把这些东西都设计进了麦金塔，这是第1台能印刷出漂亮东西的电脑。如果我没能沉溺于这样一门课，麦金塔可能就不会有多重字体和等比例间距字体。Windows抄袭了麦金塔的使用方式。因此，如果当年我没有休学，没有去上这门书写课，大概所有的个人电脑都不会有这些东西，印不出现在我们看到的漂亮的字。

当然，当我还在大学的时候，不可能把这些点点滴滴预先串连在一起，但10年后的今天回首，一切显得非常清楚。我再说一次，你不可能把点点滴滴事先串连起来，只有回首往事，你才能把它们串在一起（you can't connect the dots look-ing forward;you can only connect them looking backwards）。所以你得相信，眼前你经历的种种，将来多少会连结在一起。你得信任某个东西，直觉也好，命运也好，生命也好，或者业力。这种作法从来没让我失望，我的人生因此变得完全不同。

我的第2个故事，有关爱和失去。

我很幸运年轻时就发现了自己爱做什么事。我20岁时，跟Steve Wozniak在我爸妈的车库里开始了苹果电脑的事业。我们拼命工作，苹果电脑在10年间从一间车库里的两个小伙子扩展!成了一家员工超过4000人市价20亿美金的公司。在那事件之前1年推出了我们最棒的作品——麦金塔（Macintosh）电脑，那时我才刚开始30岁；然后，我被解雇了。

我怎么会被自己创办的公司给解雇了？

嗯，当苹果电脑成长后，我请了一个我以为在经营公司上很有才干的家伙来，他在头几年也确实干得不错。可是我们对未来的愿景不同，最后只好分道扬镳，董事会站在他那边，就这样，在我30岁的时候，公司把我解雇了。我失去了整个生活的重心，我的人生就这样被摧毁。

有几个月，我不知道要做些什么。我觉得我令企业界的前辈们失望，我把他 们交给我的接力棒弄丢了。

我见了创办HP的David Packard跟创办Intel的Bob Noyce，跟他们说很抱歉我把事情给搞砸了。我成了公众眼中失败的示范，我甚至想要离开硅谷。

但是渐渐地，我发现，我还是喜爱那些我做过的事情，在苹果电脑中经历的那些事丝毫没有改变我爱做的事。虽然我被否定了，可是我还是爱做那些事情，所以我决定从头来过。

当时我没发现，但现在看来，被苹果开除，是我所经历过最好的事情。成功的沉重被从头来过的轻松所取代，每件事情都不那么确定，让我自由进入这辈子最有创意的年代。

接下来5年，我开了一家叫做“NeXT”的公司，又开一家叫做“Pixar”的公司，也跟后来的太太Laurene谈起恋爱。Pixar接着制作了世界上第1部全电脑动画电影《玩具总动员（Toy Story）》，现在是世界上最成功的动画制作公司（听众鼓掌大笑）。然后，苹果电脑买下NeXT，我又回到了苹果，我们在NeXT发展的技术成了苹果电脑后来复兴的核心部份。我也有了个美妙的家庭。我很确定，如果当年苹果电脑没开除我，就不会发生这些事情。这帖药很苦口。有时候，人生会用砖头打你的头，但不要丧失信心。

我确信，让我一路走过来的惟一动力，是我热爱我做的工作。（I'm onvinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did）。

你得找出你的最爱，工作上是如此，人生伴侣也是如此。你的工作将占掉你人生的一大部分，而通过伟大事业的必由之路是，热爱你做的工作（And the only way to do great work is to love what you do）。如果你还没找到这些事，继续找，别停下来。尽你全心全力，你知道你一定会找到。而且，如同任何伟大的事业，情况只会随着时间推移变得愈来愈好。所以，在你找到之前，继续找，别停顿。

我的第3个故事，关于死亡。

17岁时，我读到一则格言，好像是说“把每1天都当成生命中的最后1天，你就会轻松自在（If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right）。”这对我影响深远，在过去的的33年里，我每天早上都会照镜子自问：“如果今天是此生最后1日，我要做些什么？”每当我连续太多天都得到一个“没事做”的答案时，我就知道我必须有所改变了。

此生当我面临重大抉择时，提醒自己“马上就要死了”，是我用过的最重要的方法。因为，几乎所有事情——所有外界期望、所有荣誉、所有对困窘或失败的恐惧——这些事情在面对死亡的时候全都消失了，只有真正的最重要的东西才会留下，提醒自己快死了，是我所知道的避免掉入丧失和畏惧陷阱的最好方法。人生不带来，死不带去，没理由不顺心而为。

1年前，我被诊断出癌症。我在早上7点半作断层扫瞄，在胰脏清楚出现一个肿瘤，我连胰脏是什么都不知道。医生告诉我，那几乎可以确定是一种不治之症，预计我大概活不到3到6个月。医生建议我回家，好好跟亲人们聚一聚，这是医生对临终病人的标准建议。那代表你得试着在几个月内把你将来10年想跟小孩讲的话讲完。那代表你得把每件事情搞定，家人才会尽量轻松。那代表你得跟人说再见了。

我整天想着那个诊断结果，那天晚上做了一次切片，从喉咙伸入一个内视镜，穿过胃进到肠子，将探针伸进胰脏，取了一些肿瘤细胞出来。我打了镇静剂，不醒人事，但是我老婆在场。她后来跟我说，当医生们用显微镜看过那些细胞后，他们都哭了，因为那是非常少见的一种胰脏癌，可以用手术治好。所以我接受了手术，康复了。

这是我最接近死亡的时候，我希望那会继续是未来几十年内最接近的一次。经历此事后，我可以比先前只是假想死亡时更肯定地告诉你们，没有人想死，即使那些想上天堂的人，也想活着上天堂。

但是死亡是我们共同的终点，没有人逃得过。这是注定的，因为死亡很可能就是生命中最棒的发明，是生命交替的媒介，送走老人们，给新生代让出道路。

现在你们是新生代，但是不久的将来，你们也会逐渐变老，被送出人生的舞台。抱歉讲得这么戏剧化，但是这是真的。

你们的时间有限，所以不要浪费时间活在别人的生活里。不要被教条所局限，盲从教条就是活在别人思考的结果里。不要让别人的意见淹没了你内在的心声。最重要的是，要有勇气追逐你们自己的内心世界和直觉，它们多少已经知道你们真正想要成为什么样的人，其他任何事情都是次要的！

在我年轻时，有本神奇的杂志，叫做《Whole Earth Catalog》，当年这是我们的经典读物。那是位住在离这不远的Menlo Park 的Stewart Brand发行的，他把杂志办得很有诗意。那是60年代末，个人电脑和桌上出版还没出现，所有内容都是打字机、剪刀、拍立得相机做出来的。杂志内容有点像印在纸上的平面Google，在Google 出现之前35年就有了。这本杂志很理想主义，充满新奇工具与伟大的见解。Stewart 跟他的团队出版了好几期的《Whole Earth Catalog》，然后很自然地，最后出了停刊号。当时是70年代中期，我正是你们现在这个年龄。在停刊号的封底，有张清晨乡间小路的照片，那种你四处搭便车冒险旅行时会经过的乡间小路。在照片下印了行小字： Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish(求知若饥，虚心若愚)。

那是他们亲笔写下的告别讯息，我总是以此自许。当你们毕业，展开新生活，我也以此祝福你们——Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish！

吸收知识就像是饥饿时想吃东西一样，形容对知识很渴望；向他人请教时要像什么都不懂，形容非常的谦虚好学。

第四篇：乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲稿

Thank you.I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.That's it.No big deal.Just three stories.The first story is about connecting the dots.I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit.So why did I drop out? It started before I was born.My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We've got an unexpected baby boy.Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.She refused to sign the final adoption papers.She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.This was the start in my life.And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition.After six months, I couldn't see the value in it.I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life.So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made.The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.It wasn't all romantic.I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms.I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.I loved it.And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.Let me give you one example.Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed.Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac.It was the first computer with beautiful typography.If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward.You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.My second story is about love and loss.I was lucky.I found what I loved to do early in life.Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty.We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired.How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well.But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out.When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out.What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.I really didn't know what to do for a few months.I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley.But something slowly began to dawn on me.I still loved what I did.The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.I'd been rejected but I was still in love.And so I decided to start over.I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple.It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it.Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick.Don't lose faith.I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle.As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on.So keep looking.Don't settle.My third story is about death.When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.You are already naked.There is no reason not to follow your heart.About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.I didn't even know what a pancreas was.The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months.It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family.It means to say your goodbyes.I lived with that diagnosis all day.Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades.Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept.No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share.No one has ever escaped it.And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.It's life's change agent;it clears out the old to make way for the new.right now, the new is you.But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true.Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking.Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you truly want to become.Everything else is secondary.When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation.It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras.it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along.I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age.On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off.“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay hungry, stay foolish.Thank you all, very much.本文来自:【爱学啦】原文地址：http://

第五篇：乔布斯在斯坦福大学演讲稿(中英对照)

这是苹果公司和Pixar动画工作室的CEO Steve Jobs于2005年6月12号在斯坦福大学的毕业典礼上面的演讲稿。

谢谢大家。很荣幸能和你们，来自世界最好大学之一的毕业生们，一块儿参加毕业典礼。老实说，我大学没有毕业，今天恐怕是我一生中离大学毕业最近的一次了。

今天，我想告诉大家来自我生活的三个故事。不是长篇大论，只是三个故事而已。

第一个故事，如何串连生命中的点滴。

我 在里得大学读了六个月就退学了，但是在十八个月之后--我真正退学之前，我还常去学校。为何我要选择退学呢？这还得从我出生之前说起。我的生母是一个年 轻、未婚的大学毕业生，她决定让别人收养我。她有一个很强烈的信仰，认为我应该被一个大学毕业生家庭收养。于是，一对律师夫妇说好了要领养我，然而最后一 秒钟，他们改变了主意，决定要个女孩儿。然后我的排在收养人名单中的养父母在一个深夜接到电话，“很意外，我们多了一个男婴，你们要吗？”“当然要！”但 是我的生母后来又发现我的养母没有大学毕业，养父连高中都没有毕业。她拒绝在领养书上签字。几个月后，我的养父母保证会让我上大学，她妥协了。

这 是我生命的开端。十七年后，我上大学了，但是我很无知地选了一所差不多和斯坦福一样贵的学校，几乎花掉我那蓝领阶层养父母一生的积蓄。六个月后，我觉得不 值得。我看不出自己以后要做什么，也不晓得大学会怎样帮我指点迷津，而我却在花销父母一生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并且相信没有做错。一开始非常吓人，但 回忆起来，这却是我一生中作的最好的决定之一。从我退学的那一刻起，我可以停止一切不感兴趣的必修课，开始旁听那些有意思得多的课。

事情并不那么美好。我没有宿舍可住，睡在朋友房间的地上。为了吃饭，我收集五分一个的旧可乐瓶，每个星期天晚上步行七英里到哈尔-克里什纳庙里改善一下一周的伙食。我喜欢这种生活方式。能够遵循自己的好奇和直觉前行后来被证明是多么的珍贵。让我来给你们举个例子吧。当 时的里得大学提供可能是全国最好的书法指导。校园中每一张海报，抽屉上的每一张标签，都是漂亮的手写体。由于我已退学，不用修那些必修课，我决定选一门书 法课上上。在这门课上，我学会了“serif”和“sans-serif”两种字体、学会了怎样在不同的字母组合中改变字间距、学会了怎样写出好的字来。这是一种科学无法捕捉的微妙，楚楚动人、充满历史底蕴和艺术性，我觉得自己被完全吸引了。

当 时我并不指望书法在以后的生活中能有什么实用价值。但是，十年之后，我们在设计第一台 Macintosh 计算机时，它一下子浮现在我眼前。于是，我们把这些东西全都设计进了计算机中。这是第一台有这么漂亮的文字版式的计算机。要不是我当初在大学里偶然选了这 么一门课，Macintosh 计算机绝不会有那么多种印刷字体或间距安排合理的字号。要不是 Windows 照搬了 Macintosh，个人电脑可能不会有这些字体和字号。要不是退了学，我决不会碰巧选了这门书法课，个人电脑也可能不会有现在这些漂亮的版式了。

当 然，我在大学里不可能从这一点上看到它与将来的关系。十年之后再回头看，两者之间关系就非常、非常清楚了。你们同样不可能从现在这个点上看到将来；只有回 头看时，才会发现它们之间的关系。所以你必须相信，那些点点滴滴，会在你未来的生命里，以某种方式串联起来。你必须相信一些东西--你的勇气、宿命、生 活、因缘，随便什么--因为相信这些点滴能够一路连接会给你带来循从本觉的自信，它使你走离平凡，变得与众不同。

第二个故事是关于爱与失的。

我 很幸运。很早就发现自己喜欢做的事情。我二十岁的时候就和沃茨在父母的车库里开创了苹果公司。我们工作得很努力，十年后，苹果公司成长为拥有四千名员工，价值二十亿的大公司。我们只是推出了最好的创意，Macintosh操作系统，在这之前的一年，也就是我刚过三十岁，我被解雇了。你怎么可能被一个亲手创 立的公司解雇？事情是这样的，在公司成长期间，雇佣了一个我们认为非常聪明，可以和我一起经营公司的人。一年后，我们对公司未来的看法产生分歧，董事会站 在了他的一边。于是，在我三十岁的时候，我出局了，很公开地出局了。我整个成年生活的焦点没了，这很要命。一开始的几个月我真的不知道该干什么。我觉得我 让公司的前一代创建者们失望了，我把传给我的权杖给弄丢了。我与戴维德-帕珂德和鲍勃-诺埃斯见面，试图为这彻头彻尾的失败道歉。我败得如此之惨以至于我 想要逃离这儿。有些东西在呼唤我：我还爱着我从事的行业。这次失败一点儿都没有改变这一点。我被逐了，但我仍爱着。我决定重新开始。当 时我没有看出来，但事实证明“被苹果开除”是发生在我身上最好的事。成功的重担被重新起步的轻松替代，对任何事情都不再特别看重。这让我感觉如此自由，进 入一生中最有创造力的阶段。接下来的五年，我创立了一个叫NeXT的公司，接着又建立了Pixar，然后与后来成为我妻子的女人相爱。Pixar出品了世 界第一个电脑动画电影：“玩具总动员”，现在它已经是世界最成功的动画制作工作室了。

在一系列的成功运转后，苹果收购了NeXT，我又回到了苹果。我们在NeXT开发的技术在苹果的复兴中起了核心作用，另外劳琳和我组建了一个幸福的家庭。

我 非常确信，如果我没有被苹果炒掉，这些就都不会发生。这个药的味道太糟了，但是我想病人需要它。有些时候，生活会给你迎头一棒。不要丧失信心。我确信唯一 让我一路走下来的是我对自己所做事情的热爱。你必须去找你热爱的东西，对工作如此，对你的爱人也是这样的。工作会占据你生命中很大的一部分，你只有相信自 己做的是伟大的工作，你才能怡然自得。如果你还没有找到，那么就继续找，不要停。全心全意地找，当你找到时，你会知道的。就像任何真诚的关系，随着时间的 流逝，只会越来越紧密。所以继续找，不要停。

我的第三个故事关于死亡。

我 十七岁的时候读到过一句话“如果你把每一天都当作最后一天过，有一天你会发现你是正确的”。这句话给我留下了深刻的印象。从那以后，过去的三十三年，每天 早上我都会对着镜子问自己：“如果今天是我的最后一天，我会不会做我想做的事情呢？”当答案持续否定一些次数后，我知道我需要改变一些东西了。提醒自己就 要死了是我遇见的最大的帮助，帮我作了生命中的大决定。因为几乎任何事——所有的荣耀、骄傲、对难堪和失败的恐惧——在死亡面前都会消隐，留下真正重要的 东西。提醒自己就要死亡是我知道的最好的方法，用来避开担心失去某些东西的陷阱。你已经赤裸裸了，没有理由不听从于自己的心愿。

大 约一年前，我被诊断出患了癌症。我早上七点半作了扫描，清楚地显示在我的胰腺有一个肿瘤。我当时都不知道胰腺是什么东西。医生们告诉我这几乎是无法治愈 的，还有三到六个月的时间。我的医生建议我回家，整理一切。在医生的辞典中，这就是“准备死亡”的意思。就是意味着把要对你小孩说十年的话在几个月内说 完；意味着把所有东西搞定，尽量让你的家庭活得轻松一点；意味着你要说“永别”了。我 整日都想着那诊断书的事情。后来有天晚上我做了一个活切片检查，他们将一个内窥镜伸进我的喉咙，穿过胃，到达肠道，用一根针在我的胰腺肿瘤上取了几个细 胞。我当时是被麻醉的，但是我的妻子告诉我，那些医生在显微镜下看到细胞的时候开始尖叫，因为发现这竟然是一种非常罕见的可用手术治愈的胰腺癌症。我做了 手术，现在，我痊愈了。

这 是我最接近死亡的时候，我也希望是我未来几十年里最接近死亡的一次。这次死里逃生让我比以往只知道死亡是一个有用而纯粹书面概念的时候更确信地告诉你们，没有人愿意死，即使那些想上天堂的人们也不愿意通过死亡来达到他们的目的。但是死亡是每个人共同的终点，没有人能够逃脱。也应该如此，因为死亡很可能是生 命最好的发明。它去陈让新。现在，你们就是“新”。但是有一天，不用太久，你们有会慢慢变老然后死去。抱歉，这很戏剧性，但却是真的。你们的时间是有限 的，不要浪费在重复别人的生活上。不要被教条束缚，那意味着会和别人思考的结果一块儿生活。不要被其他人的喧嚣观点掩盖自己内心真正的声音。你的直觉和内 心知道你想要变成什么样子。所有其他东西都是次要的。

我 年轻的时候，有一份叫做“完整地球目录”的好杂志，是我们这一代人的圣经之一。它是一个叫斯纠华特-布兰得，住在离这不远的曼罗公园的家伙创立的。他用诗 一般的触觉将这份杂志带到世界。那是六十年代后期，个人电脑出现之前，所以这份杂志全是用打字机、剪刀和偏光镜制作的。有点像软皮包装的Google，不 过却早了三十五年。它理想主义，全文充斥着灵巧的工具和伟大的想法。斯纠华特和他的小组出版了几期“完整地球目录”，在完成使命之前，他们出版了最后一 期。那是七十年代中期，我和你们差不多大。最后一期的封底是一张清晨乡村小路的照片，如果你有冒险精神，可以自己找到这条路。下面有一句话，“求知若渴，虚心若谷”。这是他们的告别语，“求知若渴，虚心若谷”。我常以此勉励自己。现在，在你们即将踏上新旅程的时候，我也希望你们能这样。

求知若渴，虚心若谷。

非常感谢。

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.Thank you.I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.That's it.No big deal.Just three stories.The first story is about connecting the dots.I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit.So why did I drop out? It started before I was born.My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We've got an unexpected baby boy.Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.She refused to sign the final adoption papers.She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.This was the start in my life.And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition.After six months, I couldn't see the value in it.I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life.So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made.The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.It wasn't all romantic.I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms.I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.I loved it.And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.Let me give you one example.Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligrapher.Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac.It was the first computer with beautiful typography.If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward.You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.I was lucky.I found what I loved to do early in life.Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty.We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired.How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well.But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out.When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out.What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.I really didn't know what to do for a few months.I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley.But something slowly began to dawn on me.I still loved what I did.The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.I'd been rejected but I was still in love.And so I decided to start over.I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple.It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it.Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick.Don't lose faith.I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle.As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on.So keep looking.Don't settle.My third story is about death.When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.You are already naked.There is no reason not to follow your heart.About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.I didn't even know what a pancreas was.The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months.It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family.It means to say your goodbyes.I lived with that diagnosis all day.Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades.Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept.No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share.No one has ever escaped it.And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.It's life's change agent;it clears out the old to make way for the new.Right now, the new is you.But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true.Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking.Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you truly want to become.Everything else is secondary.When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation.It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras.it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along.It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.Stuart and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age.On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off.“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay hungry, stay foolish.Thank you all, very much.