Learn English Steve Jobs Stay Hungry Stay Foolish with BIG subtitles

thank you I’m honored to be with you

today for your commencement from one of

the finest universities in the world

[Applause]

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 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 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 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 the money my

parents had saved their entire life so I

decided to drop out and trust that it

would all work out okay 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

Hari 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 10 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 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 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 parent’s 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 two billion dollar company

with over 4,000 employees we just

released our finest creation the

Macintosh a year earlier and I 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 and 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’d 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’ve 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

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 it next is

at the heart of Apple’s current

Renaissance and Laureen 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 sometime

life sometimes life’s gonna 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 gonna 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

[Applause]

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’ve

looked in the mirror every morning and

asked myself if today were the last day

of my life what 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 3 to 6

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 10 years to

tell them in just a few months it means

to make sure everything is buttoned up

so that will be as easy as possible for

your family it means to say your

goodbyes

I live 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 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’m fine now

[Applause]

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 its life’s change agent it clears

out the old to make way for the new

right now the new is you but some day

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 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 Bible’s 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 60s before personal computers and

desktop publishing so it was all made

with typewriters scissors and Polaroid

cameras it was sort of like Google and

paperback form 35 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 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

[Applause]