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]