第一篇：喬布斯斯坦福演講英文文稿

Steve Jobs’ Speech in Stanford

(This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.)I am honored to be with you today for(at)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 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 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 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 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 a 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 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, it's 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.Because believing that these dots would 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 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 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 downthese 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 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 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.4

第二篇：斯蒂夫喬布斯在斯坦福演講全文

蘋果CEO斯蒂夫.喬布斯的演講

名人勵志 2009-02-04 22:49 閱讀45 評論0

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以下是蘋果電腦CEO斯蒂夫.喬布斯于2007年6月12日在斯坦福大學畢業典禮上的演講.他不但讓我們進入這位偉大企業家的內心深處,而且告訴我們應當怎樣經營自己的人生,告訴我們從哪里來,要到哪里

去.......斯坦福是世界上最好的大學之一,我能參加各位的畢業典禮,備感榮幸,我大學只讀了半年,說實話,此時算是我離大學畢業最近的一刻.現在,我想和你們分享我生命中的三個小故事.一:串起生命中的點點滴滴

我在里德大學讀了6個月就退學了,這是為什么呢? 故事要從我的身世說起,我的生母是一名年輕的未婚媽媽,當時她還在讀研究生,于是決定把我送人,我的養父母都是藍領工人,為了供我上大學,他們傾其所有,在里德大學呆了半年后,我發現自己的人生漫無目標,也不知道這樣讀下去有什么用,為了念書,還花了父母畢生的積蓄,所以我決定退學,作出這個決定的時候,我是非常害怕,但現在看來,這是我這一生所作出的最正確的決定之一.從那一刻起,我再也不用去上那些不感興趣必修課,我開始旁聽一些比較有意思的科目,事實上這一點也不浪漫.因為沒有宿舍,我只能睡在朋友房間的地板上.可樂瓶的押金是5分錢,我把瓶子還回去,然后用押金買吃的,每周日晚上，我都要步行7英里去教堂，只為了吃一頓大餐，因為我喜歡那兒的食物。

事后證明，這些由著好奇心和直覺所做的事情，大多數都是極其珍貴的經驗，舉一個例子，當時，里德大學擁有全美國最好的書法教育，整個校園的每一張海報，每一個抽屜上的標簽，都是漂亮的手寫體。由于已經退學，我選擇旁聽書法班，想學學怎么寫出一手漂亮字，在那里，我學會了各種襯線，和無襯線字體，學會了如何改變不同字體組合之間的字間距，以及如何做出漂亮的版式，那是一種科學永遠無法捕捉的美感，歷史感和藝術感，我發現這太有意思了。

當時，我壓根兒就沒有想到這些知識有什么實際用途，但10年以后，當我們設計第一款電腦的時候，它們全派上了用場，我把它們全部設計進了MAC，這是第一臺可以排出好看版式的電腦。

現在回過頭來看，如果當時我沒有退學，就不會去書法班旁聽，蘋果電腦就不會提供各種字體和等間距字體，也不會擁有如此出色的版式功能，當然，我在念大學的那會兒，不可能有先見之明，把那些生命中的點點滴滴都串起來，但10年之后，再回頭看，生命的軌跡變得非常晰。

再強調一次，你不可能充滿預見地將生命中的點點滴滴串聯起來，只有在經歷這后，你才會發現這些點點滴滴之間的聯系，所以，你要堅信，你現在所經歷的將在你未來的生命中串聯起來。

正是這種信念，讓我從未失去希望，讓我的人生變得與眾不同。

二：從事偉大工作的惟一方法，就是熱愛這份工作 一個人最大的幸運，莫過于在他年富 力強的時候，發現了自己人生的使命，從這個意義上講，我是幸運的。20多歲的時候，我就在自家的車庫里開創了蘋果電腦公司，10年后，公司已經成長為一家擁有4000多名員工，市值20億美元的大企業，然后，我就被炒了魷魚。

一個人怎么可以被他所創立的公司解雇呢？這么說吧，隨著蘋果的成長，我們請了一個原本以為很能干的家伙和我一起管理這家公司，在頭一年左右，他干得還不錯，但后來，我們對公司未來的前景出現了分歧，于是我們之間出現了矛盾，由于公司的董事會站在他那一邊，所以在我30歲的時候，就被踢出了局，我失去了一直貫穿在我整個成年生活的重心，打擊是毀滅性的。

失業的頭幾個月，我真不知道要做些什么，我覺得我讓企業界的前輩們失望了，我失去了傳到我手上的指揮棒。我由眾人景仰的企業家變成了一個徹頭徹尾的失敗者，當時我甚至想過逃離硅谷，但曙光漸漸出現，我不是喜歡我做過的事情，在蘋果電腦發生一切絲毫沒有改變我，一點都沒有，雖然被拋棄了，但

我熱忱不改，我決定重新開始。

我當時沒有看出來，但事實證明，被蘋果開掉是我這一生最大的財富，成功的沉重被鳳凰涅磐的輕盈所代替，卸下包袱，我以自由之身軀進入了生命中最有創意的時期，在接下來的5年里，我開創了一家叫做NEXT的公司，接著是一家名PIXAR的公司，并且結識了后來成為我妻子的曼妙女勞倫斯，PIXAR后來制作了世界上第一部全電腦畫電影《玩具總動員》，現在這家公司是世界上最成功的動畫制作公司之一，后來經歷一系列的事件，蘋果買下了NEXT，于是 我又回到了蘋果，我們在NEXT研發出的技術成為推動蘋果復興的核心動力，我和勞倫斯也擁有了美滿的家庭。

我非常肯定，如果沒有被蘋果炒掉，這一切都不可能在我身上發生，生活有時候就像一塊板磚，不斷拍向你的腦袋，但你不要因此喪失信心，熱愛我所從事的工作，是一直支持我不斷前進的惟一理由，你要時刻清楚自己想要成為什么樣的人，想要做什么，對愛人如此，對工作也要如此。

工作 將占據你生命的相當一部分，從事你認為具有非凡意義的工作，才能帶給你真正的滿足感，而從事一份偉大工作的惟一方法就是熱愛這份工作，如果你現在還沒有找到這份工作，那么請繼續尋找，如同浪漫的愛情一樣，偉大的工作只會在歲月的醞釀中越陳越香。

三：死亡是生命最好的一項發明

17歲那年記不得什么書上的一段話對我產生了致命的誘惑：“如果你把每一天當作生命的最后一天，總有一天你的假設會成為現實”從那時起，我每天早晨都會對著鏡子捫心自問，假如今天 是我生命中的最后一天，我還會去做今天的事嗎？這件事值得我去為 它投入激情嗎？當一連幾天答案都是否定的時候，我就知道做出改變的時候到了．

因為所有的一切，外界的期望，尊貴的地位，對失敗的恐懼，對面對死亡的時候，都是煙消云散，只留下真正重要的東西，人赤條條地來，赤條條地走，沒有理由不聽從內心的呼喚．

兩年前，我被診斷患有癌癥，掃描結果清楚地顯示我的肺腑出現了一個腫瘤，醫生告訴我，這是一種不治之癥，頂多還能活３至６個月，于是醫生建議我回家，把各種事情安排妥當，這是醫生對臨終病人的標準用語，這意味著你的子女說的話用幾個月的時間說完，這意味著你得準備向眾人告別了．

我一直都著那個不容置疑的診斷結果，那天晚上做了一個切片檢查，當大夫們從顯微鏡下觀察了細胞之后，我忍不住哭了，因為那是一種非常罕見的，完全可以通過手術治療胰臟癌，我接受了手術，現在，我已經康復了．

這是我最接近死亡的一次，在與死神擦肩而過之后，我能夠肯定地告訴你們以下事實：誰也不愿意死即使是那些人想進天堂的人，然而死亡是我們共同的歸宿，沒人能擺脫，我們注定會死，因為死亡很可能是生命最好的一項發明，它推進生命的新陳換代．

現在，你們是新的，但在不久的將來，你們也會成為舊的，也會被淘汰，你們的時間都是有限的，所以不要按照別人的意愿去活，這是浪費時間，不要讓別人聒噪聲淹沒了自己的心聲，最主要的是要有跟著自己感覺和直覺的勇氣，無論如何，感覺和直覺早就知道你到底想成為一個什么樣的人，其他的都不重

要．

第三篇：喬布斯2005年斯坦福大學畢業演講

喬布斯2005年斯坦福大學畢業演講

史蒂夫喬布斯(Steve Jobs)2005年6 月在斯坦福大學的演講在今天對于我們仍有很大的啟發作用。這位蘋果電腦公司(Apple Computer)和皮克斯動畫公司(Pixar Animation Studios)首席執行官在演講中談到了他生活中的三次體驗，這三次體驗不僅在斯坦福大學的畢業生、也在硅谷乃至其他地方的技術同行中引起了巨大反響。他們將他的演講登在互聯網上，在博客上展開討論，通過電子郵件互相發送，在全球傳閱。下面給大家分享這次演講的中英文演講稿。

You've got to find what you love

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.I never graduated from college.Truth be told, 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 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 downthese 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 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.

第四篇：喬布斯的斯坦福演講啟示

喬布斯的斯坦福演講啟示：

1.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.much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on 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 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 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.2.I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life.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.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 until you find it.Don't settle.3.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 failurethese things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.Remembering that I am going to die is the best way to avoid the continuous thinking I have something to lose.Like I am the one who is in charge of my life.I am responsible for my day.I am responsible for how I feel and what I do.Nobody can make me feel nothing.There is no reason not to follow my heart.And there is the quote I chose to end my presentation.It went something like,work like you don’t need money;love like you ‘ve never been hurt and dance like no one is watching you.

第五篇：喬布斯斯坦福演講稿

喬布斯斯坦福演講稿

You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says Jobs說，你必須要找到你所愛的東西。

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.I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.I never graduated from college.Truth be told, 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.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 somethingthe Macintoshthat 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 retuned 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 until you find it.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 failurewhich is living with the results of other people's thinking.Don't let the noise of other's 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.Stewart Stay Hungry.Stay Foolish.Thank you all very much.