Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

[Music]

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thank

you I'm uh honored to be with you today

for your commencement from one of the

finest universities in the

[Applause]

world truth be

told uh I never graduated from

college and uh 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' 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 a 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 signed 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 workingclass

parents savings were being spent on my

college tuition after 6 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 5-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

cigraph 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 type faces 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 never dropped

in on that single course in college the

Mac would have never had multiple type

faces or proportionately spaced fonts

and since Windows just copi the Mac it's

likely that no personal computer would

have

[Applause]

[Music]

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 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

path and that will make all the

difference my second story is about love

and

loss I was lucky I found what I love to

do early in life W 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 A2 billion doll 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 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 noise 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 per of

my life during the next 5 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 L 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 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

[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

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

doctor's 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 it 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 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 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

[Applause]

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 Stuart brand not far from here in

Meno 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 in

paperback form 35 years before Google

came along it was idealistic 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

a new I wish that for you stay hungry

stay foolish thank you all very

[Applause]

[Music]

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