"每当我身处低谷，我就会听这段讲话”【乔布斯在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲】中英大字幕/英语长句快语速 Steve Jobs' Stanford Speech

Thank

[Applause]

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 six months, but then

stayed around as a dropin 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 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 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

handcalliggraphed. 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 dropped in on that single

course in college, the Mac would have

never had multiple type faces 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 at Next is

at the heart of Apple's current

renaissance. And Lorine 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

[Applause]

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 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.

[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. 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.

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 Menllo Park, and he brought it

to life with his poetic touch. This was

in the late60s 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. 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

a new, I wish that for you. Stay hungry.

Stay foolish. Thank you all very

much. Nate onion English.