This is a speech that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, gave at Stanford University in 2005 for the graduation commencement. In it, Steve recounts three personal stories in which he advocates following your heart and doing what you love.
Personally, I found his speech to be touching and motivational, so I wanted to share it with you guys. Of course, if you haven’t seen it, you also need to check out the World’s Most Inspiring Story.
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.
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 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 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 returned 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 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 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.
Thank you all very much.
史帝夫‧賈伯斯（Steve Jobs）是電腦業界的標竿人物，他從小被加州一個工人家庭收養，只讀了一個學期的大學。一九七六年，二十一歲的他與史帝夫‧沃茲尼亞克合作，在自家車庫裏成立了蘋果公司。一九八三年，賈伯斯邀請約翰‧史考力出任蘋果執行長，並推出第一台麥金塔電腦，引發很大的回響。但不到一年即遇上電腦產業的蕭條，史考力接管了公司，將賈伯斯趕出蘋果。
爾後賈伯斯創立NeXT電腦公司與皮克斯動畫工作室，推出全球第一部3D立體動畫電影《玩具總動員》，十一年後被迪士尼收購，賈伯斯因而成為迪士尼的董事會成員與最大個人股東。
隔年，蘋果電腦收購NeXT，賈伯斯重回蘋果掌管大權，推出iMac，令陷入財政困難的蘋果起死回生。之後又推出iBook、iPod、iTune等產品，廣受好評。
二○○四年，賈伯斯罹患胰臟癌，開刀治療後恢復健康，身為虔誠佛教徒的他，也對生死有更深刻的體會。
我很榮幸今天能來到全球第一流的大學，與你們一起參加畢業典禮。我從來沒有從大學畢業，這是我第一次離大學畢業典禮這麼近。今天，我想要告訴你們三個我的人生故事。沒什麼大不了的，只是三個故事。
第一個故事，是關於「串連人生點滴」。
我在里德學院（Reed College）讀了六個月後就休學了，但之後我仍然偶爾去學校上課，過了大約十八個月才真正離開。那麼，我為什麼辦休學呢？
故事得從我出生之前講起。我的親生母親是個年輕的未婚研究生，她決定讓別人領養我。她認為領養我的夫妻都該有大學學歷，於是為我準備好一切手續，好讓我一出生，就能過繼給一位律師與他的妻子。但是，當我出了娘胎，他們卻在緊要關頭決定自己其實想領養一個女孩。就這樣，排在候補名單上的我的父母，在那天半夜接到了一通電話，問他們：「我們有個意外出世的男嬰，你們想要他嗎？」他們說：「當然。」後來，我的親生母親發現養母並沒有從大學畢業，養父甚至連高中文憑都沒有，於是她拒絕在收養文件上簽字。幾個月後，我父母承諾將來會讓我上大學，她的態度才軟化下來。
就這樣，十七年後，我果真上了大學。然而，我天真地選擇了一所幾乎跟史丹佛一樣昂貴的學校，我那藍領階級的父母，幾乎把所有積蓄都花在我的學費上。六個月後，我看不出讀大學的價值何在。我不知道這輩子要做什麼，也不曉得大學如何能幫助我找到答案。所以，我決定休學，並堅信船到橋頭自然直。這個決定在當時確實令人驚心膽跳，但回首前塵，那卻是我這輩子做過最好的決定之一。休學之後，我再也不用上自己沒興趣的必修課，開始去聽比較有意思的課。但這件事一點也不浪漫。我沒有宿舍，所以得睡在朋友房間的地板，靠回收可樂瓶的五先令（約新台幣三十元）退瓶費買吃的，每個星期天晚上得走上七英里的路，穿越市區，到禮讚克里須納神廟（Hare Krishna temple，譯注：或譯哈瑞奎師那神廟）吃頓大餐。我熱愛這種生活。許多我循著自己的好奇與直覺而踏上的岔路，後來都成了無價之寶。讓我給你們舉個例子：
里德學院當時開設了或許是全國最好的書法課程。整個校園內的每張海報，每個抽屜的標籤，都有美麗的手寫字。由於我休學了，不必修一般課程，便決定去上書法課。我學會了襯線字體（Serif）與無襯線字體，學會了以多樣化方式呈現不同字母組合的間距，學到了造就美妙版面設計的要素。這種優美、具有歷史感與藝術感的微妙形式，是科學無法捕捉的。我覺得它很迷人。
我從未期待這些東西能在我的人生中發揮任何實際作用，然而，十年後，當我們在設計第一台麥金塔電腦時，這一切突然重新浮現在我腦海中。我們把這一切都納入麥金塔系統的程式設計，那是第一台能做出美麗版面的電腦。如果我當年沒在大學上過那一門課，麥金塔就不可能有那麼多樣的字體，以及字母間距協調勻襯的字型。而且，微軟視窗系統是模仿麥金塔的，所以可能沒有任何電腦會有這些功能。當然，我在大學時，是不可能預見這些點點滴滴會如何串連起來。不過，事經十年，當我再回顧過去，一切就變得非常非常清楚了。
同樣地，你們無法預先串連人生的點滴，你們只能在回顧時將它們串連起來，因此，你們必須相信這些點滴，總會以某種方式在你們的未來串連。你們必須相信某些事情?──?你們的勇氣、命運、生命、業（Karma）……因為，相信這些點滴終將於未來串連起來，會讓你有自信去依循你的內心，即使它引領著你，離開一般人已走爛了的陳腐道路，你都不會失去自信。
我的第二個故事，是關於愛與失去。
我很幸運，在很年輕的時候，就發現自己喜歡做的事情。我二十歲時，就和沃茲合作，在我父母親的車庫創辦蘋果電腦。我們拚命工作，十年後，蘋果電腦已經從兩個窩在車庫裏的小夥子，成長為一家價值二十億美元（約新台幣六百四十億元）、員工超過四千人的公司。我們推出最棒的作品?──麥金塔，而我才剛邁入人生的第三十個年頭。然後，我被解雇了。
你怎麼會被你自己創辦的公司解雇呢？
隨著蘋果日益成長，我們聘了一位我認為非常有才華的人，請他和我一起經營公司。頭一年，事情進展得很順利，然後，我們對未來的願景開始出現分歧，最後發生了爭執。在我們爭執的過程中，我們的董事會站在他那邊，所以，三十歲時，我出局了，而且是非常公開地出局。我成年後的生活重心全部消失了，這真是毀滅性的打擊。
有好幾個月的時間，我真的不知道該做什麼。我感覺自己弄丟了傳到我手上的接力棒，讓上一代的企業家們失望了。我和大衛‧普克（David Packard，惠普公司的共同創辦人）及鮑伯‧諾宜斯（Bob Noyce，英特爾Intel公司創辦人）見面，試圖向他們道歉，因為我徹底搞砸了。我是個眾所皆知的失敗者，我甚至想過要逃離矽谷。然而，某些事慢慢讓我醒悟過來?──?我依然熱愛我所做的一切，在蘋果的形勢變化絲毫沒有改變這點。因此，我決定從頭來過。
我當時沒看出這點，但事實證明，被蘋果解雇是我所經歷過的最棒的遭遇。成功的沈重感，被再度從零開始的輕鬆感給取代了，每件事情都不再那麼確定。它釋放了我，讓我進入我人生中最有創造力的一個階段。
接下來那五年，我創辦了一家叫做NeXT的公司，又創辦另一家叫做皮克斯（Pixar）的公司，還愛上了一個不可思議的女人，她後來成為我的妻子。皮克斯後來製作了世上第一部電腦動畫劇情長片?──《玩具總動員》（Toy Story），它也是當今世上最成功的動畫製片廠。在某個奇特的形勢變化下，蘋果買下了NeXT，我重新回到蘋果，我們在NeXT發展的技術成了蘋果目前振興公司的核心技術，而羅倫（Laurene）和我也共組了美滿的家庭。
我非常確定，如果我沒被蘋果解雇，這些事完全不可能發生。這是一帖味道糟透了的藥，但是，我想，病人應該需要它。有時候，人生會拿磚塊砸你的頭，但不要因此喪失你的信心。我相信，唯一支撐我不斷走下去的是，我熱愛我所做的事。你們必須找出自己究竟熱愛什麼，對工作如此，對戀人也是如此。你們的工作將會占去你們生活的很大一部分時間，要想獲得真正的滿足，唯一的方法就是從事你們相信是偉大的工作；而要從事你們相信是偉大的工作，唯一的方法就是熱愛你們從事的工作。如果你們還沒找到自己愛做什麼，繼續尋找吧，不要停下來。一如一切只關乎於心，當你找到答案時，你一定會知道的；而且，就像所有偉大的關係，它只會隨著時間的流逝而愈變愈好。
我的第三個故事，是關於死亡。
十七歲那年，我讀到一段語錄，內容大概是這樣的：「把每一天都當作是你生命中的最後一天來過，總有一天，你會輕鬆自在的。」這句話令我印象深刻，從那刻起，過去三十三年來，我每天早上都會看著鏡中的自己，問：「假如今天是我生命中的最後一天，我會想做我今天即將要做的事嗎？」每當連續好多天答案都是否定的，我就會知道我必須有所改變了。
「提醒自己快死了」，這句話幫助我當人生面臨重大抉擇時，能做出正確決定。因為幾乎每件事──所有外在的期待，所有榮耀，所有對於難堪或失敗的恐懼?──?在面臨死亡那刻都會消失，只留下真正重要的東西。記得你將會死去，是我所知避免落入「你擁有可能失去的東西」的思維陷阱的最佳方法。你早已是赤身裸體的了，沒有理由不依循自己的心。
大約在二○○四年左右，我被診斷出罹患癌症。我在早上七點半做了一個掃瞄，檢查結果很清楚地呈現我的胰腺長了一個腫瘤。我甚至不知道什麼是胰腺。醫師告訴我，那是一種幾乎無藥可醫的癌症，我應該活不過三到六個月了。我的醫師建議我回家，把我的事情安排妥當，以醫師的密碼來說，他的建議就是「準備死吧」，而這意味著：你必須試著在短短幾個月內，告訴你的孩子們你以為可以在未來十年內告訴他們的事；你要確保搞定了每件事，好讓你的家人好過些。這也意味著向大家告別。我整天都在想那個診斷結果。當天晚上，我做了一個切片檢查，他們從我的喉嚨裏伸進一個內視鏡，穿過我的胃，深入小腸，然後在我的胰腺中置入一根針，從腫瘤內取出少許組織細胞。我被打了麻醉劑，不過，我的妻子當時也在現場，她告訴我，那些醫師看到顯微鏡下的組織細胞時，個個都哭了，因為那是一種相當罕見的胰腺癌，可以透過手術治癒。我做了手術，現在我已經康復了。
這是我最貼近死亡的時刻，希望這也是我未來數十年內最貼近死亡的經驗。經過這一切之後，我可以更確定地跟你們說：沒有人想死。即使是想上天堂的人，也不想搭乘死亡列車抵達那裏。然而，死亡是我們共同的宿命，沒有人能逃過這個宿命，而且也理當如此，因為死亡很可能是生命獨一無二的最棒的發明，它是生命改變的原動力，它清除老一代的生命，為新一代開道。此刻的新一代是你們，但在不久的將來，你們會逐漸變老，並且被清除掉。很抱歉講得這麼戲劇化，但這話是非常真實的。
你們的時間有限，所以，不要浪費時間活在別人的人生裏。不要被教條困住──這等於是活在別人思考的結果裏。不要讓他人意見的噪音淹沒了你們內在的聲音。最重要的是，要有勇氣依循你們的心與直覺，從某個角度來看，它們早已知道你真正想成為什麼樣的人。其他一切都是次要的。
我年輕的時候，有本神奇的刊物叫做《全球目錄》（The Whole Earth Catalog），那是我這一代的聖經之一。這本刊物是一個名叫史都華‧布蘭德（Stewart Brand）的傢伙，在離這裏不遠的門羅公園（Menlo Park）創辦的，他以自己詩意的感受賦與這本刊物生命。那是一九六○年代晚期的事了，當時，個人電腦與桌上型電腦尚未誕生，所以，這本刊物全都是用打字機、剪刀與拍立得相機製作而成，它就像某種書面的Google，比Google早了三十五年問世；它很理想主義，充滿了靈巧的方法與偉大的見解。
史都華與他的團隊發行了幾期《全球目錄》，然後，當這本刊物完成了它的使命後，他們發行了最後一期。當時是一九七○年代中期，我正處於像你們這樣的年紀。他們最後一期的封底，有張清晨鄉間公路的照片，那是某種夠有冒險精神的人可能會在那裏搭便車的路。照片下面有一段話：「保持饑渴。保持愚昧。」（Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.）那是他們停刊的告別辭。保持饑渴，保持愚昧，我一直以此自許。
現在，在你們畢業、展開新生活之際，我祝福你們能夠做到這點。
保持饑渴。保持愚昧。（Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.）
非常感謝大家。
