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Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
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[Music]
this program is brought to you by
Stanford University please visit us at
stanford.edu
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]
much the preceding program is
copyrighted by Stanford University
please visit us at stanford.edu
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