http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc


   

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

   
                                                                               
   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.