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乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲稿[中英]
苹果计算机公司CEO史蒂夫•乔布斯6.14在斯坦福大学对即将毕业的大学生们进行演讲时说，从大学里辍学是他这一生做出的最为明智的一个选择，因为它逼迫他学会了创新。 乔布斯对操场上挤的满满的毕业生、校友和家长们说：“你的时间有限，所以最好别把它浪费在模仿别人这种事上。” －－同样地，如果还在学校的话，似乎不应该去模仿退学的牛人们。
You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
Jobs说，你必须要找到你所爱的东西。
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of AppleComputer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
这是苹果公司和Pixar动画工作室的CEOSteve Jobs于2005年6月12号在斯坦福大学的毕业典礼上面的演讲稿。
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finestuniversities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, thisis the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tellyou 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 aroundas a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did Idrop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed collegegraduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt verystrongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was allset for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when Ipopped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. Somy parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the nightasking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said:"Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother hadnever graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from highschool. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a fewmonths 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 wasalmost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savingswere being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see thevalue in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea howcollege was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of themoney my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out andtrust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, butlooking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I droppedout I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begindropping 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 infriends' 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 goodmeal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbledinto by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless lateron. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction inthe country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer,was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have totake the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how todo this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying theamount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes greattypography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a waythat science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But tenyears later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all cameback to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer withbeautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course incollege, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionallyspaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that nopersonal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would havenever dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might nothave the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible toconnect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, veryclear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect themlooking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect inyour 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 thedifference 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 Applein my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple hadgrown from just the two of us in a garage into a billion company with over 4000employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a yearearlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get firedfrom a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thoughtwas very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or sothings went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge andeventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided withhim. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of myentire 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 theprevious generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as itwas being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried toapologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I eventhought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawnon me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changedthat one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided tostart over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was thebest thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of beingsuccessful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sureabout everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of mylife.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another companynamed 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, ToyStory, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In aremarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and thetechnology 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 fromApple. 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'mconvinced 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 isfor your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and theonly way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And theonly 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 whenyou find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and betteras 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 eachday as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." Itmade an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have lookedin the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last dayof my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And wheneverthe answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need tochange something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've everencountered 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 trulyimportant. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoidthe trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. Thereis no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in themorning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know whata pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancerthat is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to sixmonths. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which isdoctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everythingyou thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. Itmeans to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy aspossible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, wherethey stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into myintestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. Iwas sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed thecells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to bea very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had thesurgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest Iget for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to youwith a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectualconcept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die toget there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has everescaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely thesingle best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the oldto make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too longfrom now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be sodramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't betrapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. Andmost important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Theysomehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else issecondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole EarthCatalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by afellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought itto life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personalcomputers 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 neattools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, andthen when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was themid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was aphotograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourselfhitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words:"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as theysigned off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that formyself. And now, as you graduate to begin a new, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
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