喬布斯在斯坦福大學(xué)畢業(yè)典禮上的英文演講稿

1、Steve Jobs,delivered on June 12, 2005.I am honored to be with you today at your comme nceme nt from one of the fin est uni versities in theworld. I n ever graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest rve ever gotten to a collegegraduation.Today I want to tell you threestories from my l

2、ife. Thats 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 mon ths, but the n stayed around as a drop-i n for another 18 mon ths or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?It startedbefore I was born. My biologic

3、almother was a young, unwed collegegraduatestudent, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt verystro ngly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everyth ing was all set for me to be adoptedat birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that whe n I popped out they decided at the la

4、st minute thatthey really wan ted a girl. So my pare nts, who were on a wait ing list, got a call in the middle of the night ask in g: We have anunexpected baby boy; do you want him? They said: Of course. My biological mother later found outthat my mother had never graduated from college and thatmy

5、father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adopti on papers. She only rele nted a few mon ths later whe n my pare nts promised that I would someday go to college.And 17 years later I did go to college. But I n aively chose a college that was almost as expe nsive asSta

6、nford, and all of my work in g-class pare nts savi ngs were beingspe nt on my college tuiti on. After six mon ths, I could nt 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 pa

7、re nts had saved their en tire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that itwould all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but look ing back it was one of the best decisi onsI ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop tak ing the required classes that did nt interest me,and begin

8、dropping in on the ones that lookedinteresting.Itwas nt all roma ntic. I did nt have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in frien dsrooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5Cdeposits towcttiy anddI wouldwalk the 7 miles across town every Sun day ni ght to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krish n

9、atemple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by follow ing my curiosity and intuition turned out tobe priceless later on. Let me give you one example:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy in structi on in thecountry.Throughout the campus every poster, every label on

10、 every drawer, wasbeautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and did nt have to take the no rmal classes,I decided to take a calligraphy class to lear n how to do this. I learned about serif and san seriftypefaces, about varying the amount of space betwee n differe nt letter comb in at

11、io ns, about whatmakes great typography great.It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science cant capture, andI found it fasc in at ing.None of this had even a hope of any practical applicati on in my life.But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh compu

12、ter,it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautifultypography. If I had n ever dropped in on that sin gle course in college, the Mac would have n ever hadmultiple typefaces or proport ion ally spaced fon ts. And since Win dows just copied the Mac

13、, its likelythat no pers onal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never droppedin on thiscalligraphy class, and pers onal computers might not have thewon derfultypography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots look ing forward when I was incolleg

14、e. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.Again, you cant connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect themlook ing backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in yourfuture. You have to trust i n someth ingyour gut, dest iny, life, karma, what

15、ever.This approach has n ever let me dow n, and it has made all the differe nee in my life.My sec ond story is about love and loss.I was luckyI found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple inmy parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 yearsApplehadgrow n from just t

16、he two of us in a garage into a $2 billio n compa ny with over 4000 employees. Wehad just released our finest creation the Macintosh a yearearlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a compa ny youstarted? Well, as Apple grew we hired some one who I thought wa

17、s very tale nted to run the compa nywith me, and for the first year or so things went well. But the n our visi ons of the future bega n todiverge and even tually we had afalli ng out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out.And very publicly out. What had bee n the foc

18、us of my en tire adult life was gone,and it was devastating.I really did nt know what to do for a few mon ths. I felt that I had let the previousgen erati on of en trepre neurs dow n - that I had dropped the bat on as it was beingpassed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apol

19、ogize forscrew ing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about runningaway from the valley. But someth ing slowly bega n to daw n on meI still lovedwhat I did. The turn of events at Apple had not cha nged that one bit. I had bee nrejected, but I was still in love. And so I dec

20、ided to start over.I did nt see it the n,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 light ness of being a begi nner aga in, less sureabout everyth in g. It freed me to en ter one of the

21、most creative periods of my life.During the n ext five years, I started a compa ny n amed NeXT, ano ther compa nynamed Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer ani mated feature film, Toy Story,and is now the most succes

22、sful ani matio n studio in the world. In a remarkable tur nof even ts, Apple bought NeXT, I retur ned to Apple, and the tech no logy we developed at NeXT is atthe heart of Apples curre nt ren aissa nee. And Laure ne and I have a wonderful family together. rmpretty sure none of this would havehappe n

23、ed if I had nt bee n fired from Apple. It was awful tasti ng medici ne, but Iguess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Dont lose faith.Im convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. Youve got tofind what you love. And that is as

24、true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going tofill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe isgreat work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you have nt found it yet,keep look ing. Dont settle. As with a

25、ll matters of the heart, youll know when you find it. And, like anygreat relati on ship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep look ing until you find it.Dont settle.My third story is about death.When I was 17, I read a quote thatsomethinglike: If you live each day as if it wa

26、s your last, someday youllcerta inly be right. It made an impressi on on me, and since the n, for the past 33 years, I havelooked 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? whenever the answer has been No for to

27、omany days in a row, I know I need to cha nge someth ing.Rememberi ng that ni be deadsoon is the most importa nttool rve ever encoun tered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everyth ing allexter nal expectati ons, all pride, all fear of embarrassme nt or failure -these thi ngs j

28、ust fall away in theface of death, leav ing only what is truly importa nt. Remembering that you are going to die is the bestway I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have someth ing to lose. You are already n aked. There isno reas on not to follow your heart.wentmostAndAbout a year ago I was diag

29、 no sed with can cer. I had a sea n at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearlyshowed a tumor on my pan creas. I did nt even know what a pan creas was. The doctors told me thiswas almost certai nly a type of cancer that is in curable, and that I should expect to liveno Ion ger tha n three to six mon ths.

30、 advised me to go home and get my affairs in order,which is doctors prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everyth ing you thoughtyoud have the n ext 10 years to tell them in just a few mon ths. It means to everyth ingis butt oned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family.

31、 It means to say yourgoodbyes.I lived with that diag no sisall day.evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an en doscope dow n my throat, through mystomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells fromthe tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that whe n they viewedthe cells under a microscope the doctors started crying turned out to be a very rare formof pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and rm fine now.This was the closest rve bee n to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for afew more deca