为大家带来的是乔布斯演讲的英文稿，快来看看他传奇的人生吧。
I am honored to be with you today at your commencementfrom one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated fromcollege. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a collegegraduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. Nobig 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 reallyquit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was ayoung, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up foradoption. 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 hiswife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that theyreally wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call inthe middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do youwant him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother laterfound out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my fatherhad never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoptionpapers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that Iwould someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naivelychose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of myworking-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. Aftersix months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to dowith my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. Andhere I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. SoI decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was prettyscary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I evermade. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn'tinterest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so Islept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town everySunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I lovedit. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuitionturned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the bestcalligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster,every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I haddropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take acalligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san seriftypefaces, about varying the amount of space between different lettercombinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful,historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and Ifound it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical applicationin my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintoshcomputer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It wasthe first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on thatsingle course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces orproportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likelythat no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I wouldhave never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers mightnot have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots lookingforward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwardsten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; youcan only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dotswill 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 hasmade 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, andin 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finestcreation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then Igot fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Applegrew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company withme, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of thefuture began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, ourBoard 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 wasdevastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I feltthat I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I haddropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard andBob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very publicfailure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But somethingslowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events atApple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still inlove. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that gettingfired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Theheaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginneragain, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the mostcreative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company namedNeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman whowould become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computeranimated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animationstudio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, Ireturned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart ofApple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful familytogether.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if Ihadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess thepatient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't losefaith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I lovedwhat I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your workas 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 foundit yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'llknow when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets betterand better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don'tsettle.
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 mostcertainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for thepast 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 aboutto do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too manydays in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most importanttool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Becausealmost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear ofembarrassment 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 isthe 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 ascan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. Ididn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almostcertainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to liveno longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get myaffairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try totell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell themin just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so thatit 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 Ihad a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomachand 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 when theyviewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because itturned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable withsurgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and Ihope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, Ican now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a usefulbut purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want togo to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destinationwe all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, becauseDeath is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's changeagent. 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 becleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someoneelse's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results ofother people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out yourown inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart andintuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everythingelse is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication calledThe Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It wascreated by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and hebrought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, beforepersonal 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 neattools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The WholeEarth 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 finalissue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you mightfind yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were thewords: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message asthey signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that formyself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.