Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

00:07This program is brought to you by Stanford University.

00:10Please visit us at stanford.edu

00:22Thank You. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement

00:30from one of the finest universities in the world.

00:35Truth be told I never graduated from college

00:41and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

00:47Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it.

00:52No big deal. Just three stories.

00:55The first story is about connecting the dots.

01:01I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months,

01:03but then stayed around as a drop-in

01:05for another 18 months or so before I really quit.

01:09So why did I drop out?

01:12It started before I was born.

01:15My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student,

01:19and she decided to put me up for adoption.

01:22She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates,

01:26so everything was all set for me to

01:28be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.

01:31Except that when I popped out they decided

01:34at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

01:37So my parents, who were on a waiting list,

01:40got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected

01:44baby boy; do you want him?"

01:47They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that

01:53my mother had never graduated from college

01:55and that my father had never graduated from high school.

01:59She refused to sign the final adoption papers.

02:03She only relented a few months later when

02:05my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

02:12And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college

02:19that was almost as expensive as Stanford,

02:22and all of my working-class parents'

02:24savings were being spent on my college tuition.

02:27After six months, I couldn't see the value in it.

02:30I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life

02:32and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.

02:36And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved

02:40their entire life.

02:42So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.

02:46It was pretty scary at the time,

02:49but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

02:54The minute I dropped out I could stop

02:56taking the required classes that didn't interest me,

02:59and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

03:04It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room,

03:08so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms,

03:10I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with,

03:14and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday

03:17night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna

03:21temple. I loved it.

03:23And much of what I stumbled into by following

03:26my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

03:29Let me give you one example: Reed College at that

03:34time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.

03:38Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer,

03:42was beautifully hand calligraphed.

03:45Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes,

03:49I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.

03:53I learned about serif and san serif typefaces,

03:56about varying the amount of space

03:57between different letter combinations,

03:59about what makes great typography great.

04:03It was beautiful, historical,

04:05artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture,

04:09and I found it fascinating.

04:12None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.

04:17But ten years later,

04:18when we were designing the first Macintosh computer,

04:21it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.

04:25It was the first computer with beautiful typography.

04:29If I had never dropped in on that single course in college,

04:32the Mac would have never had multiple

04:34typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

04:37And since Windows just copied the Mac,

04:39it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

04:47If I had never dropped out,

04:51I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class,

04:54and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography

04:57that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect

05:00the dots looking forward when I was in college.

05:02But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

05:07Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward;

05:10you can only connect them looking backwards.

05:12So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect

05:15in your future.

05:16You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma,

05:20whatever.

05:22Beleiveing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart

05:28Even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.

05:38My second story is about love and loss.

05:44I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life.

05:48Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20.

05:51We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of

05:55us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

05:59We had just released our finest creation the Macintosh

06:03a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

06:06And then I got fired.

06:09How can you get fired from a company you started?

06:12Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought

06:15was very talented to run the company with me,

06:18and for the first year or so things went well.

06:20But then our visions of the future began

06:22to diverge and eventually we had a falling out.

06:25When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.

06:29So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.

06:32What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone,

06:35and it was devastating.

06:38I really didn't know what to do for a few months.

06:41I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs

06:43down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.

06:47I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce

06:50and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.

06:54I was a very public failure,

06:55and I even thought about running away from the valley.

06:58But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did.

07:03The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.

07:07I had been rejected, but I was still in love.

07:12And so I decided to start over.

07:14I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from

07:17Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

07:21The heaviness of being successful was

07:23replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again,

07:26less sure about everything.

07:27It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

07:31During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT,

07:34another company named Pixar,

07:35and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.

07:39Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature

07:42film, Toy Story,

07:44and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

07:49In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT,

07:53I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at

07:56NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance.

07:59And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

08:03I'm pretty sure none of this would

08:05have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple.

08:08It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

08:12Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

08:18I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved

08:21what I did. You've got to find what you love.

08:24And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

08:28Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,

08:30and the only way to be truly satisfied

08:32is to do what you believe is great work.

08:35And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

08:38If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

08:43As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

08:47And, like any great relationship,

08:49it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

08:52So keep looking. Don't settle.

09:05My third story is about death.

09:09When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like:

09:12"If you live each day as if it was your last,

09:15someday you'll most certainly be right."

09:20It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years,

09:25I have looked in the mirror every morning

09:27and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life,

09:30would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

09:34And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row,

09:37I know I need to change something.

09:40Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important

09:43tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

09:47Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride,

09:52all fear of embarrassment or failure -

09:54these things just fall away in the face of death,

09:58leaving only what is truly important.

10:00Remembering that you are going to die is the best

10:03way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

10:08You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

10:13About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer.

10:16I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning,

10:20and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.

10:23I didn't even know what a pancreas was.

10:26The doctors told me this was almost

10:28certainly a type of cancer that is incurable,

10:30and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.

10:35My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order,

10:40which is doctor's code for prepare to die.

10:42It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought

10:47you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months.

10:51It means to make sure everything is buttoned

10:53up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family.

10:56It means to say your goodbyes.

11:01I lived with that diagnosis all day.

11:04Later that evening I had a biopsy,

11:06where they stuck an endoscope down my throat,

11:08through my stomach and into my intestines,

11:11put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.

11:14I was sedated, but my wife, who was there,

11:18told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope

11:21the doctors started crying because it turned out to be

11:24a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.

11:29I had the surgery and thankfully I'm fine now.

11:40This was the closest I've been to facing death,

11:43and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades.

11:46Having lived through it,

11:48I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when

11:51death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

11:55No one wants to die.

11:58Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

12:02And yet death is the destination we all share.

12:06No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be,

12:10because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.

12:15It is Life's change agent.

12:16It clears out the old to make way for the new.

12:19Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now,

12:24you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.

12:28Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

12:32Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

12:38Don't be trapped by dogma which is living

12:40with the results of other people's thinking.

12:42Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner

12:46voice. And most important,

12:48have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

12:51They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

12:55Everything else is secondary.

13:09When I was young,

13:11there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog,

13:15which was one of the bibles of my generation.

13:18It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here

13:21in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.

13:25This was in the late 1960's,

13:27before personal computers and desktop publishing,

13:30so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras.

13:34It was sort of like Google in paperback form,

13:3635 years before Google came along: it was idealistic,

13:41overflowing with neat tools, and great notions.

13:45Stewart and his team put out several

13:47issues of The Whole Earth Catalog,

13:48and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.

13:53It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.

13:58On the back cover of their final issue

14:00was a photograph of an early morning country road,

14:04the kind you might find yourself

14:05hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.

14:08Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

14:13It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry.

14:18Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself.

14:23And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

14:28Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

14:31Thank you all very much.

14:57The preceding program is copyrighted by Stanford University.

15:01Please visit us at stanford.edu