STANFORD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS by Steve Jobs
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.
Watch
the Video
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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 retuned 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 other's 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.
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This really works! I was having dinner with a chap that said he had mercury poisoning. Since I eat a lot of fish, I was curious. He said the doctor told him to eat a lot of cilantro. I found a cilantro pesto recipe on the internet (see below). I made it and it cured me of my arthritis in my two big toes by the next day. I gave some to my 95 year old mother for her shoulder (sore for months) and it is now better. I gave some to my neighbor Sid and his arthritis in his foot is better. I gave some to my handyman who had to give up his construction business (including welding for 14 yrs) and his arthritic knuckles are pain free now. Amazing? Yes try it (tastes good too).
Cilantro Pesto
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup almonds, cashews, or other nuts
1 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves (and smaller stems)
2 tablespoons lemon juice (a professional chef recommends just one Tbl of lemon juice)
6 tablespoons olive oil
Sea Salt to taste
Blend the cilantro and olive oil in a blender, add other ingredients to make a nice smooth paste, then go ahead and add some nuts and/or seeds: pistachio, cashews, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, you name it. Have fun. Add it to your favorite pasta and serve warm or cold. Remember, cayenne pepper added to anything has a synergistic effect, making all the other ingredients work better. Simple fact.
For more info: http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/detox/cilantro.htm
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