乔布斯斯坦福大学演讲

　　

　　

　　

中文版

　　

　　

　　今天很荣幸和大家一起参加毕业典礼。斯坦福大学是世界上最好的大学之一。我没有从大学毕业。说实话，今天可能是我人生中离大学毕业最近的一天。今天我想告诉你我生活中的三个故事。没什么大不了的，就是三个故事而已。 　　

　　

　　第一个故事是关于如何将生活中的点点滴滴串联起来。 　　

　　

　　六个月后我从里德学院退学，但是十八个月后——在我真正做出退学决定之前，我经常去学校。我为什么要退学？ 　　

　　

　　故事从我出生的时候开始。我的生母是一个年轻的未婚大学毕业生。她决定让别人收养我，她真的希望我被大学毕业生收养。但我的生母后来发现，我的养母没上过大学，我的养父连高中都没上过。她拒绝签署收养合同。才过了几个月，养父母就答应她，我一定要上大学，然后她就同意了。 　　

　　

　　十七岁那年，我傻傻的选了一个和你们斯坦福大学差不多贵的学校。我爸妈还在蓝领阶层，几乎把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上。六个月后，我已经看不到它的价值了。但在这里，我几乎花光了父母所有的积蓄。所以我决定退学。不可否认我当时真的很害怕，但现在回想起来，那真的是我这辈子最好的决定。 　　

　　

　　但也没那么浪漫。我丢了宿舍，只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。我去捡5分钱的可乐瓶只是为了填饱肚子。星期天晚上，我不得不步行7英里穿越整个城市，只为了吃一顿饭――这是本周唯一一顿更好的饭。但是我喜欢这个。我跟着直觉和好奇心走，遇到的很多东西都被证明是无价的。让我给你举个例子： 　　

　　

　　里德学院提供了当时美国最好的书法课程。这所大学每个抽屉里的每张海报和标签上都写满了漂亮的书法。我决定学习如何写漂亮的艺术字。 　　

　　

　　当时好像这些东西都没有在我生活中实际应用的可能。但十年后，当我们设计第一台麦金塔电脑时，情况并非如此。我把当时学到的东西都设计到了Mac里。这是第一台使用漂亮印刷字体的电脑。如果当时没有退学，我就不会有机会上这门自己感兴趣的美术书法课，Mac也不会有那么多丰富的字体和赏心悦目的字体间距。那么个人电脑就不会有现在这么奇葩的字体了。当然，大学的时候，不可能把过去的点点滴滴联系起来，但是十年后回过头来看，真的恍然大悟。 　　

　　

　　当你向前看的时候，你无法把这些片段连接起来；你只能在回头看的时候把点点滴滴联系起来。所以你要相信，在你未来的某一天，这些碎片会连在一起。你必须相信一些东西：你的勇气，目标，生活，因果报应。这个过程从来没有让我失望过，只是让我的人生更加独特。 　　

　　

　　我的第二个故事是关于爱和失去。 　　

　　

　　我很幸运，因为小小年纪就找到了自己热爱的东西。史蒂夫沃兹尼亚克和我20岁时在父母的车库里创立了苹果公司。10年后，这家公司已经从那两个车库里的穷光蛋成长为拥有4000多名员工、价值20多亿的大公司。在公司的第九年，我们刚刚发布了最好的产品，就是Macintosh。我也快三十了。那一年，我被解雇了。你怎么会被自己创立的公司解雇呢？当苹果公司发展迅速时，我们雇佣了一个非常有才华的人和我一起管理公司。最初几年，公司经营得很好。但后来我们对未来的看法出现了分歧。发生争吵时，董事会站在他一边。所以在三十岁的时候，我被解雇了。三十岁的时候，我生命中所有的支柱都离我而去。 　　

　　

　　刚开始的几个月，我真的不知道该怎么办。失去了曾经的创业激情，感觉让所有和我一起创业的人都很沮丧。但我渐渐找到了曙光，我依然热爱我所做的事情。在苹果发生的事情并没有改变什么。我被开除了，但我仍然热爱它。所以我决定从头再来。 　　

　　

　　我当时并没有意识到这一点，但事后证明，被苹果解雇是我经历过的最好的事情。因为作为一个成功人士的极乐感觉被作为一个企业家的轻松感觉所取代：我对什么都不特别关注。这让我觉得好自由，进入了人生中最有创造力的阶段。 　　

　　

　　 　　

　　

　　在接下来的五年里，我创办了一家名为NeXT的公司和另一家名为Pixar的公司，然后我认识了一位优雅的女士，她后来成为了我的妻子。皮克斯现在是世界上最成功的电脑制作工作室。经过一系列操作，苹果收购了NeXT，我回到了苹果。我们在NeXT开发的技术在苹果的复兴中发挥了关键作用。我也和劳伦斯建立了一个幸福的家庭。 　　

　　

　　我很确定，如果我没有被苹果解雇，这一切都不会发生。这药太苦了，但我认为病人需要它。有时候，生活会拿起一块砖头，往你头上拍。不要灰心。我知道唯一让我坚持下去的，就是我做的事情让我非常热爱。你需要找到你所热爱的。对工作如此，对爱人也是如此。你的工作会占据你生活的很大一部分。只有当你相信你所做的是一项伟大的工作时，你才能感到安心。如果你还没有 　　

有找到，那么继续找、不要停下来、全心全意的去找，当你找到的时候你就会知道的。就像任何真诚的关系，随着岁月的流逝只会越来越紧密。所以继续找，直到你找到它，不要停下来！

　　

我的第三个故事是关于死亡的。

　　

当我十七岁的时候， 我读到了一句话：“如果你把每一天都当作生命中最后一天去生活的话，那么有一天你会发现自己是正确的。”这句话给我留下了深刻的印象。从那时开始，过了 33年，我在每天早晨都会对着镜子问自己：“如果今天是我生命中的最后一天，你会不会完成你今天想做的事情呢？”当答案连续很多次被给予“不是”的时候，我知道自己需要改变某些事情了。

　　

“记住你即将死去”是我一生中遇到的最重要箴言。它帮我指明了生命中重要的选择。因为几乎所有的事情，包括所有的荣誉、所有的骄傲、所有对难堪和失败的恐惧，这些在死亡面前都会消失。我看到的是留下的真正重要的东西。

　　

你有时候会思考你将会失去某些东西，“记住你即将死去”是我知道的避免这些想法的最好办法。你已经赤身裸体了，你没有理由不去跟随自己的心一起跳动。

　　

大概一年以前，我的一次体检结果清楚的显示在我的胰腺有一个肿瘤。医生告诉我那很可能是一种无法治愈的癌症，我还有三到六个月的时间活在这个世界上。我的医生叫我回家，然后整理好我的一切，那就是医生准备死亡的程序。那意味着你将要把未来十年对你小孩说的话在几个月里面说完；那意味着把每件事情都搞定， 让你的家人会尽可能轻松的生活；那意味着你要说“再见了”。

　　

我整天和那个诊断书一起生活。后来有一天早上医生将一个内窥镜从我的喉咙伸进去，通过我的胃，然后进入我的肠子，用一根针在我的胰腺上的肿瘤上取了几个细胞。我当时很镇静，因为我被注射了镇定剂。但是我的妻子在那里，后来告诉我，当医生在显微镜地下观察这些细胞的时候他们开始尖叫，因为这些细胞最后竟然是一种非常罕见的、可以用手术治愈的胰腺癌细胞。我做了这个手术，现在我痊愈了。

　　

那是我最接近死亡的时候，我还希望这也是以后的几十年最接近的一次。从死亡线上又活了过来，死亡对我来说，只是一个有用但是纯粹是知识上的概念的时候，我可以更肯定一点地对你们说：

　　

没有人愿意死，即使人们想上天堂，人们也不会为了去那里而死。但是死亡是我们每个人共同的终点。从来没有人能够逃脱它，也应该如此。因为死亡就是生命中最好的一个发明。它将旧的清除以便给新的让路。你们现在是新的，但是从现在开始不久以后，你们将会逐渐的变成旧的然后被清除。我很抱歉这很具有戏剧性，但是这十分的真实。

　　

你们的时间很有限，所以不要将他们浪费在重复其他人的生活上。不要被教条束缚，那意味着你和其他人思考的结果一起生活。不要被其他人喧嚣的观点掩盖你真正的内心的声音。还有最重要的是，你要有勇气去听从你直觉和心灵的指示――它们在某种程度上知道你想要成为什么样子，所有其他的事情都是次要的。

　　

当我年轻的时候，有一本叫做“整个地球的目录”振聋发聩的杂志，它是我们那一代人的圣经之一。它是一个叫Stewart Brand的家伙神奇地将这本书带到了这个世界。那是六十年代后期，所以这本书全部是用打字机，、剪刀还有偏光镜制作的。

　　

Stewart和他的伙伴出版了几期的“整个地球的目录”，当它完成了自己使命的时候，他们做出了最后一期的目录。那是在七十年代的中期，你们的时代。在最后一期的封底上是清晨乡村公路的照片（如果你有冒险精神的话，你可以自己找到这条路的），在照片之下有这样一段话：“求知若渴，虚心若愚”这是他们停止了发刊的告别语。“保持饥饿，保持愚蠢。”我总是希望自己能够那样，现在， 在你们即将毕业，开始新的旅程的时候， 我也希望你们能做到这样：求知若渴，虚心若愚。

　　

　　

英文版

New York: 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, it's 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 returned 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 it's 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 others' 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.