Speech by Steve Jobs to 2005 Stanford University Alumni:
It is a great honor for me to be among you today, graduates of one of the best universities in the world. I myself have not received higher education. To tell the truth, today's event was for me the moment when I was most close to the end of the university. Today I will tell you three stories from my life. That’s all. Just three stories.
The first is about points and lines between them.
I left Reed College (Reed College), having studied for only half a year, but then I spent another 18 months hanging around the university as a former student, until I decided to leave completely. Why did I leave school then?
It all started before I was born. My biological mother was a young unmarried graduate student who decided to give me up for adoption. She firmly knew that graduates of the college, people with higher education, must adopt me, and everything was prepared so that right after I was born I would be admitted to the family of one lawyer. However, when I was born, the couple suddenly realized that she wanted a girl. Therefore, in the house of my future parents, who also stood in line for adoption, in the middle of the night the bell rang, and the voice of an employee from the adoption agency asked: “We have an unforeseen boy. Do you want to adopt him? `-` Of course, 'they answered. But my biological mother, having learned that my adoptive mother had not graduated from the university, and my adoptive father did not even have a diploma of graduation from school, refused to sign the adoption papers. Only a few months later she made concessions, forcing my parents to make a promise that as soon as I finish school, they will send me to study further.
So, after 17 years I went to college. But I inadvertently chose an educational institution whose education cost almost as much as at Stanford (Stanford University), so all the savings of my hard-working parents went to pay for their studies. After studying for 6 months, I still did not see any benefit in this. I decided to quit college in the hope that everything would work out somehow. Then I was very scared, but now I understand that this was one of the best decisions in my life. From the moment I officially stopped being a student, I could no longer take courses that were unattractive to me and attend only those classes that seemed really interesting to me.
Death is the best invention of life.
')
Now, when I remember that time, it looks not at all romantic. I did not have a dorm room, so I had to sleep on the floor with friends. I handed over 5 cents of cola bottles to buy food, and I walked 7 miles every Sunday to eat normally in the Krishnaite temple at least once a week. And yet I liked it. Much of what I, thanks to my curiosity and intuition, learned during my ʻex-student ', later proved to be invaluable to me. Here is one example. At that time, the best calligraphy training course was taught at Reed College. Every ad on campus, every sticker on the desk drawer was handwritten in beautiful handwriting. I decided to study calligraphy to write as well as the people who made all these wonderful signs. I learned all about Serif and Sans Serif fonts, about art of varying the distance between different letter combinations and what exactly makes typography a work of art. All this was so fascinating and filled with such aesthetic subtlety that I consider the study of calligraphy to be one of the most remarkable events in my life.
It is impossible to connect time points in advance, to see the connection between them is possible, just looking back. You just have to believe that the dots will somehow connect in the future.
Nothing of what I learned then, it would seem, could not have any practical consequences for my life. But 10 years later, when we created the first mac computer, it all came in handy for me. We have put all the wisdom I have learned into our car. It was the first computer that owned calligraphy. If I had not stumbled upon that course in college, `maka` would never have had many different types of fonts and proportional scaling. And since Windows simply replicates `mac 'in this respect, it is possible that none of this would be on any personal computer.
So, you can not connect the time points in advance, to see the connection between them is possible only by looking back. You just have to believe that the dots somehow connect in the future.
The second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky: I found what I love quite early. Woz (Steve Wozniak) and I created an Apple company in my parents' garage when I was 20 years old. We worked a lot, and in 10 years Apple grew to the size of a corporation with a turnover of $ 2 billion and a staff of 4 thousand employees. We have just released our most perfect piece - the mac computer, I turned 30 years old. And then ... I was fired. How can you be fired from a company that he founded? When Apple began to grow, we hired a man whom I considered talented enough to lead the company with me, and in the first year things went very well. But then our vision of the future became increasingly different, and, in the end, we completely diverged. When there was a gap between us, the board of directors took his side. So, in my 30 years I was outside the doors of the company I founded.
Although at that moment I did not understand this, but the dismissal from Apple was the best event that could happen to me then. The severity of success was replaced by the ease of a new beginning - the ease of a person who is not sure of anything. This opened for me one of the most creative periods in my life.
Over the next 5 years, I founded a new company - Next, then another - Pixar, and loved an amazing woman who became my wife. Paradoxically, Apple bought Next, and I returned to Apple, and the technologies we created in Next formed the basis for our company's renaissance. In addition, Lauren and I have had a wonderful family all these years.
I'm just sure that nothing of this happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple then. The medicine was bitter, but I think the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. In such moments, do not lose faith! I am convinced that the only thing that allowed me to move on was love for what I was doing. You also need to find something that you can love. Keep searching until you find it. Do not stop. The dismissal from Apple was the best event that could have happened to me then.
My third story is about death.
The memory that I will die soon is one of the most important tools that I used when making major decisions of my life. After all, almost everything - external expectations, pride, fear of resentment or fear of defeat - disappears in the face of death, and only that which is truly important remains. Remembering that I will die is the best way for me to escape from thinking that you can lose something. You seem to be standing without clothes. Nothing prevents you from trusting your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. X-rays were taken at 7.30 am, and the tumor in the pancreas was clearly visible in the picture. The doctors said that this is almost certainly the type of cancer that is incurable, and I have to live for 3 to 6 months. My doctor advised me to go home and put my affairs in order, which is the code word for doctors instead: `Prepare for death. '
I lived with this diagnosis all day. Later in the evening I had a biopsy. I was under anesthesia, but my wife, who was nearby, then told me that the doctors at the microscope began to cry for joy: it turned out that this is a very rare resectable form of cancer. I had an operation, and now my condition is quite satisfactory.
Then I came closer to death than ever before, and I hope this experience will remain my closest meeting with her for a few more decades. After going through this, I can speak to you about her with a somewhat greater degree of certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept for me.
Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else's life. Do not fall under the power of dogma - this is the same thing as living on someone else’s orders. Do not let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. In some incomprehensible way, they already know who exactly you really want to become. Everything else is much less important.
During my youth there was an amazing book series called `The Whole Earth Catalog` (` Catalog of the Whole Earth`). The volumes included in it became one of the main books for our generation. It was created by a man named Stewart Brand in Menlo Park, not far from here. It was at the end of the 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing systems, so the books were made with the help of typewriters, scissors and `Polaroid` cameras.
Stewart and his team made several releases of the Catalog, and when they felt that the series had exhausted itself, the final issue was released. It happened in the mid-70s, and I was as old as you are now. On the cover of the book was a photograph of the morning country road, and under it the words: `Stay hungry. Stay stupid. This was their farewell message. Stay hungry. Stay stupid. I always wanted this for myself. And now, when you graduate from a university to start over, I wish you:
Be hungry. Be reckless.
Thank you very much.
Original on YouTube
The first is about points and lines between them.
I left Reed College (Reed College), having studied for only half a year, but then I spent another 18 months hanging around the university as a former student, until I decided to leave completely. Why did I leave school then?
It all started before I was born. My biological mother was a young unmarried graduate student who decided to give me up for adoption. She firmly knew that graduates of the college, people with higher education, must adopt me, and everything was prepared so that right after I was born I would be admitted to the family of one lawyer. However, when I was born, the couple suddenly realized that she wanted a girl. Therefore, in the house of my future parents, who also stood in line for adoption, in the middle of the night the bell rang, and the voice of an employee from the adoption agency asked: “We have an unforeseen boy. Do you want to adopt him? `-` Of course, 'they answered. But my biological mother, having learned that my adoptive mother had not graduated from the university, and my adoptive father did not even have a diploma of graduation from school, refused to sign the adoption papers. Only a few months later she made concessions, forcing my parents to make a promise that as soon as I finish school, they will send me to study further.
So, after 17 years I went to college. But I inadvertently chose an educational institution whose education cost almost as much as at Stanford (Stanford University), so all the savings of my hard-working parents went to pay for their studies. After studying for 6 months, I still did not see any benefit in this. I decided to quit college in the hope that everything would work out somehow. Then I was very scared, but now I understand that this was one of the best decisions in my life. From the moment I officially stopped being a student, I could no longer take courses that were unattractive to me and attend only those classes that seemed really interesting to me.
Death is the best invention of life.
')
Now, when I remember that time, it looks not at all romantic. I did not have a dorm room, so I had to sleep on the floor with friends. I handed over 5 cents of cola bottles to buy food, and I walked 7 miles every Sunday to eat normally in the Krishnaite temple at least once a week. And yet I liked it. Much of what I, thanks to my curiosity and intuition, learned during my ʻex-student ', later proved to be invaluable to me. Here is one example. At that time, the best calligraphy training course was taught at Reed College. Every ad on campus, every sticker on the desk drawer was handwritten in beautiful handwriting. I decided to study calligraphy to write as well as the people who made all these wonderful signs. I learned all about Serif and Sans Serif fonts, about art of varying the distance between different letter combinations and what exactly makes typography a work of art. All this was so fascinating and filled with such aesthetic subtlety that I consider the study of calligraphy to be one of the most remarkable events in my life.
It is impossible to connect time points in advance, to see the connection between them is possible, just looking back. You just have to believe that the dots will somehow connect in the future.
Nothing of what I learned then, it would seem, could not have any practical consequences for my life. But 10 years later, when we created the first mac computer, it all came in handy for me. We have put all the wisdom I have learned into our car. It was the first computer that owned calligraphy. If I had not stumbled upon that course in college, `maka` would never have had many different types of fonts and proportional scaling. And since Windows simply replicates `mac 'in this respect, it is possible that none of this would be on any personal computer.
So, you can not connect the time points in advance, to see the connection between them is possible only by looking back. You just have to believe that the dots somehow connect in the future.
The second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky: I found what I love quite early. Woz (Steve Wozniak) and I created an Apple company in my parents' garage when I was 20 years old. We worked a lot, and in 10 years Apple grew to the size of a corporation with a turnover of $ 2 billion and a staff of 4 thousand employees. We have just released our most perfect piece - the mac computer, I turned 30 years old. And then ... I was fired. How can you be fired from a company that he founded? When Apple began to grow, we hired a man whom I considered talented enough to lead the company with me, and in the first year things went very well. But then our vision of the future became increasingly different, and, in the end, we completely diverged. When there was a gap between us, the board of directors took his side. So, in my 30 years I was outside the doors of the company I founded.
Although at that moment I did not understand this, but the dismissal from Apple was the best event that could happen to me then. The severity of success was replaced by the ease of a new beginning - the ease of a person who is not sure of anything. This opened for me one of the most creative periods in my life.
Over the next 5 years, I founded a new company - Next, then another - Pixar, and loved an amazing woman who became my wife. Paradoxically, Apple bought Next, and I returned to Apple, and the technologies we created in Next formed the basis for our company's renaissance. In addition, Lauren and I have had a wonderful family all these years.
I'm just sure that nothing of this happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple then. The medicine was bitter, but I think the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. In such moments, do not lose faith! I am convinced that the only thing that allowed me to move on was love for what I was doing. You also need to find something that you can love. Keep searching until you find it. Do not stop. The dismissal from Apple was the best event that could have happened to me then.
My third story is about death.
The memory that I will die soon is one of the most important tools that I used when making major decisions of my life. After all, almost everything - external expectations, pride, fear of resentment or fear of defeat - disappears in the face of death, and only that which is truly important remains. Remembering that I will die is the best way for me to escape from thinking that you can lose something. You seem to be standing without clothes. Nothing prevents you from trusting your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. X-rays were taken at 7.30 am, and the tumor in the pancreas was clearly visible in the picture. The doctors said that this is almost certainly the type of cancer that is incurable, and I have to live for 3 to 6 months. My doctor advised me to go home and put my affairs in order, which is the code word for doctors instead: `Prepare for death. '
I lived with this diagnosis all day. Later in the evening I had a biopsy. I was under anesthesia, but my wife, who was nearby, then told me that the doctors at the microscope began to cry for joy: it turned out that this is a very rare resectable form of cancer. I had an operation, and now my condition is quite satisfactory.
Then I came closer to death than ever before, and I hope this experience will remain my closest meeting with her for a few more decades. After going through this, I can speak to you about her with a somewhat greater degree of certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept for me.
Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else's life. Do not fall under the power of dogma - this is the same thing as living on someone else’s orders. Do not let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. In some incomprehensible way, they already know who exactly you really want to become. Everything else is much less important.
During my youth there was an amazing book series called `The Whole Earth Catalog` (` Catalog of the Whole Earth`). The volumes included in it became one of the main books for our generation. It was created by a man named Stewart Brand in Menlo Park, not far from here. It was at the end of the 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing systems, so the books were made with the help of typewriters, scissors and `Polaroid` cameras.
Stewart and his team made several releases of the Catalog, and when they felt that the series had exhausted itself, the final issue was released. It happened in the mid-70s, and I was as old as you are now. On the cover of the book was a photograph of the morning country road, and under it the words: `Stay hungry. Stay stupid. This was their farewell message. Stay hungry. Stay stupid. I always wanted this for myself. And now, when you graduate from a university to start over, I wish you:
Be hungry. Be reckless.
Thank you very much.
Original on YouTube
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/28652/
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