Speech by Steven Jobs to graduates of Stanford University.
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 the agency employee asked: “We have an unforeseen boy. Do you want to adopt him? ”-“ Of course, ”they answered. But my biological mother, having learned that my future adoptive mother had not graduated from the university, and my father did not even have a diploma of graduation from school, refused to sign the papers. Only a few months later she made concessions, as a condition forcing my parents to make a promise after leaving school, be sure to 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 did not understand what to do with my life, and it was absolutely incomprehensible to me how the college would help me figure this out. At the same time I spent the money that my parents have accumulated for their entire life. In the end 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 go to unattractive courses for me and attend only those classes that seemed really interesting to me.
')
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, through my curiosity and intuition, learned during my “ex-studentship,” later proved invaluable to me. Here is one example.
At that time, Reed College was probably the best calligraphy training course in the whole country. Every ad on campus, every sticker on the desk drawer was handwritten in beautiful handwriting. Since I was no longer a student and did not need to go through ordinary subjects, I decided to study calligraphy in order to write as well as the people who made all these beautiful 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.
Nothing of what I learned then, it would seem, could have no practical consequences for me. But 10 years later, when we created the first Macintosh 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, “Mac” would never have had many different types of fonts and proportional scaling. And since Windows simply copies “Macintosh” in this respect, it is possible that none of this would have happened on any personal computer. Of course, I could not draw a line between these two events, to connect these two points on the timeline, when I studied calligraphy in college. However, after some 10 years, this connection became quite obvious to me.
So, you can not connect the time points in advance, to see the connection between them is only possible looking back. You just have to believe that the dots somehow connect in the future. One can only believe - in their abilities, fate, life, karma ... Yes, at least in something. This approach has never let me down, and it is to him that I owe all the main events in my life.
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. When we released our most perfect piece, the Macintosh computer, I turned 30 years old. And then ... I was fired. How can you be fired from the company you founded? Well, it happens. 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 more and more 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.
For several months I just didn’t know what to do. It seemed to me that I had failed the entire previous generation of entrepreneurs, that I had missed the baton given to me. I even met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and apologized for the fact that everything turned out so badly. It was a public defeat, so I even thought to escape from Silicon Valley. But gradually everything began to get better, because I still loved what I was doing. What happened at Apple has not changed this feature of my life. And I decided to start all over again.
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. Pixar developed, created the first ever feature film using computer animation, Toy Story, and is today one of the most successful animation studios in the world. 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. This is equally true for your work and for your loved ones. Work will fill a significant part of your life, and the only way to feel satisfaction is to do what you think is really good work. And the only way to do a good job is to love what you are doing. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Do not stop. As always with regard to our heart, you will know it when you find it. And, like any true love story, it will get better and better over the years. So keep looking until you find it. Do not stop.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read one aphorism, which sounded like this: "If you live every day as if it were your last day, someday you will most likely be right." It made such an impression on me that for the next 33 years I look in the mirror every morning and ask myself: “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am going to do?” And if I answer for many days in a row “ no ”, then I understand: something needs to be changed.
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 - all this disappears in the face of death, and only that which is truly important remains. Remembering that I will die - this is the best way I know of avoiding the thought of losing 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. I did not even know what a pancreas is. The doctors said that it is almost certainly the type of cancer that is incurable, and I have to live from 3 to 6 months. My doctor advised me to go home and put my affairs in order, which doctors have is the code word instead of "prepare for death." This means: “Within a few months, try to tell your children everything that they were going to tell them over the next 10 years.” This means: “Make your family transfer the inevitable as easily as possible.” This means: "It's time to say goodbye."
I lived with this diagnosis all day. Later in the evening I was given a biopsy, during which an endoscope was stretched through my throat, it passed through the stomach into the insides, a needle was inserted into the pancreas, and several cells were removed from the tumor. 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.
No one wants to die. Even people seeking to go to paradise are in no hurry to go there. Yet death awaits us all. No one has escaped her. It should be so, because death is perhaps the best invention of life. It serves for life as the main engine of change. She cleans out all that is old, making way for the new. Now the new is you, but one day, quite soon, you yourself will become old, and you will also have to clear the way. Sorry for the drama, but it is.
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 using typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was something like paper-bound Google, 35 years before the real Google was created. There was a lot of romance and great ideas.
Stewart and his team made several editions of the “Catalog”, and when they felt that the series had exhausted itself, the final edition was published. It happened in the mid-70s, and I was as old as you are now. On the cover of the book was a photo 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 the university to start everything from the beginning, I wish you:
Stay hungry. Stay stupid.
Thank you very much.
PS - I was very surprised when I did not find this wonderful performance on Habré. So many people have not read it yet.
The translation is taken from here .
Original performance here .
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 the agency employee asked: “We have an unforeseen boy. Do you want to adopt him? ”-“ Of course, ”they answered. But my biological mother, having learned that my future adoptive mother had not graduated from the university, and my father did not even have a diploma of graduation from school, refused to sign the papers. Only a few months later she made concessions, as a condition forcing my parents to make a promise after leaving school, be sure to 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 did not understand what to do with my life, and it was absolutely incomprehensible to me how the college would help me figure this out. At the same time I spent the money that my parents have accumulated for their entire life. In the end 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 go to unattractive courses for me and attend only those classes that seemed really interesting to me.
')
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, through my curiosity and intuition, learned during my “ex-studentship,” later proved invaluable to me. Here is one example.
At that time, Reed College was probably the best calligraphy training course in the whole country. Every ad on campus, every sticker on the desk drawer was handwritten in beautiful handwriting. Since I was no longer a student and did not need to go through ordinary subjects, I decided to study calligraphy in order to write as well as the people who made all these beautiful 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.
Nothing of what I learned then, it would seem, could have no practical consequences for me. But 10 years later, when we created the first Macintosh 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, “Mac” would never have had many different types of fonts and proportional scaling. And since Windows simply copies “Macintosh” in this respect, it is possible that none of this would have happened on any personal computer. Of course, I could not draw a line between these two events, to connect these two points on the timeline, when I studied calligraphy in college. However, after some 10 years, this connection became quite obvious to me.
So, you can not connect the time points in advance, to see the connection between them is only possible looking back. You just have to believe that the dots somehow connect in the future. One can only believe - in their abilities, fate, life, karma ... Yes, at least in something. This approach has never let me down, and it is to him that I owe all the main events in my life.
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. When we released our most perfect piece, the Macintosh computer, I turned 30 years old. And then ... I was fired. How can you be fired from the company you founded? Well, it happens. 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 more and more 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.
For several months I just didn’t know what to do. It seemed to me that I had failed the entire previous generation of entrepreneurs, that I had missed the baton given to me. I even met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and apologized for the fact that everything turned out so badly. It was a public defeat, so I even thought to escape from Silicon Valley. But gradually everything began to get better, because I still loved what I was doing. What happened at Apple has not changed this feature of my life. And I decided to start all over again.
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. Pixar developed, created the first ever feature film using computer animation, Toy Story, and is today one of the most successful animation studios in the world. 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. This is equally true for your work and for your loved ones. Work will fill a significant part of your life, and the only way to feel satisfaction is to do what you think is really good work. And the only way to do a good job is to love what you are doing. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Do not stop. As always with regard to our heart, you will know it when you find it. And, like any true love story, it will get better and better over the years. So keep looking until you find it. Do not stop.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read one aphorism, which sounded like this: "If you live every day as if it were your last day, someday you will most likely be right." It made such an impression on me that for the next 33 years I look in the mirror every morning and ask myself: “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am going to do?” And if I answer for many days in a row “ no ”, then I understand: something needs to be changed.
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 - all this disappears in the face of death, and only that which is truly important remains. Remembering that I will die - this is the best way I know of avoiding the thought of losing 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. I did not even know what a pancreas is. The doctors said that it is almost certainly the type of cancer that is incurable, and I have to live from 3 to 6 months. My doctor advised me to go home and put my affairs in order, which doctors have is the code word instead of "prepare for death." This means: “Within a few months, try to tell your children everything that they were going to tell them over the next 10 years.” This means: “Make your family transfer the inevitable as easily as possible.” This means: "It's time to say goodbye."
I lived with this diagnosis all day. Later in the evening I was given a biopsy, during which an endoscope was stretched through my throat, it passed through the stomach into the insides, a needle was inserted into the pancreas, and several cells were removed from the tumor. 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.
No one wants to die. Even people seeking to go to paradise are in no hurry to go there. Yet death awaits us all. No one has escaped her. It should be so, because death is perhaps the best invention of life. It serves for life as the main engine of change. She cleans out all that is old, making way for the new. Now the new is you, but one day, quite soon, you yourself will become old, and you will also have to clear the way. Sorry for the drama, but it is.
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 using typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was something like paper-bound Google, 35 years before the real Google was created. There was a lot of romance and great ideas.
Stewart and his team made several editions of the “Catalog”, and when they felt that the series had exhausted itself, the final edition was published. It happened in the mid-70s, and I was as old as you are now. On the cover of the book was a photo 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 the university to start everything from the beginning, I wish you:
Stay hungry. Stay stupid.
Thank you very much.
PS - I was very surprised when I did not find this wonderful performance on Habré. So many people have not read it yet.
The translation is taken from here .
Original performance here .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/31539/
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