Steve·jobs的演讲稿中英文

Transcript of Jobs' commencement speech:

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and 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 six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen 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 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've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later 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 go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naely 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 of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all 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 far more 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 five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven 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 sans-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 that calligraphy class and personals 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 10 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--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well- worn path, and that will make all the difference.

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 twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, 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, and so at thirty, 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'd 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 get

ting 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 in 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 world's 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 and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene 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's going to hit 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 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, and 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. 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 thing 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 doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that 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 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 doctor 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, thankfully, I am 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's 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's 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, 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 Catalogue, 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 Sixties, 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 thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies 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 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 gradua

te to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.




很荣幸今天能和你们一起参加毕业典礼，斯坦福大学是世界上最好的大学之一。我从来没有从大学中毕业。说实话，今天也许是我生命中离大学毕业最近的一天了。我想向你们讲述我生活中的三个故事。没什么大不了的，只是三个故事而已。

第一个故事是关于如何把生命中的点点滴滴串连起来

我在里德大学读了六个月之后就退学了, 但是作为旁听生还继续在学校听课，十八个月后才真正离开学校。我为什么要退学呢？?
故事要从我出生前讲起。我的亲生母亲是一个年轻的未婚大学毕业生。她决定让别人收养我, 但收养人一定要大学毕业。在我出生的时候，她已经安排好了一切，使我能被一对律师夫妇收养。但是她没有料到, 当我出生之后, 这对律师夫妇突然改变决定，坚持想要一个女孩。于是我的养父母（他们当时在我亲生父母的收养人候选名单上）突然在半夜接到了一个电话:“我们这儿突然有一个男婴可以收养，你们想要他吗？”他们回答道:“当然！”但是我亲生母亲随后发现，我的养母从来没有上过大学，我的养父甚至高中没有毕业。她拒绝签署正式的收养文件。过了几个月, 我的养父母答应她一定要让我上大学, 我的生母才签字同意将我交给他们。?
十七年后, 我真的上了大学。但是我很幼稚的选择了一所几乎和你们的斯坦福大学一样学费昂贵的学校。我的父母属于工薪阶层，他们几乎把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上。六个月后, 我看不到这样上学的价值所在。我不知道今后将怎样安排我的生活，也不知道大学能怎样帮我找到答案。而现在，我几乎花光了父母一辈子的积蓄。所以我决定退学, 抱着一个信念，一切都会好起来的。我当时确实非常害怕, 但是现在回头看看, 那是我这一生中最好的一个决定。从我做出退学决定的那一刻开始, 我就可以不必去上必修课程，而是去选修那些我更感兴趣的课程了。?
但是这一切并不全是那么浪漫。我没有了宿舍, 只能在朋友房间的地板上睡觉。我靠捡可乐瓶子来填饱肚子，每个瓶子当时可以换5分钱。每个星期天晚上, 我都要走七英里的路程，穿过城市去印度克利须那神庙，只是为了能吃上一个星期唯一一顿好一点的饭。但是我喜欢这样的生活。在好奇心和直觉的引导下, 我跌跌撞撞地前进，学到的很多东西以后被证明非常宝贵。让我给你们举个例子吧：?
里德大学当时开设了也许是全美最好的美术字课程。学校里的每张海报, 每个抽屉上的标签，都用的是漂亮的手

写美术字体。因为我退学了, 不需要按照规定上课, 所以决定去上这个课，学学怎样写出漂亮的美术字。我学到了san serif和serif字体, 学会了怎样调整不同字母组合的间距, 认识到了怎样才能创造出最漂亮的印刷字体。这种艺术美丽、精妙而又富有历史渊源，是科学永远捕捉不到的，我发现它实在太美妙了。?
当时这些东西看起来在我的生命中不会有一点儿用途。但是十年后, 当我们设计第一台苹果电脑的时候, 我想起了这些知识，把当时学的那些技巧都设计进了苹果电脑中。那是第一台使用了漂亮的印刷字体的电脑。如果我当时没有走进美术字课堂, 苹果电脑就不会有这么丰富多样的字体，以及赏心悦目的字体间距了；由于其它个人电脑纷纷模仿苹果机的设计，那么很有可能现在所有的个人电脑都不会有美丽的字体。而如果我没有退学, 就不会有机会学习美术字设计。当然，还在念大学的那个时候，我不可能看到未来，把这些点点滴滴串连起来, 但是十年后回顾往事时，一切就豁然开朗了。?
再次想说明的是, 你在向前展望的时候不可能将这些点点滴滴连起来；只有在回顾过去时才能理解它们。所以你必须要有信心，这些片断在你的未来一定会串连起来。你必须要相信某种东西：直觉、命运、生活、或是因缘等等。这种处事方式从来没有令我失望过, 它一次又一次地改变了我的命运。

我的第二个故事是关于爱和损失的

我非常幸运, 很早就找到了自己钟爱的事业。二十岁的时候，沃慈和我在我父母的车库里创建了苹果公司。经过十年的努力奋斗, 苹果公司从车库中的两个穷光蛋发展成为拥有二十亿资产，雇员超过四千人的大公司。在公司成立的第九年, 我们刚刚发布了最好的苹果机产品，我也刚满三十岁。然而就在那一年, 我被炒了鱿鱼。你怎么可能被你自己创建的公司炒了鱿鱼呢? 在公司快速成长的时候，我们雇用了一个很有天分的家伙和我一起管理公司。最初的几年, 公司运转的很好。但是后来我们在公司未来发展方向上发生了分歧, 最终产生了争执，而董事会选择了站在他的一边。于是而立之年, 我在众目睽睽之下被迫离开了自己创建的公司。我的事业，我的生命的全部支柱，毁于一旦，这真是毁灭性的打击。?
最初的几个月里，我真的不知道该做些什么。我感觉自己令创业的先辈们失望了，我 没能接住他们传递下的接力棒。我和大卫 . 派克以及鲍勃 . 波易斯见面，试图为把事情搞得这么糟向他们道歉。我的失败倍受公众关注，尽人皆知，我甚至想到过离开硅谷。但是渐渐地，我看现了曙光: 我仍

然喜爱我从事的事业，苹果公司发生的事情丝毫没有改变我的兴趣。我被驱逐了, 但是内心依然充满爱，于是我决定从头再来。?
当时我没有意识到, 但是事后证明, 从苹果公司被炒是我这辈子遇到的最好的事情。因为，作为一个成功者的沉重感被作为一个创业者的轻松感所代替: 对任何事情都不那么特别确定，这种感觉让我自由地进入了生命中最有创造力的阶段。
在接下来的五年里, 我创立了一个名叫耐克斯特（NeXT) 的公司, 还有一个叫皮克斯（Pixar)的公司, 爱上了一个非常出色的女人，她最终成为了我的妻子。皮克斯公司后来制作了世界上第一部完全用电脑制作的动画电影《玩具总动员》，并成为当今世界上最成功的电脑动画工作室。斗转星移，在后来发生的事件中, 苹果公司收购了耐克斯特公司, 我又回到了苹果公司。而我们在耐克斯特公司开发的技术在苹果公司的复兴中发挥了关键作用。洛琳和我同时建立了一个幸福的家庭。?
我可以非常肯定, 如果我不被苹果公司开除的话, 这些事一件也不会发生。这个良药的味道实在太苦了, 但是我想病人需要这剂药。有时候, 生活会拿起一块砖头向你的脑袋上猛拍一下，但是不要失去信心。我很清楚，唯一使我一直坚持下去的是我对所做事情的热爱。你必须找到自己钟爱的东西：对于爱人是这样, 对于工作也是如此。你的工作将会占据生活中很大的一部分。只有相信自己所做的工作很伟大, 你才能真正得到满足。如果你现在还没有找到, 继续找，不要凑合。只要全心全意的去寻找, 当你遇见它的时候自然会知道。正如所有真诚的关系, 随着岁月的流逝这份感情只会越来越亲密。继续寻找你的爱，直到你找到它为止，不要停步！

我的第三个故事是关于死亡的

十七岁那年, 我读到了一句名言:“如果你把每一天都当作生命中的最后一天去过的话，那么总有一天你会发现自己是对的。”这句话给我留下了深刻的印象。从那时开始, 在过去的三十三年中, 我每天早晨都会对着镜子问自己:“如果今天是你生命中的最后一天, 你会不会还去做你现在想做的事情呢？”如果连续多日我给出的答案都是“不”, 我就知道自己需要做出改变了。?
“记住你即将死去”是我一生中掌握的最有效的工具，它帮我做出了生命中最重大的 选择。几乎所有的事情, 别人的期待、骄傲、害怕出丑、畏惧失败, 这些在死亡面前都会消失，剩下的才是真正重要的东西。人人都要面对死亡，记住这点你就不会在意得失了。你本来就赤身裸体，一无所有。没有理由不去追随自己的梦想。?

大约一年前, 我被诊断出患有癌症。早晨七点半做的检查清楚地显示出我的胰腺上有一个肿瘤。我当时连胰腺是什么东西都不知道。医生告诉我他们基本可以肯定这类癌症无药可治, 我还有三到六个月的时间活在这个世界上。我的医生建议我回家, 安排好一切事务, 这其实是医生让病人为死亡做准备的代码。它意味着要设法把未来十年中想对孩子说的话在几个月里说完；意味着把每件事情都安顿好, 让家人能尽可能轻松的生活；意味着你就要说“再见了”。?
我和那个诊断书一起度过了一天。当天傍晚，医生又给我作了一个活切片检查，他们将一个内窥镜从我的喉咙伸进去, 通过胃, 进入肠子, 然后用一根针在我的胰腺肿瘤上取了几个细胞。我当时处于麻醉状态，但我的妻子目睹了全过程。她后来告诉我，当医生在显微镜下观察这些细胞的时候他们开始尖叫, 因为这些细胞显示，我的病竟然是一种非常罕见的可以用手术治愈的胰腺癌症。我接收了手术, 现在痊愈了。?
那是我最接近死亡的时候, 我希望以后的几十年中它也是最接近的一次。从死亡线上活转了过来, 死亡对我来说，不再仅仅是个有用的理论概念，我现在可以更肯定地对你们说：?
没有人愿意死, 即使人们想上天堂, 也不会为了去那里而选择死亡。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，事实上也应该如此。因为死亡可能是生命中唯一的最佳创造。它是生命的催化剂，将旧的清除以便让路给新人。你们现在是新人, 但是在不久的将来, 你们也会逐渐衰老，被替换掉。很抱歉这个说法很有戏剧性, 但它十分真实。?
你们的时间很有限, 不要把它浪费在重复别人的生活上。不要被教条所束缚, 那意味着你在用别人的思考结果来指导自己的生活。不要让其他人喧嚣的观点掩盖你自己内心的声音。最重要的是, 要有勇气去听从你的直觉和心灵的引导。在某种程度上，它们已经知道你想成为什么样的人。其他所有的事情都是次要的。
当我年轻的时候, 有一本叫做“全地球目录”的刊物非常棒，被我们那一代人奉为知识圣经。它是一个叫司徒尔特. 布兰特的家伙在离这里不远的曼楼公园写的, 他给这本刊物注入了诗意，使它充满活力。六十年代后期, 个人电脑和桌面排版都还没有诞生，所以整本刊物全部是靠打字机、剪刀，还有宝丽莱立刻成像相机做成的。它有点像软皮书形式的谷歌, 在谷歌出现的三十五年前，这本刊物充满了理想主义, 书中处处是灵巧便利的工具和出色的想法。
司徒尔特和他的伙伴出版了好几期“全地球目录”,

当刊物完成了自己的使命的时候, 他们制作了最后一期。那是在七十年代中期, 当时我的年纪和你们现在相仿。在这最后一期的封底上有一张清晨乡村公路的照片，如果你有冒险精神去背包旅行，在清晨搭便车的话，可能会发现自己就站在这样一条乡村公路上。照片下面有一句话：“好学若饥、谦卑若愚。”这是他们的停刊告别语。“好学若饥、谦卑若愚。” 我总是希望自己能够这样做。此刻，你们即将毕业，开始新的旅程, 我也希望你们能这样做：

好学若饥、谦卑若愚。（Stay hungry, stay foolish.)

谢谢你们的聆听。