steve jobs speech at standford university

8/3/2019 Steve Jobs Speech at Standford University

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This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on

June 12, 2005.

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 verystrongly 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


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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 yearslater, 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 inmy 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 bestthing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful


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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 featurefilm, 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 impressionon 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 trapof 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


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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. Iwas 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 toget 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 mostimportant, 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 ofThe 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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9 things you didnt know about the life of

Steve JobsFor all of his years in the spotlight at the helm ofApple, Steve Jobs in many ways remains aninscrutable figure even in his death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics abouthis personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer

a disease that ultimatelyclaimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.

While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the publicfascination with his private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond theMac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, morenuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo

that we remember him as today.

1. Early life and childhood

Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birthand reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. Hisadoptive father a term that Jobs openly objected to was a machinist for a laser companyand his mother worked as an accountant.

Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged parents. His birth mother, JoanneSimpson, was a graduate student at the time and later a speech pathologist; his biologicalfather, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 andreportedly now serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs reconnectedwith Simpson in later years, he and his biological fatherremained estranged.

2. College dropout

The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never graduated fromcollege, in fact, he didn't even get close. After graduating from high school in Cupertino,California a town now synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple's headquarters Jobsenrolled in Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in Portland,Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to the financial burden the private

school's steep tuition placed on his parents.

In his famous 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time atReed: "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 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk theseven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishnatemple."

3. Fibbed to his Apple co-founder about a job at Atari

Jobs is well known for his innovations in personal computing, mobile tech, and software, buthe also helped create one of the best known video games of all-time. In 1975, Jobs was tapped

by Atari to work on thePong-like gameBreakout.
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He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the possibility of an extra$100 for each chip eliminated from the game's final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak(later one of Apple's other founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed towhittle the prototype's design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus but Jobskept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend only $375, according to

Wozniak's own autobiography.

4. The wife he leaves behind

Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the public eye. Thinking back onhis legacy conjures images of him commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneckand jeans, and those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs wasraising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who attended the University ofPennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business school and later received her MBA at Stanford,where she first met her future husband.

For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs

actually skipped a meetingto take Laurene on their first date: "I was in the parking lot withthe key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on earth, would I ratherspend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her ifshe'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together eversince."

In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park,and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a Zen Buddhist monk.

5. His sister is a famous author

Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of hisbirth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author ofAnywhere But Here a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a filmstarring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.

After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told aNewYork Times interviewer: "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call herand talk to her every couple of days.''Anywhere But Here is dedicated to "my brother Steve."

6. Celebrity romances

In The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography, a friend from Reed revealsthat Jobs had a brief fling with folk singer Joan Baez. Baez confirmed the the two were close"briefly," though her romantic connection with Bob Dylan is much better known (Dylan wasthe Apple icon's favorite musician). The biography also notes that Jobs went out with actressDiane Keaton briefly.

7. His first daughter

When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived adaughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam inthe tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedlydenied paternity for sometime, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three

more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his
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first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazinewriter.

8. Alternative lifestyle

In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he andMicrosoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off toan ashram when he was younger."

The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who firstsynthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug'stherapeutic use.

In abook interview, Jobs called his experience with the drug "one of the two or three mostimportant things I have done in my life." As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may havecontributed to the "think different" approach that still puts Apple's designs a head above the

competition.

Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking,alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned to the U.S. as a Zen Buddhist.

Jobs was also a pescetarian who didn't consume most animal products, and didn't eat meatother than fish. A strong believer in Eastern medicine, he sought to treat his own cancerthrough alternative approaches and specialized diets before reluctantly seeking his firstsurgery for a cancerous tumor in 2004.

9. His fortune

As the CEO of theworld's most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salaryof just $1. While the gesture isn't unheard of in the corporate world Google's Larry Page,Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually Jobs haskept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple's lead executive. Of his salary,Jobsjoked in 2007: "I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based onmy performance."

In early 2011, Jobs owned 5.5 million shares of Apple. After his death, Apple shares werevalued at $377.64 a roughly 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years that shows

no signs of slowing down.

He may only have taken in a single dollar per year, but Jobs leaves behind a vast fortune. Thelargest chunk of that wealth is the roughly $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006.In 2011, with an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion, he was the 110th richest person in theworld, according toForbes. If Jobs hadn't sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (beforereturning to the company in 1996), he would be the world's fifth richest individual.

While there's no word yet on plans for his estate, Jobs leaves behind three children from hismarriage to Laurene Jobs (Reed, Erin, and Eve), as well as his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
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steve jobs speech at standford university

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