Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (with intro by President John Hennessy)

[Music]

this program is brought to you by

Stanford University please visit us at

stanford.edu

it now gives me great pleasure to

introduce this year's commencement

speaker Steve Jobs

[Applause]

the chief executive officer and

co-founder of apple and Pixar Animation

[Applause]

Studios Stanford University has been

characterized since its founding by a

willingness to be bold and to strike out

in New Directions and this is a

characteristic very much shared by

today's speaker a Pioneer and Visionary

for almost three decades his name and

the companies he has founded have been

synonymous with Innovation and

creativity as a young boy growing up in

Los Altos Steve Jobs came of age at the

same time as Silicon

Valley while still in school he attended

lectures informally at Stanford as well

as at ulip Packard where he spent his

summer

working after graduating from high

school he left California to attend Reed

College a a trek through India and a

short stint as a video game designer for

Atari

followed soon after his return to the

valley in

1974 he became a regular along with

Steve WN at meetings of The Homebrew

Computer Club held at the Stanford

linear accelerator

Center it was not long before the two of

them had built the prototype for the

Apple One the apple one was was very

fast at the time reading and writing 4

kilobytes in about 20

[Applause]

seconds about 20,000 times slower than

we do so

today the Apple 2 was faster still but

more importantly introduced color

monitors into the Home

Market in the mid 1980s the Macintosh

became the first truly userfriendly

personal computer you didn't have to be

an expert to set it up or to load

software or to transfer information

between

applications and the mouse offered point

and click convenience and opened the

door to computer Literacy for

everyone I still remember the amazed

faces of onlookers as they saw a

computer that was completely different

from the personal computers of that

day Steve also co-founded Pixar

Animation Studios which has

revolutionized the film industry in its

Short history with brilliant use of

technology and produced two Academy

award-winning films Toy Story and

Finding

[Applause]

Nemo since his return to Apple eight

years ago Steve has reinvented the

company once again extending its Vision

to music and new digital media

iPod and

iTunes have changed the way we listen to

organize store and purchase our music

and in my case the way I often read

books now songs we love are just 99

Cents and a completely legal click

away I photo and iMovie revolutionize

the ability of consumers to organize

edit and display digital photography and

video putting capabilities that once

cost thousands of dollars into the hands

of every Mac

User Steve is also widely recognized for

his ability to create an Innovative

environment inside apple as well as an

external company image that is equally

Innovative just think about Apple's

marketing campaigns over the past three

decades a promotional flyer in 1976 six

showed Isaac Newton sitting under a tree

just as an apple was falling by with the

catchy exhortation to bite

byte into an

apple there was an iconic Super Bowl

commercial techy

humor an iconic Superbowl commercial

telling us that the Macintosh was on the

horizon and assuring us that we would

see why

1984 wouldn't be like

1984 and in the late 1990s we saw

banners and billboards featuring Pablo

Picasso Albert Einstein Martha Graham

and mahat m Gandhi all urging us to

think

different Steve Jobs understands that

creativity and Innovation start by

thinking

differently he has a deeep rooted belief

in the power of Education to train

transform lives coupled with the desire

to make the world a better

place from the earliest days of apple he

worked to develop Partnerships with

Educators and get computers into

schools for almost three decades he and

his companies have provided invaluable

technology and support to schools and

communities increasing accessibility to

information for Learners of all

ages more than 100 years ago in

describing his vision for a new

University Leland Stanford wrote the

imagination needs to be cultivated and

developed to assure success in

life Stanford clearly understood that

technical knowledge was only the

starting point for creation and

Discovery Steve Jobs understands that

the computer is a very powerful tool in

a technical sense but that it true power

lies in the ability to unleash the

imagination and creativity of the

user as he explained to the New York

Times in a 1997 interview the Macintosh

turned out so well because the people

working on it were musicians artists

poets and historians who also happened

to be excellent computer

scientists and last fall a business week

reporter asked how he manages for

Innovation his answer was deceptively

simple we hire people who want to make

the best things in the

world Steve Jobs personifies the spirit

and creativity that have characterized

this University since its founding 114

years ago and we are pleased to have him

here today please join me in warmly

welcoming this year's commencement

speaker Steve Jobs

thank

you I'm uh honored to be with you today

for your commencement from one of the

finest universities in the

[Applause]

world truth be

told uh I never graduated from college

and uh 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 18

months or so before I really

quit so why' 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 and 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 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 workingclass

parents savings were being spent on my

college tuition after 6 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 the money my parents had

saved their entire life

so I decided to drop out and trust that

it would all work out okay 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 return Coke

bottles for the 5-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 Hari

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 type faces

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 10 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 typ faces

or proportionally spaced fonts and since

Windows just copied the Mac it's likely

that no person computer would have

them if I had never dropped out I would

have never dropped in on that

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 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 love to

do early in life was 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 4,000 employees we just released

our finest creation the Macintosh a year

earlier and I 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 and 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 noise 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 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 5 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 Loren 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 sometime life 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've

looked in the mirror every morning and

ask 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 3 to 6

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 and 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 live 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 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'm fine now

[Applause]

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 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 Stuart brand

not far from here in Meno Park and he

brought it to life with his poetic touch

this was in the late 60s 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 idealist istic

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 mid1 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

a new I wish that for you stay hungry

stay foolish thank you all very much

[Music]

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