This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered 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 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 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 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 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, its 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 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 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 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 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 feature film, 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 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 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 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 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. I was 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 its 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 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 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 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 of The 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.

[flash=400,400]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA[/flash]

Did you ever read Ayn Rand? I know Jobs did and he stated something above that came from her - how humans mirror other people so often, consistently and well that they end up having no identity as they become subsumed in what they think others want to see and that they've tried to become. At day end, they are an empty shell of nothing that went nowhere

Surprised you'd put such in the religious forum though - here, its hype to be like Jesus or Mohammed or be as cursing + belligerent as sin. The only thing we are NOT here is ourselves

Oh, I certainly have my reasons for putting it here. It illustrates a very fine religious point that I've always tried to make ever since I've joined this forum. The point that there is a format for our lives already and we might not know it as we live it but at a certain point we realise that certain fortuitous accidents were actually part of a grand plan for our lives.

That is what I'm talking about when I talk about Ori, Ipin (destiny) or when the Greek philosophers talk about the Logos, or even when Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow but to be in the moment. Let today's issues be enough for today. These are lessons that are hardly spoken of in modern churches yet I believe are integral to the christian faith.

Hindus call it Dharma. Chinese call it Tao.

I think I've mentioned it here myself that I studied much of these. I think I went as far as stating that my own "ifa" was the one associated with lasigun ilu ogere and carrying the "asise'la" character, which has borne out to a T in real life starting from grace to grass and back to grace but of a sort and level even now "strange".

I "rin'ed", I "tee'ed" and I "gbo'dud" !!! I stepped back at capping it!

So I totally agree with you about the proddings, instructions and exigencies of some "master power" pulling the strings behind the scenes. I know you enough to have understood also from start that there was such a reason behind your post!

But AIO, there's nobody HOME here! Do you understand me?

There is so much that is so 'christian' in practically everything he said. Very on point piece.

Pastor AIO:

Oh, I certainly have my reasons for putting it here. It illustrates a very fine religious point that I've always tried to make ever since I've joined this forum. The point that there is a format for our lives already and we might not know it as we live it but at a certain point we realise that certain fortuitous accidents were actually part of a grand plan for our lives.

That is what I'm talking about when I talk about Ori, Ipin (destiny) or when the Greek philosophers talk about the Logos, or even when Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow but to be in the moment. Let today's issues be enough for today. These are lessons that are hardly spoken of in modern churches yet I believe are integral to the christian faith.

Hindus call it Dharma. Chinese call it Tao.

 
 I've been meaning to open a thread somewhere along these lines titled. Infact this is my cue to do so now . . .

 and Jobs is so right about being able to connect dots ONLY when you're looking back. When you're in it, it seems like meaningless chaos punctuated by unanswered questions. But on the flip side & at the same time, do the dots always connect? . . .

nuclearboy:

But AIO, there's nobody HOME here! Do you understand me?

Nobody home? Where did they go? Are they in the market?

I think your call is for us to wake up! Then clear the drowsiness, brush, bathe, ensure again we're awake, THEN look in the mirror to determine who's there! That's when people can start connecting the dots! For now, we're still trying to be what everyone else thinks is right.

But you started from the end and are working backwards from there. I'm done stopping you - I too want to see if any is awake anyway

nuclearboy:


Surprised you'd put such in the religious forum though - here, its hype to be like Jesus or Mohammed or be as cursing + belligerent as sin. The only thing we are NOT here is ourselves

The funny thing is . . . I suggested that the arabic Al-Fitra was alluding to the same thing but some moslems here refuted me and said that Fitra was just Tawhid, that is 'knowledge of the Oneness of Allah'. I just left it there because I don't want to be arguing with somebody else over his own religion even though many deep moslems (outside NL) agree that Fitra is that natural and individual inclination and path that has been set out for us from our inception.

JeSoul:

There is so much that is so 'christian' in practically everything he said. Very on point piece.

'So much that is Christian' is a sad place to be.

Have you heard of the almost christian, like the rich young ruler , Herod or King Agrippa . They came close to believing but never accepted Jesus.

People can sound like Jesus and make wise statements, but alas if they reject him as their saviour, it is all pointless.

I am not condemning Steve , he might well have repented during his illness and before death , it's just to suggest that sounding like Solomon or Jesus does not make one a Christian.

frosbel:


'So much that is Christian' is a sad place to be.

Have you heard of the almost christian, like the rich young ruler , Herod or King Agrippa . They came close to believing but never accepted Jesus.

People can sound like Jesus and make wise statements, but alas if they reject him as their saviour, it is all pointless.

I am not condemning Steve , he might well have repented during his illness and before death , it's just to suggest that sounding like Solomon or Jesus does not make one a Christian.

Its not everything that revolves around the bubble of delusion that you have been indoctrinated with. . .Steve Jobs to me is on the same level with Jesus. . . Billions of people the world over have been touched with his creativity and his creativity has helped humanity in so many ways. . . .Stop wasting your time feeling sorry for him. . . .He lives on through his inventions just as Jesus lives on through the religion that was created after him. . . .

CAMPBELL: That’s right. Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called "On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others, The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.

It’s a magnificent idea – an idea that appears in India in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can’t blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.

http://www.whidbey.com/parrott/moyers.htm

“We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone”

-Viggo Mortensen
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/we-all-experience-many-freakish-and-unexpected/347725.html

The essay the above are both referring to is this (all I've got is an excerpt quoted by Campbell in his book Masks of God (bk IV):
"On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual":

"Everyone, during the course of his lifetime, becomes aware of certain
events that, on the one hand, bear the mark of a moral or inner
necessity, because of their especially decisive importance to him, and
yet, on the other hand, have clearly the character of outward, wholly
accidental chance.  The frequent occurrence of such events may lead
gradually to the notion, which often becomes a conviction, that the
life course of the individual, confused as it may seem, is an
essential whole, having within itself a certain self-consistent,
definite direction, and a certain instructive meaning - no less than
the best thought-out of epics. . ."



"Rather, one is moved to believe that - just as in the cases of those
pictures called anamorphoses, which to the naked eye are only broken,
fragmentary deformities but when reflected in a conic mirror show
normal human forms - so the purely empirical interpretation of the
course of the world resembles the seeing of those pictures with the
naked eyes, while the recognition of the intention of Fate resembles
the reflection in the conic mirror, which binds together and organizes
the disjointed, scattered fragments."

- Arthur Schoepenhauer

mazaje:


Its not everything that revolves around the bubble of delusion that you have been indoctrinated with. . .Steve Jobs to me is on the same level with Jesus. . . Billions of people the world over have been touched with his creativity and his creativity has helped humanity in so many ways. . . .Stop wasting your time feeling sorry for him. . . .He lives on through his inventions just as Jesus lives on through the religion that was created after him. . . .

Feel sorry for him 

I am an avid iphone user and admirer of apple products.

Otherwise no further comment on your other nonsense 

frosbel:


Feel sorry for him 

I am an avid iphone user and admirer of apple products.

Otherwise no further comment on your other nonsense 

Thought you believe he is somewhere in hell right now cos he was a buddhist. . . .

mazaje:

Thought you believe he is somewhere in hell right now cos he was a buddhist. . . .

^^

Is it not true that you hold such beliefs?. . .

What belief

That Steve Jobs is in Hell

You have lost me totally.

Enjoy your day !!

frosbel:

What belief 

That Steve Jobs is in Hell 

You have lost me totally.

Enjoy your day !!

Yeah, is that not what you believe, he was a buddhist. . . .According to your beliefs buddhist go to hell when they die, no?. . . . .

frosbel:


'So much that is Christian' is a sad place to be.

Have you heard of the almost christian, like the rich young ruler , Herod or King Agrippa . They came close to believing but never accepted Jesus.

People can sound like Jesus and make wise statements, but alas if they reject him as their saviour, it is all pointless.

I am not condemning Steve , he might well have repented during his illness and before death , it's just to suggest that sounding like Solomon or Jesus does not make one a Christian.

Bill Gates too isn't a college graduate and he's very super successful

I liked the one of the drop-out, because soonly I'll drop out too

and stay faithful

chrisj2000:

To associate Steve Jobs with your silly religious ideas is an arrant nonsense. One of his most memorable quotes is; "don't let yourself be caught up in dogma, that's living in another man's thinking." He was talking about religious dogma. Steve Jobs is everything except a Christian.

This guy, you need to on the light so you can see what is going on in the room.

Let me help you. What is the difference between religion and dogma? Is every religion based on Dogma? Is every Dogma religious?

Did anyone say Jobs was a Christian? Was Jobs unreligious?