Original subtitles

[Music]

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 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 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 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 Mike

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 parent's 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 two billion dollar 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've

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 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 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 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 it next is at the heart of

Apple's current Renaissance and Laureen

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

[Applause]

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

asked myself if today were the last day

of my life what 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 all 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 doctors 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 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 its life's change agent it clears

out the old to make way for the new

right now the new is you but some day

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 Bible's of

my generation it was created by a fellow

named Stuart brand not far from here in

Menlo 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 and

paperback form 35 years before Google

came along it was idealistic overflowing

with neat tools and great notions Stuart

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

[Applause]

[Music]

you