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史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs），世界著名企业家、美国苹果公司联合创始人、前行政总裁。乔布斯还是迪士尼公司的董事会成员和最大的个人股东。乔布斯被认为是电脑业与娱乐业的标志性人物，同时人们也把他视作麦金塔电脑、iPod、iTunes商店、iPhone等知名数字产品的缔造者。1985年他获得了由里根总统授予的国家级技术勋章；曾多次成为《时代》周刊的封面人物；1997年被评为最成功的管理者，是声名显赫的“计算机狂人”。2009年他被《财富》杂志评选为“十年最佳首席执行官”，同年当选《时代》周刊“年度风云人物之一”。2011年10月5日，乔布斯在家人的陪伴下安然离世。
毕业典礼上的演讲大都轻松愉快，但却容易被遗忘。然而，史蒂夫·乔布斯于2005年6月在斯坦福大学的演讲在经过了一个夏天，甚至若干年之后依然为人所提及，津津乐道，并且备受推崇。这位苹果电脑公司和皮克斯动画公司的首席执行官在演讲中谈到了他人生中的三个故事，这三个故事不仅在斯坦福大学的毕业生中，也在硅谷乃至其他地方的技术同行中引起了巨大反响，尤其是乔布斯去世后，这篇演讲备受世界各国年轻人的青睐，演讲中的励志名言被汇成“乔布斯语录”，激励着千千万万的人。
很荣幸今天能和你们一起参加世界上最好的一所大学的毕业典礼。说实话，我大学都没毕业，这是我离大学毕业典礼最近的一次。今天我想给大家讲讲我人生中的三个故事，仅此而已，也没什么大不了的，就只讲三个故事。
Iam honored to be with you today for your commencement [注] 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.
第一个故事讲的是把生命中的点滴串连起来。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
我在里德学院只读了六个月就退学了，此后便在学校里旁听。又过了大约一年半，我彻底辍学了。那么，我为什么退学呢？
I dropped out [注] of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in [注] for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
这得从我出生前讲起。我的生母是一名年轻未婚的在校研究生，她决定将我送给别人收养。她非常坚决地认为我应该被有大学学历的人收养，所以我的一切都被安排好了，我一出生就会由一位律师和他的妻子收养。只是我才刚刚出生，那对夫妇却在最后一刻决定，他们真正想要的是一个女孩。就这样，我的养父母——他们的名字当时就在等候者名单上——半夜三更接到一个电话：“我们这儿有一个男婴突然没有人收养了，你们想收养他吗？”“当然。”他们回答道。我的生母后来才发现我的养母不是大学毕业生，我的养父甚至高中都没有毕业，所以她拒绝在最后的收养文件上签字。几个月后，我的养父母许诺日后一定送我上大学，她才心软让了步。这就是我生命的起点。
It started before I was born. My biological mother [注] was a young, unwed [注] 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 [注] 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 [注] a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.
17年后，我真的上了大学。但当时我天真幼稚地选了一所学费几乎和斯坦福大学一样昂贵的学校，而我的养父母只是工薪阶层，他们倾其所有的积蓄为我支付了大学学费。过了六个月，我却看不出上大学有什么意义。我既不知道自己这一生想干什么，也不知道大学是否能够帮助我做出人生规划。而且在大学里我会花光父母一辈子节省下来的钱。所以，我决定退学，并且坚信日后一切终归会好起来的。当年做出这个决定时心里很害怕，但现在回想起来，这还真是我有生以来做出的最好的决定之一。一退学，我就可以不用再选那些我一点都不感兴趣的必修课，并可以开始去旁听那些看上去有趣得多的课。
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively [注] 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 [注] . 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 [注] . 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 [注] 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.
那种日子一点儿都不浪漫。我没有宿舍，只能睡在朋友们的房间的地板上。我用退掉可乐瓶赎回来的五美分的押金来买吃的。每个星期天晚上我都要步行七英里，走到城市另外一头的克利须那神庙去吃一周才能享用一次的美餐。我喜欢那里的饭菜。我凭着好奇心和直觉所碰巧做的许多事情后来都被证明是无价的。我给大家举个例子：
It wasn't all romantic [注] . 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 [注] 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 [注] into by following my curiosity and intuition [注] turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
当时，里德学院的书法课大概是全美最好的。整个校园里所有的海报标语和每个抽屉标签上的字都是非常漂亮的手写体。因为我已经退学，不用正常上课，所以我决定去上书法课，学学怎么写出漂亮的字。我学习写带衬线和无衬线的字体，根据不同字母组合调整间距的大小，并学习怎样把版式调整得更好。这门课太棒了，既有历史价值，在艺术方面妙不可言，这一点自然科学是做不到的，我觉得太有吸引力了。
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy [注] instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed [注] . 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 [注] and san-serif [注] typefaces [注] , about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography [注] great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle [注] in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
当时我并不指望书法在我以后的生活中可以实际派上什么用场。但是，十年之后，我们在设计第一台麦金塔计算机时，书法课上学到的知识一下子浮现在我的脑海里。于是，我们把这些东西全都设计进了麦金塔计算机中。麦金塔计算机是第一台有这么漂亮的文字版式的计算机。要不是我当初在大学里偶然旁听了这门课，麦金塔计算机绝不会有那么多种印刷字体或间距安排那么合理的字型。又因为Windows照搬了麦金塔，如果我不这样设计，个人电脑可能就不会有这些字体和字型了。要是我当初没有退学，我绝不会碰巧选了那门书法课，个人电脑也可能不会有现在这些漂亮的版式了。当然，我在大学里不可能预先看到这些生活点滴与将来的联系。但十年之后再回头看，两者之间的联系就非常、非常显而易见了。
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 [注] spaced fonts [注] . 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.
再次重申，你们不可能从现在这些生活点滴中看到将来；只有再回头看时，才会发现它们之间的联系。所以，你们要相信这些生活点滴迟早会在将来联系到一起的。你们必须相信某些东西——直觉、命运、生命以及因果报应，等等。因为相信这些生活点滴会在人生的道路上一直联系着，会给予你听从自己心声的自信，会引导你走自己的路，然后取得成就。
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 [注] , destiny, life, karma [注] , whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even will lead you off to one's own path, and then will make all the difference.
我的第二个故事是关于好恶与得失。
My second story is about love and loss.
幸运的是，我早年就发现自己喜欢做什么。我在20岁时和沃兹（注：苹果公司创始人之一）在我父母的车库里创办了苹果公司。我们工作很努力。十年来，苹果公司从只有我们两个人的在车库办公的小公司发展成为一个拥有20亿美元资产、4000余名员工的大企业。那时，我们刚刚推出了最好的设计——麦金塔电脑——那是在第9年，我刚满30岁。不久，我被解雇了。你怎么会被自己创办的公司解雇呢？是这样的，随着苹果公司越做越大，我们聘了一位我认为非常有才华的人和我一起管理公司。大概在最开始的一年时间里，一切都很顺利。可是，随后我们两个人对公司前景的看法开始出现分歧，最后我们闹翻了，而董事会站在了他那一边。所以在30岁那年，我离开了公司，而且这件事闹得满城风雨。我失去了成年后整个生活的重心，真的是毁灭性的打击。
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 [注] 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 [注] of the future began to diverge [注] and eventually we had a falling out [注] . 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 [注] .
一连几个月，我真的不知道该怎么办。我感到自己让老一代的创业者失望了——因为我扔掉了传到自己手里的接力棒。我去见了戴维·帕卡德（惠普公司创始人之一）和鲍勃·诺伊斯（英特尔公司创建者之一），想为把事情搞得如此糟糕说声抱歉。我成了公认的失败人物，我甚至想过逃离硅谷。但是，渐渐地，我开始明白了一件事——我仍然热爱我过去做的一切。在苹果公司发生的这些风波丝毫没有改变这一点。我虽然被拒之门外，但我仍然深爱我的事业。于是，我决定从头开始。
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs [注] down — that I had dropped the baton [注] as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up [注] so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn [注] 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.
虽然当时我并没有意识到，但后来事实证明，被苹果公司炒鱿鱼是我一生中碰到的最好的事情。从头开始的轻松感取代了保持成功的沉重感，一切都是未知的。这使我轻松踏入了一生中最富有创造力的时期之一。
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.
在此后的五年里，我创办了一家名叫NeXT的公司和一家叫皮克斯的公司，我还爱上一位了不起的女士，后来还娶了她。皮克斯公司继而推出了世界上第一部用电脑制作的动画故事片《玩具总动员》，它现在是全球最成功的动画工作室。真的是三十年河东，三十年河西。苹果公司买下NeXT之后，我又回到了苹果公司，我们在NeXT公司开发的技术成了当前苹果公司重新崛起的核心力量。我和劳伦娜也建立了美满的家庭。
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT [注] , another company named Pixar [注] , and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated [注] feature film, Toy Story ,and is now the most successful animation [注] studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retu rned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance [注] . And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
我确信，如果不是被苹果公司解雇，这一切绝不可能发生。这是一剂苦药，可我认为良药苦口利于病。有时生活会给你当头一棒，但不要灰心。我坚信让我不断前行的唯一力量就是我热爱我所做的一切。所以，你们一定得知道自己喜欢什么，选择工作时如此，选择爱人时同样如此。工作将是生活中的一大部分，让自己真正满意的唯一办法就是做自己认为有意义的工作；而做有意义工作的唯一办法就是热爱自己做的事情。如果你们还没有发现自己喜欢什么，那就不断地去寻找，不要急于做出决定。一心虔诚，一旦找到了自己喜欢的事，感觉就会告诉你。就像任何一种美妙的人与人之间的关系，历久弥新。所以说，要不断地寻找，不要停下来。
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 is gonna 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 [注] . So keep looking. Don't settle.
我的第三个故事与死亡有关。
My third story is about death.
17岁那年，我读到过这样一段话：“如果把每一天都当作生命的最后一天，总有一天你必定会证明自己是正确的。”这句话给我留下了很深刻的印象。从那时起，33年过去了，我每天早晨都对着镜子问自己：“假如今天是生命的最后一天，我还想去做今天要做的事吗？”如果一连许多天我的回答都是“不”，那么我就知道自己应该有所改变了。
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.
“记住生命即将结束”是我所遇到的能帮我做出种种人生重大抉择的最重要方法。因为几乎所有的东西——所有外在的需求、所有的尊严、所有对窘迫或失败的恐惧——在死亡来临时都将不复存在，只剩下真正重要的东西。记住自己即将死去，这是我所知道的防止患得患失的良方。你已经一无所有了，还有什么理由不去听从自己的心声呢。
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 [注] 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.
大约一年前，我被诊断患了癌症。那天早上七点半，我做了一次扫描检查，结果清楚地显示出我的胰腺上长了一个瘤子，可那时我连胰腺是什么都还不知道呢！医生们告诉我说，几乎可以确诊这是一种无法治愈的癌症，我最多还能活3到6个月。医生建议我回去把一切都安排好，其实这是在暗示“准备后事”。也就是说，把今后十年要跟孩子们说的所有事情在这几个月内都得嘱咐完；这就意味着，把一切都安排妥当，尽可能不给家人留麻烦；也意味着，去跟大家诀别。
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 [注] on my pancreas [注] . 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 preparing 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 [注] so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
我那一整天都一直在想着这个诊断结果。到了晚上，我做了一次活组织切片检查。他们把一个内窥镜通过我的喉咙经由胃探入肠子，再用一根针伸入我的胰腺，从那个肿瘤上取了一些细胞组织。当时我打了麻药，陪在一旁的妻子后来告诉我，医生们在显微镜下观察细胞时叫了起来，原来这是一种非常少见的胰腺癌，可以通过外科手术治愈。我做了手术，谢天谢地，我现在康复了。
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy [注] , where they stuck an endoscope [注] down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines [注] , put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated [注] , 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 [注] cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and thankfully I'm fine now.
这是我和死神离得最近的一次，我希望这也是今后几十年里最近的一次。这次挺了过来，比起以前死亡只是一个有用但纯粹是认知的概念而言，现在我可以更加肯定一些地跟你们说这句话：谁都不想死。就是那些想进天堂的人也不愿意为了去那里而死。但是，死亡是我们共同的归宿，没人能摆脱。本就应当如此，因为死亡很可能是生命最好的一项发明。它推进生命的更替，旧的不去，新的不来。现在，你们就是新的生命，但在不久的将来，你们也会逐渐成为旧的生命，也会被淘汰。很抱歉，生命的更替如此富有戏剧性，不过这是千真万确的。
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
[注]
你们的时间是有限的，所以不要将它们浪费在重蹈其他人的覆辙上。不要囿于成见，那是在按照他人思想的结果而活。不要让别人观点的聒噪声淹没你自己的心声。最重要的是，要有跟着自己内心和直觉走的勇气。无论如何，内心和直觉早就知道你到底想成为什么样的人。其他都是次要的。
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma [注] — 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.
我年轻时有一本非常好的刊物，叫《全球概览》，是我们那代人的经典之一，创办人名叫斯图尔特·布兰德，就住在离这儿不远的门洛帕克市。他用富有诗意的笔触让刊物生动活泼。那是在20世纪60年代末，当时还没有个人电脑和桌面出版系统，全靠打字机、剪刀和宝丽来一次成像照相机来制作完成。它有些像纸质的谷歌，却比谷歌早问世35年。这份刊物太完美了，查阅方法简单、见解独特。
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 [注] . It was sort of [注] like Google in paperback [注] form,35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, overflowing [注] with neat tools and great notions [注] .
斯图尔特和他的同事们出了好几期《全球概览》，到最后办不下去时，他们出了最后一期。那是在20世纪70年代中期，我当时也就是你们现在的年纪。最后一期的封底上是一张清晨乡间小路的照片，就是那种爱冒险的人等在那儿搭便车的那种小路。照片下面写道：“好学若饥，谦卑愚。”那是他们停刊前的告别辞。“好学若饥，谦卑若愚。”这也是我一直希望自己能做到的。眼下正值诸位大学毕业、开始新生活之际，我同样希望大家能做到：
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog , and then when it had run its course [注] , 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 [注] . Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew [注] , I wish that for you.
好学若饥，谦卑若愚。
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
谢谢大家。
Thank you all very much.
