-
The commencement speech Steve Jobs gave at
Stanford
University in 2005
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.
谢谢。
今天来参加世上最好大学之一的毕业典礼让我感到荣幸。
老实说，
我大学
从未毕业而现在是我离大学毕业最近的
时刻。
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.
今天我想告诉你我生命的
3
个故事。就这样。没有什么。只有
3
个故事。第一
个故事是关于把点连
接起来。
I dropped out of Reed College after the
first six months but then stayed around as a
drop
-
in for
another eighteen 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.
待在里德学院
6
个月后我即辍学，但仍然于课堂旁听且待了约
18
个月后才真
正退学。所以我为什
么辍学？这从我还未出生即开始。我的亲生母亲是个年轻、
未婚的研究所学生，
而她决定让我被领养。
她非常坚信我应被大学毕业生所领养，
所以一切都已准备好让我一出生即被一位律师及他的太太所领养，
只是当我
蹦出
时，
他们在最后一分钟决定他们真正想要的是女孩。
所以我的父母，
他们在等候
名单上，在半夜接
到一通电话问说：
「我们有一个突然出现的男婴儿，你们想要
他
吗？」他们说：
「当然。」我的亲生母亲后来发现我的母亲大学从未毕业而我
的父亲高中从未毕业。
她拒绝签署最后的领养文
件。
几个月后她终于接受，
当我
父母承
诺我将会上大学后。
This
was
the
start
in
my
life.
And
seventeen
years
later,
I
did
go
to
college,
but
I
na?vely
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
of
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
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 far more interesting.
这是我生命的开始。
而
17
年过后，
我真的上了大学，
但我天真的选了一个几乎
与史丹佛一样贵的学院，而我劳动阶级父母
所有的积蓄都花费在我的大学学费
上。
6
个月后，我无法看见它的价值。我不知道我人生要做什么，也不知道大学
将如何帮助
我想出，
而我在这里，
花费我父母毕生所存下的钱。
所以我辍学并相
信一切事情都将顺利解决。
这在当
时非常的可怕，
但回顾过去，
这是我做过最好
< br>的决定之一。
我辍学的那一分起，
我可以不用上那些我不
感兴趣的必修课程，
并
开始旁听一些看起来有趣许多的课程。<
/p>
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
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.
并非一切都是美好的。
我没有宿舍，
所
以我睡在朋友宿舍房间的地板。
我退还可
口可乐瓶子来换得五分
钱的押金来购买食物，而每个星期天晚上我会走
7
英哩
的路程穿过城镇来到哈瑞奎师那神庙吃每星期的一顿好餐。
我超爱它的！
而我因
跟随好奇及直觉所涉足的的
大部分事情后来都证明是无价的。让我给你一个例
子。
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.
里德学院在当时提供全国或许最好的文字艺术课程。整个校园
内，每一个海报、
每个抽屉上的每一个标记都是用手美丽的刻画出来。
< br>因为我已辍学且不必选修一
般的课程，
我决定上一堂文字
艺术课程来学习文字艺术。
我学到衬线及无衬线字
体、改变不同
字母组合间的空间、是什么造就优良的排版。它是美丽的、俱历史
意义的、且艺术上微妙
而致科学无法描述，而它使我着迷。
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.
这没有一样有任何希望会在我生命里被实际运用。
但十年后当我们在设计第一台
苹果计算机时，
它全部都回来了，
而我们将它
全部都设计在苹果计算机里。
它是
第一个有美丽版面设计的计算
机。
如果我从未在大学里旁听那一堂课，
苹果计算
机绝不会有几种不同字体，
或间隔均称的字型，
而由
于微软只是复制苹果，
或许
没有个人计算机会有它们。
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.
如果我从未辍学，
我就不会旁听那堂文字艺术课程，
而个人计算机可能就不会有
它们美丽的版面设计。
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.
当然，
当我在大学往前看时，
把点连接起来是不可能的，
但十年后往后看它是非
常，非常清楚的。再提一次，往前看时你无法把点连起来。只有往后看时你才能
连接
它们，
所以你必需相信点将在你的未来以某种方式连接。
你必需
相信某些事
情
–
你的直觉、命运、人生、因缘、不管是什么
–
因为相信点将在未来的路
上连接起来将带给你追随内心声音的信心，即便它引领你离开已被踏平的步道，
< br>而那将造就所有的不同。
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 twenty. We worked
hard and
in ten years, Apple had
grown from just the two of us in a
garage into a $$2 billion company with over 4,000
employees. We
’
d
just released our finest creation, the Macintosh,
a year earlier, and
I
’
d just turned
thirty, 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
thirty,
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.
我的第二
个故事是有关爱及失去。
我是幸运的，
我在年轻时就发现我喜爱
做什么。
我
20
< br>岁时沃兹与我在我父母的车库开始了苹果计算机。我们努力工作而在
10
年内，
苹果已从车库内的只有我
们两个人成长至员工超过
4000
人，
价值
20
亿
的公司。
我们才刚推出我们最好的发明，
苹果计算机，
在一年之前，
而我才刚
30
岁，
然后我被解僱了。
你如何被自己所创立的公司解僱？这
个…
当苹果成长时，
我们僱用了一个
我觉得非常有才能的人与我一起经营公司，
而头一年前后，
事情
进展得不错。
但之后我们对未来的愿景开始产生分歧，
而最后我们有了争吵。
当
我们争吵时，我们的董
事会支持他，所以
30
岁时，我被
赶出了，且非常公开的
被赶出。
我整个成人人生的重心已经不在
，
而这是令人极为难过的。
我有几个月
真的不知道要做什么。
我觉得我让前一代的企业家失望，
当接力
棒传给我时我让
它掉了下去。我与大卫
?
帕卡德
(HP
创立人
)
及鲍勃
?
诺伊斯
(Intel
创立人
)
见面并试图因把事情搞得如
此糟而道歉。
我是一个非常公开的失败而我甚至想过
逃离硅谷。
但我开始慢慢明了某些事情。
我仍然喜爱我所做的事。
在苹果情势的