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.
很榮幸和大家一道參加這所世界上最好的一座大學的畢業典禮。我大學沒畢業，說實
話，這是我第一次離大學畢業典禮這麼近。今天我想給大家講三個我自己的故事，不講別的，也不講大道理，就講三個故事。
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?
第一個故事講的是點與點之間的關係。我在裏德學院（Reed
College）只讀了六個月就退學了，此後便在學校裏旁聽，又過了大約一年半，我徹底離開。那麼，我爲什麼退學呢？
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.
這得從我出生前講起。我的生母是一名年輕的未婚在校研究生，她決定將我送給別人收養。她非常希望收養我的是有大學學
歷的人，所以把一切都安排好了，我一出生就交給一對律師夫婦收養。沒想到我落地的霎那間，那對夫婦卻決定收養一名女孩。就這樣，我的養父母——當時他們還
在登記冊上排隊等著呢——半夜三更接到一個電話:
“我們這兒有一個沒人要的男嬰，你們要麼？”“當然要”他們回答。但是，我的生母后來發現我的養母不是大學畢業生，我的養父甚至連中學都沒有畢業，所以她
拒絕在最後的收養文件上簽字。不過，沒過幾個月她就心軟了，因爲我的養父母許諾日後一定送我上大學。
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.
17
年後，我真的進了大學。當時我很天真，選了一所學費幾乎和斯坦福大學一樣昂貴的學校，當工人的養父母傾其所有的積蓄爲我支付了大學學費。讀了六個月後，我
卻看不出上學有什麼意義。我既不知道自己這一生想幹什麼，也不知道大學是否能夠幫我弄明白自己想幹什麼。這時，我就要花光父母一輩子節省下來的錢了。所
以，我決定退學，並且堅信日後會證明我這樣做是對的。當年做出這個決定時心裏直打鼓，但現在回想起來，這還真是我有生以來做出的最好的決定之一。從退學那
一刻起，我就可以不再選那些我毫無興趣的必修課，開始旁聽一些看上去有意思的課。
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:
那些日子一點兒都不浪漫。我沒有宿舍，只能睡在朋
友房間的地板上。我去退還可樂瓶，用那五分錢的押金來買喫的。每個星期天晚上我都要走七英里，到城那頭的黑爾科裏施納禮拜堂去，喫每週才能享用一次的美
餐。我喜歡這樣。我憑藉好奇心和直覺所幹的這些事情，有許多後來都證明是無價之寶。我給大家舉個例子:
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 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.
當時，裏德學院的書法課大概是全國最好的。校園裏所有的公告欄和每個抽屜標
簽上的字都寫得非常漂亮。當時我已經退學，不用正常上課，所以我決定選一門書法課，學學怎麼寫好字。我學習寫帶短截線和不帶短截線的印刷字體，根據不同字
母組合調整其間距，以及怎樣把版式調整得好上加好。這門課太棒了，既有歷史價值，又有藝術造詣，這一點科學就做不到，而我覺得它妙不可言。
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.
當時我並不指望書法在以後的生活中能有什麼實用價值。但是，
十年之後，我們在設計第一臺 Macintosh
計算機時，它一下子浮現在我眼前。於是，我們把這些東西全都設計進了計算機中。這是第一臺有這麼漂亮的文字版式的計算機。要不是我當初在大學裏偶然選了這
麼一門課，Macintosh 計算機絕不會有那麼多種印刷字體或間距安排合理的字號。要不是 Windows 照搬了
Macintosh，個人電腦可能不會有這些字體和字號。要不是退了學，我決不會碰巧選了這門書法課，個人電腦也可能不會有現在這些漂亮的版式了。當然，
我在大學裏不可能從這一點上看到它與將來的關係。十年之後再回頭看，兩者之間的關係就非常、非常清楚了。
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.
你們同樣不可能從現在這個點上看到將來；
只有回頭看時，纔會發現它們之間的關係。所以，要相信這些點遲早會連接到一起。你們必須信賴某些東西——直覺、歸宿、生命，還有業力，等等。這樣做從來沒
有讓我的希望落空過，而且還徹底改變了我的生活。
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.
我的第二個故事是關於好惡與得失。幸運的是，我在很小的時候就發現自己
喜歡做什麼。我在 20 歲時和沃茲（Woz，蘋果公司創始人之一 Wozon
的暱稱——譯註）在我父母的車庫裏辦起了蘋果公司。我們乾得很賣力，十年後，蘋果公司就從車庫裏我們兩個人發展成爲一個擁有 20 億元資產、4000
名員工的大企業。那時，我們剛剛推出了我們最好的產品——Macintosh 電腦——那是在第 9 年，我剛滿 30
歲。可後來，我被解僱了。你怎麼會被自己辦的公司解僱呢？是這樣，隨著蘋果公司越做越大，我們聘了一位我認爲非常有才華的人與我一道管理公司。在開始的一
年多裏，一切都很順利。可是，隨後我倆對公司前景的看法開始出現分歧，最後我倆反目了。這時，董事會站在了他那一邊，所以在 30
歲那年，我離開了公司，而且這件事鬧得滿城風雨。我成年後的整個生活重心都沒有了，這使我心力交瘁。
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.
一連幾個月，我真的不知道應該怎麼辦。我感到
自己給老一代的創業者丟了臉——因爲我扔掉了交到自己手裏的接力棒。我去見了戴維帕卡德（David
Packard，惠普公司創始人之一─譯註）和鮑勃諾伊斯（Bob
Noyce，英特爾公司創建者之一─譯註），想爲把事情搞得這麼糟糕說聲道歉。這次失敗弄得沸沸揚揚的，我甚至想過逃離硅谷。但是，漸漸地，我開始有了一
個想法——我仍然熱愛我過去做的一切。在蘋果公司發生的這些風波絲毫沒有改變這一點。我雖然被拒之門外，但我仍然深愛我的事業。於是，我決定從頭開始。
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 retuned 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.
雖然當時我並沒有意識到，但事實證明，被蘋果公司炒魷魚是我一生中碰到的最好的事情。儘管前景未卜，但從頭開始的輕鬆感取代了保持成功的沉重感。這使我
進入了一生中最富有創造力的時期之一。 在此後的五年裏，我開了一家名叫 NeXT
的公司和一家叫皮克斯的公司，我還愛上一位了不起的女人，後來娶了她。皮克斯公司推出了世界上第一部用電腦製作的動畫片《玩具總動員》（Toy
Story），它現在是全球最成功的動畫製作室。世道輪迴，蘋果公司買下 NeXT 後，我又回到了蘋果公司，我們在 NeXT
公司開發的技術成了蘋果公司這次重新崛起的核心。我和勞倫娜（Laurene）也建立了美滿的家庭。
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.
我確信，如果不是被蘋果公司解僱，這
一切決不可能發生。這是一劑苦藥，可我認爲苦藥利於病。有時生活會當頭給你一棒，但不要灰心。我堅信讓我一往無前的唯一力量就是我熱愛我所做的一切。所
以，一定得知道自己喜歡什麼，選擇愛人時如此，選擇工作時同樣如此。工作將是生活中的一大部分，讓自己真正滿意的唯一辦法，是做自己認爲是有意義的工作；
做有意義的工作的唯一辦法，是熱愛自己的工作。你們如果還沒有發現自己喜歡什麼，那就不斷地去尋找，不要急於做出決定。就像一切要憑著感覺去做的事情一
樣，一旦找到了自己喜歡的事，感覺就會告訴你。就像任何一種美妙的東西，歷久彌新。所以說，要不斷地尋找，直到找到自己喜歡的東西。不要半途而廢。
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.
我的第三個故事與死亡有關。17
歲那年，我讀到過這樣一段話，大意是：“如果把每一天都當作生命的最後一天，總有一天你會如願以償。”我記住了這句話，從那時起，33
年過去了，我每天早晨都對著鏡子自問：“假如今天是生命的最後一天，我還會去做今天要做的事嗎？”如果一連許多天我的回答都是“不”，我知道自己應該有所
改變了。
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.
讓我能夠做出人生重大抉擇的最主要辦法是，記住生命隨時都有可能
結束。因爲幾乎所有的東西——所有對自身之外的希求、所有的尊嚴、所有對困窘和失敗的恐懼——在死亡來臨時都將不復存在，只剩下真正重要的東西。記住自己
隨時都會死去，這是我所知道的防止患得患失的最好方法。你已經一無所有了，還有什麼理由不跟著自己的感覺走呢？
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 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 lived with that
diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck
an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach 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, thankfully, I'm fine now.
一年前，我
被診斷出癌症。我在早上七點半作斷層掃描，在胰臟清楚出現一個腫瘤，我連胰臟是什麼都不知道。醫生告訴我，那幾乎可以確定是一種不治之症，我大概活不到三
到六個月了。醫生建議我回家，好好跟親人們聚一聚，這是醫生對臨終病人的標準建議。那代表你得試着在幾個月內把你將來十年想跟小孩講的話講完。
那代表你得把每件事情搞定，家人才會盡量輕鬆。那代表你得跟人說再見了。我整天想着那個診斷結果，那天晚上做了一次切片，從喉嚨伸入一個內視鏡，從胃進腸
子，插了根針進胰臟，取了一些腫瘤細胞出來。我打了鎮靜劑，不醒人事，但是我老婆在場。她後來跟我說，當醫生們用顯微鏡看過那些細胞後，他們都哭了，因爲
那是非常少見的一種胰臟癌，可以用手術治好。所以我接受了手術，康復了。
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.
這是我最接近死亡的時候，我希望那會繼續是未來幾十年內最接近的一次。經歷此事後，我可以比之前死亡只是抽象
概念時要更肯定告訴你們下面這些：
沒有人想死。即使那些想上天堂的人，也想活着上天堂。但是死亡是我們共有的目的地，沒有人逃得過。
這是註定的，因爲死亡簡直就是生命中最棒的發明，是生命變化的媒介，送走老人們，給新生代留下空間。現在你們是新生代，但是不久的將來，你們也會逐漸變
老，被送出人生的舞臺。抱歉講得這麼戲劇化，但是這是真的。
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.
你們的時間有限，所以不要浪費時間活在別人的生活裏。不要被信條所惑——盲從信條就是活在別人思考的結果裏。不
要讓別人的意見淹沒了你內在的心聲。最重要的，擁有跟隨內心與直覺的勇氣，你的內心與直覺多少已經知道你真正想要成爲什麼樣的人。任何其它事物都是次要
的。
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 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 idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
在我年輕時，有本神奇的雜誌叫做 《Whole Earth Catalog》，當年我們很迷這本雜誌。那是一位住在離這不遠的Menlo
Park的Stewart
Brand發行的，他把雜誌辦得很有詩意。那是1960年代末期，個人計算機跟桌上出版還沒發明，所有內容都是打字機、剪刀跟拍立得相機做出來的。雜誌內
容有點像印在紙上的Google，在Google出現之前35年就有了：理想化，充滿新奇工具與神奇的註記。
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've 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.
Stewart跟他的出版團隊出了好幾期《Whole Earth
Catalog》，然後出了停刊號。當時是1970年代中期，我正是你們現在這個年齡的時候。在停刊號的封底，有張早晨鄉間小路的照片，那種你去爬山時會
經過的鄉間小路。在照片下有行小字：求知若飢，虛心若愚。那是他們親筆寫下的告別訊息，我總是以此自許。當你們畢業，展開新生活，我也以此期許你們。
求知若飢，虛心若愚。
非常謝謝大家。