Stanford University, 2005
Steve Jobs
CEO, Apple and Pixar Animation
Truth be told, I never graduated from college…
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life…
- Connecting the Dots
I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was… one of the best decisions I ever made.
It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.
- Love and Loss
I still loved what I did.
I’d been rejected but I was still in love, so I decided to start over.
You have got to find what you love… do what you believe is great work… love what you do… don’t settle… you’ll know when you find it.
Keep looking, don’t settle.
- Death
If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.
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 make the big choices in life.
You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
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 change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions to drown out your inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become, everything else is secondary.
You have to trust in something… 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.
Stay hungry.
Stay foolish.
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