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 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 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 10 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
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 who 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’ve 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 sometime
life sometimes life’s going to 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 this 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 so keep
looking don’t settle
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
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 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 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 have the
surgery and thankfully I’m fine now
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
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 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 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 10 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
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 who 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’ve 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 sometime
life sometimes life’s going to 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 this 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 so keep
looking don’t settle
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
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 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 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 have the
surgery and thankfully I’m fine now
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
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