here’s to the crazy ones The Misfits the
rebels the troublemakers the round pegs
in the square holes the ones who see
things differently they’re not fond of
rules and they have no respect for the
status quo you can quote them disagree
with them glorify or vilify them about
the only thing you can’t do is ignore
them because they change things they
push the human race forward while some
may see them as the crazy ones we see
genius because the people who are crazy
enough to think they can change the
though we tend to look forward and you
know one of the things I did when I got
back to Apple ten years ago was I I gave
the museum to Stanford and all the
papers and all the old machines and kind
of cleared out the cobwebs and said
let’s stop looking backwards here it’s
all about what happens tomorrow and yeah
because you can’t you can’t look back
and say well gosh you know I wish I
hadn’t gotten fired I wish I was there I
wish this I wish that it doesn’t matter
and so let’s go invent tomorrow rather
than worrying about what happened to
yesterday I was worth about over a
million dollars when I was 23 and over
10 million dollars when I was 24 and
over a hundred million dollars when I
was 25 and it wasn’t that important
because I never did it for the money I I
think money is wonderful thing because
it enables you to do things enables you
to invest in ideas that don’t have a
short-term payback and things like that
but especially at that point in my life
it was it was not the most important
thing the most important thing was the
company the people the products we were
making what we were gonna enable people
to do with these products so I didn’t
think about it a great deal and I never
sold any stock just really believed that
the company would would do very well
over the long term me manage you if they
know what if once they know what to do
they’ll go figure out how to do it they
don’t need to be managed at all what
they need is a common vision and that’s
what leadership is what leadership is is
having a vision being able to articulate
that so the people around you can
understand it and getting a consensus on
a common vision we wanted people that
were insanely great at what they did but
work we’re not necessarily those
seasoned professionals but who had on at
the tips of their fingers and in their
passion the latest understanding of
where technology was and what we
that technology and who wanted to bring
that to lots of people so the neatest
thing that happens is when you get a
core group of you know ten great people
that it becomes self policing as to who
they let into that group so I consider
the most important job of someone like
myself is recruiting 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 look 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 5
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
Reeth 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 for just the two of us in a garage
into a two billion dollar company with
4,000 points 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 you
started well as Apple grew we hired
someone who I thought was very talented
to run the company with her 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 about 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’d 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
I was a very public failure and I even
thought about running away from the
valley but something slowly began to
the turn of events at Apple had not
cheese 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 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 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’ve 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 them remembering that all 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 of
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
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 good-byes 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 had the surgery and thankfully
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 be
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 he 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
in run its course they put out a final
on the back cover of their final issue
is a photograph of an early morning
mind you might find yourself hitchhiking
on he was 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
rebels the troublemakers the round pegs
in the square holes the ones who see
things differently they’re not fond of
rules and they have no respect for the
status quo you can quote them disagree
with them glorify or vilify them about
the only thing you can’t do is ignore
them because they change things they
push the human race forward while some
may see them as the crazy ones we see
genius because the people who are crazy
enough to think they can change the
though we tend to look forward and you
know one of the things I did when I got
back to Apple ten years ago was I I gave
the museum to Stanford and all the
papers and all the old machines and kind
of cleared out the cobwebs and said
let’s stop looking backwards here it’s
all about what happens tomorrow and yeah
because you can’t you can’t look back
and say well gosh you know I wish I
hadn’t gotten fired I wish I was there I
wish this I wish that it doesn’t matter
and so let’s go invent tomorrow rather
than worrying about what happened to
yesterday I was worth about over a
million dollars when I was 23 and over
10 million dollars when I was 24 and
over a hundred million dollars when I
was 25 and it wasn’t that important
because I never did it for the money I I
think money is wonderful thing because
it enables you to do things enables you
to invest in ideas that don’t have a
short-term payback and things like that
but especially at that point in my life
it was it was not the most important
thing the most important thing was the
company the people the products we were
making what we were gonna enable people
to do with these products so I didn’t
think about it a great deal and I never
sold any stock just really believed that
the company would would do very well
over the long term me manage you if they
know what if once they know what to do
they’ll go figure out how to do it they
don’t need to be managed at all what
they need is a common vision and that’s
what leadership is what leadership is is
having a vision being able to articulate
that so the people around you can
understand it and getting a consensus on
a common vision we wanted people that
were insanely great at what they did but
work we’re not necessarily those
seasoned professionals but who had on at
the tips of their fingers and in their
passion the latest understanding of
where technology was and what we
that technology and who wanted to bring
that to lots of people so the neatest
thing that happens is when you get a
core group of you know ten great people
that it becomes self policing as to who
they let into that group so I consider
the most important job of someone like
myself is recruiting 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 look 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 5
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
Reeth 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 for just the two of us in a garage
into a two billion dollar company with
4,000 points 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 you
started well as Apple grew we hired
someone who I thought was very talented
to run the company with her 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 about 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’d 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
I was a very public failure and I even
thought about running away from the
valley but something slowly began to
the turn of events at Apple had not
cheese 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 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 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’ve 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 them remembering that all 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 of
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
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 good-byes 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 had the surgery and thankfully
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 be
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 he 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
in run its course they put out a final
on the back cover of their final issue
is a photograph of an early morning
mind you might find yourself hitchhiking
on he was 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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