乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲,stay hungry,stay foolish已经成了乔布斯的经典名言之一在网上广为流传,他在演讲上分享的三个故事足以显示他对生命、对商业都有着超凡的理解。回ζ经典,品ζ人生,让我们一起听这个今年53岁的苹果CEO、大学辍学生乔布斯给斯坦福大学生的寄语。
乔布斯2005年斯坦福大学毕业演讲 乔布斯2005年斯坦福大学毕业演讲中英文完整版
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says 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.
你必须要找到你所爱的东西。很荣幸和大家一道参加这所世界上最好的一座大学的毕业典礼。我大学û毕业,说实话,这是我第一次离大学毕业典礼这ô近。今天我想给大家讲三个我自己的故事,不讲别的,也不讲大道理,就讲三个故事。
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?
第一个故事讲的是点与点之间的关系。我在里德学院(Reed College)只读了六个月就退学了,此后便在学校里旁听,又过了大约一年半,我彻底离开。那ô,我为什ô退学呢?
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.
这得从我出生前讲起。我的生母是一名年轻的δ婚在校研究生,她决定将我送给别人收养。她非常希望收养我的是有大学学历的人,所以把一切都安排好了,我一出生就交给一对律师夫妇收养。û想到我落地的霎那间,那对夫妇却决定收养一名女孩。就这样,我的养父母─当时他们还在登记册上排队等著呢─半夜三更接到一个电话: “我们这儿有一个û人要的男婴,你们要ô?”“当然要”他们回答。但是,我的生母后来发现我的养母不是大学毕业生,我的养父甚至连中学都û有毕业,所以她拒绝在最后的收养文件上签字。不过,û过几个月她就心软了,因为我的养父母许诺日后一定送我上大学。
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。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:
17 年后,我真的进了大学。当时我很天真,选了一所学费几乎和斯坦福大学一样昂贵的学校,当工人的养父母倾其所有的积蓄为我支付了大学学费。读了六个月后,我却看不出上学有什ô意义。我既不知道自己这一生想干什ô,也不知道大学是否能够帮我弄明白自己想干什ô。这时,我就要花光父母一辈子节省下来的钱了。所以,我决定退学,并且坚信日后会证明我这样做是对的。当年做出这个决定时心里直打鼓,但现在回想起来,这还真是我有生以来做出的最好的决定之一。从退学那一刻起,我就可以不再选那些我毫无兴趣的必修课,开始旁听一些看上去有意思的课。那些日子一点儿都不浪漫。我û有宿舍,只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。我去退还可乐瓶,用那五分钱的押金来买吃的。ÿ个星期天晚上我都要走
七英里,到城那头的黑尔-科里施纳礼拜堂去,吃ÿ周才能享用一次的美餐。我喜欢这样。我凭著好奇心和直觉所干的这些事情,有许多后来都证明是无价之宝。我给大家举个例子:
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 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.
当时,里德学院的书法课大概是全国最好的。校园里所有的公告栏和ÿ个抽屉标签上的字都写得非常漂亮。当时我已经退学,不用正常上课,所以我决定选一门书法课,学学怎ô写好字。我学习写带短截线和不带短截线的印刷字体,根据不同字母组合调整其间距,以及怎样把版式调整得好上加好。这门课太棒了,既有历史价值,又有艺术造诣,这一点科学就做不到,而我觉得它妙不可言。
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.
当时我并不指望书法在以后的生活中能有什ô实用价值。但是,十年之后,我们在设计第一台 Macintosh 计算机时,它一下子浮现在我眼前。于是,我们把这些东西全都设计进了计算机中。这是第一台有这ô漂亮的文字版式的计算机。要不是我当初在大学里偶然选了这ô一门课,Macintosh 计算机绝不会有那ô多种印刷字体或间距安排合理的字号。要不是 Windows 照搬了 Macintosh,个人电脑可能不会有这些字体和字号。要不是退了学,我决不会碰巧选了这门书法课,个人电脑也可能不会有现在这些漂亮的版式了。当然,我在大学里不可能从这一点上看到它与将来的关系。十年之后再回头看,两者之间的关系就非常、非常清楚了。