乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲
乔布斯作为苹果CEO，从一手创立苹果到被开除，最后重新回到苹果开发出了畅销全世界的IPHONE手机，他的人生不得不说是充满了传奇色彩。下面是乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲，值得一看：
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.
我今天很荣幸能与各位一起参加毕业典礼。
Truth be told, I never graduated from college.
说实话，我并未从大学毕业。
And this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.
而且这应该算是我一生中离大学毕业最近的一次了。
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.
今天我想向你们讲述我生活中的三个故事。
That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
不是什么大不了的事情，仅仅是三个小故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事是关于如何把生命中的点点滴滴串连起来。
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months.
我在雷德大学读了六个月之后就退学了。
But then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.
但是在十八个月以后——我真正的作出退学决定之前，我还是经常去学校。
So why did I drop out? It started before I was born.
我为什么要退学呢？那要从我出生的时候讲起。
My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student.
我的亲生母亲是一个年轻的，没有结婚的大学毕业生。
And she decided to put me up for adoption.
并且她决定让别人收养我。
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.
她十分想让我被大学毕业生收养，所以她为我做好了一切，我被一个律师一家收养。
Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
但出乎意料的是，当我出生之后，律师夫妇突然想要一个女孩。
So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking.
所以我的养父母（乔布斯养父养母在一个名单上）突然在半夜接到了一个电话。
“We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?”
我们现在这儿有一个不小心生出来的男婴，你们想要他吗？”
They said: “Of course.”
他们回答道：“当然想要！”
My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.
但是我生母随后发现，我的养母从来没有上过大学，我的养父甚至从未读过高中。
She refused to sign the final adoption papers.
她拒绝签这个收养合同。
She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
几个月后，在我的养父母承诺一定会送我上大学后，她才勉强同意。
This was the start in my life.
这是我生活的开始。
And 17 years later I did go to college.
十七年后，我真的上了大学。
But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford.
但是我很愚蠢的选择了一个几乎和你们斯坦福大学一样贵的学校。
And all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition.
我父母还处于蓝领阶层，他们几乎把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上面。
After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it.
在六个月后，我已经看不到其中的价值所在。
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.
我不知道要怎么做，我也不知道大学能不能帮我找到答案。
And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.
而且在这里，我几乎花光了我父母这一辈子的全部积蓄。
So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.
所以我决定要退学，我觉得这才是正确的选择。
It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
我那时的确很害怕，不过现在看来，那应该是我人生中做得最正确的选择。
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.
在我做出退学决定的那一刻，我终于可以不必去读那些令我提不起丝毫兴趣的课程了，然后我可以去攻读那些我喜欢的课程了。
It wasn’t all romantic.
不过那也不都是那么的浪漫。
I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms.
我失去了我的宿舍，所以我只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。
I returned coke bottles for the five-cent 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.
我又去捡五美分的可乐瓶了，仅仅是为了填饱肚子。每个星期天晚上，我会走7英里的路穿过波特兰市区去 Hare Krishna 神庙去吃顿好的。
I loved it.
我爱上了它。
And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
很多在这段跟随自己的好奇心和直觉度过的日子里学到的东西，后来都让我获益匪浅。
Let me give you one example.
我给你们举个例子。
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.
雷德大学当时的书法课程大概是美国国内最好的了。
Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.
校园里的每一幅海报，抽屉上的每一个标签，都是用漂亮的字体手写而成的。
Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes.
因为我已经退学，用不着去上常规课。
I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.
所以我决定去参加一门书法课，去学写字。
I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations about what makes great typography great.
我学习 Serif 字体和 San Serif 字体，关于不同字母组合中间隙空间的变化，关于怎么让好看的字体变得更好看。
It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
它很美、有悠久历史、精妙的艺术感，为科学所无法企及，我对它着迷了。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
这些对于我的生活毫无任何实际的用途，我也从没指望。
But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.
但是在10年后，当我们正在设计第一台 Macintosh 的时候，这些又回到了我的脑海里。
And we designed it all into the Mac.
并且我们把这些都注入到了 Mac 中去。
It was the first computer with beautiful typography.
那是第一台拥有着美丽字体的计算机。
If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.
假如我当年没有旁听这门课程，Mac 也许就不会有那么多种不同的字体以及字符按比例间隔的字形。
And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them.
而且要不是 Windows 照抄了 Mac 的设计，也许今天的个人电脑就不会拥有这些了。
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.
假如我当年没退学，也许我就不会旁听者们书法课了，也许个人电脑就不会有那么好看的字体了。
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
当然，在学校的时候我不可能预见到这些点滴事件之间的联系。
But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
但是，10年之后再看过去，这种联系非常非常清楚。
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.
再说一遍，你没法预知你人生的点点滴滴之间会有怎样的联系，你只能在事后把它们串接起来。
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
因此，你必须相信，这些人生的片段会在你的未来产生联系。
You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
你必须相信点什么，你的勇气、命运、生活、因缘，什么都可以。
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.
因为相信那些片段会在之后的人生之路上给你以发自内心的自信，甚至引导你走出颓废，那将改变一切。
My second story is about love and loss.
我的第二个故事是关于爱与失败。
I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life.
我很幸运，在人生很早的时期就找到了我所喜爱的东西。
Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was twenty.
20岁时，我与 Woz 在父母的车库里建立了苹果公司。
We worked hard and in ten years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.
我们很努力地工作，10年之内，苹果由最初车库中的两个人变成一家拥有4000多员工、价值20亿美元的公司。
We’d just released our finest creation the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I’d just turned thirty, and then I got fired.
那个时候我们最棒的产品Macintosh 刚刚推出一年，而我刚刚30岁，之后我被解雇了。
How can you get fired from a company you started?
你怎么可能被你自己创立的公司解雇？
Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me.
随着苹果的壮大，我们请了一个在我看来非常有才能的人来和我一起管理公司。
And for the first year or so, things went well.
第一年一切都非常顺利。
But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out.
但是后来我们对于未来的看法出现了分歧，最终我们之间起了争论。
When we did, our board of directors sided with him.
争执发生之后，我们的董事会站在了他那一边。
And so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out.
就在三十岁那年，我被炒鱿鱼了，一次非常惹人注目的解雇。
What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
一直以来都是我成年生活核心的东西，忽然不复存在了，那感觉相当可怕。
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months.
有几个月的时间，我完全不知道该干什么。
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.
我感到自己辜负了前辈企业家的期望，就像接力棒交到我的手里，而我却把它丢掉了。
I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.
我跟 David Packard 与 Bob Noyce 见面，为自己把事情弄得如此糟糕而道歉。
I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley.
我成了一名众所周知的失败者，我甚至想过离开硅谷。
But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did.
然而有一种东西慢慢地照亮了我。我依然爱着我所爱的东西。
The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.
发生在苹果公司的事并没能改变这一点。
I’d been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
虽然我被赶走了，但是我的爱依然还在，于是我决定重新开始。
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.
我当时并不知道，实际上被苹果解雇是当时发生在我身上的最好的事了。
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.
事业成功伴随的沉重不见了，取而代之的是重回起跑线的那种轻松。
Less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.
对于一切都不再确信无疑。我获得了解放，进而开始了我一生中最富有创造力的时期。
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.
在接下去的五年中，我建立了一家名叫 NeXT 的公司，另一家公司是Pixar，并与一位奇妙的女士共堕爱河，她后来成为了我的太太。
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.
Pixar 创作出了世界上第一部电脑动画电影《玩具总动员》，现在它已经是世界上最成功的动画工作室了。
In a remarkable turn of events. Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple.
再后来，一次引人注目的事件产生了转机，苹果公司买下了 NeXT，我重返苹果。
And the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.
而且我们在 NeXT 开发的技术现在成为了苹果复兴事业的核心。
And Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
Lorene 跟我也组建了一个美好的家庭。
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.
我很确定，假如苹果没有开除我，所有这一切都不会发生。
It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it.
我想，这也正是良药苦口利于病吧。
Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.
有时候，生活会给你当头一棒。不要失去信心。
I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
我确信，唯一支撑我前进的东西就是：我爱我所做的事。
You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.
你必须找到你所爱的东西，这句话不仅适用于你的工作也同样适用于你的爱情。
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.
你的工作构成了你生活的大部分，而唯一能让你真正感到满足的就是去做你认为伟大的工作，而做伟大的工作的唯一途径是爱你所做的工作。
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.
倘若你还没有找到它，请你继续，不要停下脚步。
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.
同所有与心灵相关的东西一样，当你找到它时，你就会明白。而且它会像那些美好的爱情一样，它会随着岁月的流逝而愈加醇美。
So keep looking. Don’t settle.
所以，保持前行，永不止步。
My third story is about death.
我的第三个故事是关于死亡。
When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like,
我17岁那年读到过一句话，大意是这样，
“If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”
“倘若你把每一天都当成你的最后一天，总有一天你会发现你是对的。”
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,
这话给我留下了印象。在那之后的33年里，每个早晨我都对着镜子自问，
“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
“假如今天是我人生的最后一天，我还会做我今天要做的这些事吗？”
And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
每当连续很多天答案都是“不会”的时候，我知道有什么东西需要改变了。
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
记住自己将不久于人世，这是我在作出人生重大选择时的一个最重要的参考工具。
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.
因为几乎所有的一切一切外界对你的期待、一切荣耀、一切对丢脸和失败的恐惧 -这些东西在面对死亡的时候都黯然失色，剩下的只有真正重要的东西。
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
在我看来，时刻谨记你将离去是避开“我会失去什么”这种思维陷阱最好的方式。
You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
你已经是赤裸裸的了，没有理由。