Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech Transcript 2005

Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech Transcript

Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, gave a commencement address at Stanford University for the class of 2005. Read the full transcript of the June 12, 2005 commencement speech here.

best speech by steve jobs

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best speech by steve jobs

Steve Jobs: ( 00:21 ) 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’d I drop out? It started before I was born.

Steve Jobs: ( 01:15 ) 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 02:13 ) 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 03:04 ) 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, 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 sanserif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

Steve Jobs: ( 04:03 ) 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. Since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 04:58 ) Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 05:38 ) My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I love to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ 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 2 billion 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 you 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 06:28 ) 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 07:04 ) The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected, but I was still in love. 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’ve 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 07:49 ) In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought Next and I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at Next is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. Laurene 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. 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 08:21 ) 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. 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 09:04 ) 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. 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? 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 10:11 ) 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 doctor’s 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 it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

Steve Jobs: ( 11:00 ) I lived 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, I’m fine now

Steve Jobs: ( 11:40 ) 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. 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 12:14 ) It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you, but someday 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 drowned 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 13:08 ) When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the Bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand, not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60’s before personal computers and desktop publishing. So it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools, and great notions. Stewart 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.

Steve Jobs: ( 13:52 ) 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. I’ve 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.

Speaker 1: ( 14:56 ) The preceding program is copyrighted by Stanford University. Please visit us at stanford.edu.

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Here's the full text of Steve Jobs' famous Stanford commencement speech

Kif leswing   .

Here's the full text of Steve Jobs' famous Stanford commencement speech

YouTube/Stanford

It's a well-known speech, and one of Jobs' most notable public appearances. It's a short speech, but it still highlights Jobs' considerable strengths as a storyteller and inspirational leader. 

On Wednesday, current Apple CEO Tim Cook and other people close to Apple  memorialized Jobs , who died five years ago. 

Read the speech: 

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.

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?

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.

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:

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.

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 sinceWindows just copied the Mac, it's 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.

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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

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 parents 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 $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had 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 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. 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 had 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 worlds 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, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene 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. Sometimes life hits 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 your 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. 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 until you find it. 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, 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 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 doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to 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 it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived 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 doctors 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 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. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is 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 bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart 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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Wearing jeans and sandals under his black robe, Jobs delivered a keynote address that spanned his adoption at birth to his insights into mortality after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year ago. In plainspoken terms, his address struck a balance between the obstacles he has encountered during his notably public life and the lessons he has gleaned—for example, from his high-profile ousting in 1985 from the computer company he helped start.

Go to the web site to view the video.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement address

“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,” said Jobs, 50. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.”

The 2005 Commencement proceeded with its familiar mix of the goofy and the formal: Graduates attached plush animals to their caps and carried body-length flotation devices onto the field for the Wacky Walk. This traditional kickoff to the ceremony was once again a flurry of wild wigs, rock-star shades, feather boas and a few Speedo swim trunks.

Also seen were a procession of walking iPods, several balloon floats, spray-painted umbrellas and one group that unfurled a volleyball net and spontaneously started to play. The first ones on the field carried boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, while behind them a dance troupe in tutus and ape masks pranced around the track.

But calm was restored once the graduates took their seats and the Rev. Scotty McLennan, dean for religious life, delivered the opening invocation. President John Hennessy then welcomed the estimated 23,000 people in the stadium and, after a presentation of faculty, staff and student awards by Provost John Etchemendy, returned to the podium to introduce the keynote speaker.

Hennessy said Jobs embodied the university’s spirit, its “willingness to be bold and strike out in new directions.” Hennessy also touched on Jobs’ reputation as an innovator, a visionary and an advocate for education who developed partnerships during Apple’s earliest days to get computers into schools and communities.

Jobs began by noting that he dropped out of college, and that Sunday’s ceremony was the closest he had ever gotten to a university graduation. He then launched into the first part of his address, which focused on having faith that the dots of one’s life will connect down the road, even if the journey so far has not followed a clear pattern.

Jobs said his biological mother was an unwed graduate student who wanted him to go to college, so she chose a lawyer and his wife to be the adoptive parents. But because they ultimately wanted a girl, he was adopted by a working-class couple—neither of whom had college degrees, Jobs said.

Jobs said they pledged to send him to college, and when the time came, he chose Reed College in Portland, Ore. Concerned that tuition was draining his parents’ life savings and dissatisfied by his required courses, Jobs said he dropped out and began taking courses that interested him, including a calligraphy course that, a decade later, inspired him to design different fonts for the first Macintosh.

“Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward,” Jobs said. “You can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Jobs also talked about love and loss, and how he discovered what he wanted to do in life at an early age. He was 20 years old when he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer, which in 10 years grew into a $2 billion company with 4,000 employees. After his departure from Apple, Jobs went on to found NeXT Software Inc., which was subsequently bought by Apple in 1997, returning him to the company that got him started.

“I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple,” Jobs said. “I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.”

The last part of his speech was about death. When he was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, Jobs said doctors initially gave him up to six months to live. His cancer turned out to be a rare, curable form, and he quickly underwent surgery. He has since recovered, but the experience nonetheless taught him another lesson.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

After a standing ovation, Hennessy brought the ceremony to a close with remarks that honored Jane Stanford?this year being the centennial of her death. The graduates of each school were then asked by their deans to stand for the conferral of degrees by Hennessy.

“Stanford is committed to keeping the spirit envisioned by Jane and Leland Stanford alive, and instilling it in the generations of students who pass this way,” Hennessy said. “And so, I hope that you leave this campus with a strong reservoir of the Stanford spirit, a reservoir that will grow over the years.”

On Sunday, 1,782 bachelor’s degrees were awarded, along with 2,026 master’s degrees and 904 doctoral degrees, according to Paddy McGowan, associate registrar and director of institutional research. Of the 1,732 undergraduates, 844 were female and 888 were male. Departmental honors were awarded to 388 undergraduates, 294 graduated with university distinction, 118 graduated with multiple majors, 477 completed minors, 70 graduated with dual bachelor’s degrees and 133 graduated with combined bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Among international students, there were 95 undergraduates from 40 different countries and 948 graduate students from 70 different nations, according to McGowan.

“I just can’t believe that I got here,” said Farah Giga of the Southern California suburb of LaVerne, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree with honors in computer science. “This makes five all-nighters in a row totally worth it.”

Kateri Jones sat among family members who came from all over California and Colorado for her daughter, Dyani Jones, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human biology. One of the biggest achievements, her mother said, was just getting to this point.

“I just think it’s a remarkable accomplishment to get through this school,” she said. “Just the challenge of being here.”

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Steve Jobs Speech at Stanford University

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Steve Jobs Stanford University Inspirational Speech

Steve Jobs, Stanford University, Inspirational Speech, Commencement Speech, Motivation, Transcript, Analysis, The Meaning Behind, Success, Apple, Pixar, Next, Connecting the dots, story about death, story about love, love what you do, don't settle.

1. Steve Jobs's inspirational speech story 1: CONNECTING THE DOTS

2. steve jobs's inspirational speech story 2: story about love, 3. steve jobs's inspirational speech story 3: story about death.

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Stanford university commencement 2005 - steve jobs.

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At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself.

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Steve Jobs' Speech At Stanford University

Steve Jobs said in a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University that "no one wants to die." Yet, "no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life." Apple's co-founder died Wednesday at the age of 56.

Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Top Three Steve Jobs Speeches

As a CEO, Steve Jobs will be remembered for many things–not just as a purveyor of innovative, landscape-changing products. He’ll also be remembered as one of the most powerful and charismatic orators and marketers of our time. Here are my top three picks for Steve Jobs’ most compelling speeches.

Apple’s Partnership with Microsoft at Macworld Boston, 1997

Steve Jobs handled a lot of tough crowds (a recent example was Antennagate , which was easily quelled by handing out free iPhone 4 cases). But perhaps Jobs’ toughest situation came in 1997, after Bill Gates and Microsoft bailed Apple out of impending bankruptcy with a $150 million stock purchase — and a few added provisions.

best speech by steve jobs

Ever the master, Jobs laid on the charm and made the problem disappear with just one line, delivered with a smirk: “… since we believe in choice ” (2:42), reminding his grumbling audience that Mac users can, of course, change their default browser settings. And change they did: Internet Explorer is no longer available for the Mac.

The “one more thing” moment (4:29) isn’t a new product, but a special guest: Bill Gates, who appears on the big screen much like Big Brother did in Apple’s 1984 Macintosh SuperBowl ad . This, too, caused a wave of dissent from the crowd, and Jobs, who had looked defeated up until Gates’ visage left the screen, followed through with words advocating a complete change (around minute 7:15).

“If we want to move forward, see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace the notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us, that’s great … And if we screw up and don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault — it’s our fault … So the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry, to get healthy and prosper again.”

Jobs then switched to a slide of Apple’s logo and Microsoft’s logo together, and then got serious about Apple’s “Think Differently” marketing campaign, ruminating on how Apple products are for “people who aren’t just out to get a job, but for people who want to change the world.”

It’s a clever and heartening follow-up to a situation that seemed, to many, like the beginning of Apple’s eventual downfall … which, of course, never happened.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Merging the themes of life, growth, and death, Jobs’ 2005 commencement address to Stanford University was stirring in a way that transcends many cut-and-paste graduation speeches.

In his address, Jobs told three stories set in three pivotal moments of his life, one of the most important being when he was fired from Apple (7:14):

“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.”

best speech by steve jobs

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers … Keep looking. Don’t settle.”

“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.”

Jobs’ speech was so inspiring, in fact, that its even been ripped off by others around the world .

Apple iPad 2 Keynote, Special Event, March 2011

Jobs’ unexpected appearance at the iPad 2 event in March 2011 caused a lot of stir. He had just taken an indefinite medical leave of absence , and already people were wondering what Apple would look like post-Jobs.

His keynote didn’t contain the flourishes audiences had grown accustomed to. In fact, Jobs seemed in poor health and spoke in a quiet, gravelly voice. But during his discussion of the post-PC world Jobs linked his long-held philosophy about the marriage of technology and the liberal arts — an idea that Jobs espoused in a 1985 Playboy interview when discussing how work computers needn’t be dull: “If we can inject that liberal-arts spirit into the very serious realm of business, I think it will be a worthwhile contribution. We can’t even conceive of how far it will go.”

best speech by steve jobs

Simple, yet it cuts straight to the core of not only Apple’s philosophy when it comes to building products that change the tech landscape (as well as our everyday lives), but also the thinking of one of our century’s greatest inventors and public speakers.

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Full Transcript Of The Steve Jobs Commencement Speech At Stanford University: An Uplifting Message For All

The 2005 Steve Jobs commencement speech from Stanford University is a testament to his remarkable storytelling abilities and a reminder of the power of words.

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In 2005, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered the commencement speech at Stanford University . A powerful orator, Jobs’ brief address is a testament to his exceptional storytelling and motivational abilities. This speech is widely regarded as one of his most memorable public appearances.

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Transcript

Steve jobs commencement speech.

For the structure of Jobs’ speech, he decided to share three short stories from his life. Here’s the full transcript of the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University.

Here’s the full transcript of the famous Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech.

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. 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? 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. 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: 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. 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, it’s 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. 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. 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 parents 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 $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had 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 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. 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 had 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 worlds 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, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene 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. Sometimes life hits 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 your 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. 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 until you find it. 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, 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 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 doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to 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 it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived 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 doctors 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 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. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is 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 ($50+ via Amazon) , which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of  The Whole Earth Catalog , and then when it had run its course, they put out a( Amazon link) 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. Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University (2005)

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech

With its short but powerful words, Steve Jobs showcased his powerful strengths as both a leader and a storyteller. Several lines from his speech, including “ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life ,” are frequently quoted to this day.

For anyone else giving a commencement speech, Jobs set the bar pretty high. If you’re even trying to come close, good luck!

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Frank Wilson is a retired teacher with over 30 years of combined experience in the education, small business technology, and real estate business. He now blogs as a hobby and spends most days tinkering with old computers. Wilson is passionate about tech, enjoys fishing, and loves drinking beer.

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11 presentation lessons you can still learn from steve jobs.

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Steve Jobs is still the word’s greatest corporate storyteller. I’ve seen plenty of talented speakers in the past year and I’ve written about many of them in this column but I have yet to find someone as good as Steve Jobs. This is why I have spent so many years reviewing, analyzing and sharing Jobs’ presentation techniques because leaders and entrepreneurs today need to carry on his legacy if we hope to inspire the world with our ideas. His keynote presentations continue to attract thousands of views on YouTube and he has profoundly impacted the way leaders communicate.

Earlier this year a Wall Street Journal article titled Bio As Bible featured managers who are imitating Steve Jobs based on what they’ve learned in Walter Isaacson’s biography and also from one of my books, The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs . While I’m very proud that the WSJ highlighted my content, dressing like Jobs is not going to inspire your audience. However, there are many other presentation techniques that you can and should copy from Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was an astonishing presenter because he informed, inspired, and entertained. In this article I outline 11 techniques from one presentation, the iPhone launch in 2007 . If your presentation is tomorrow and you only have time to incorporate a few ideas, then spend 7 minutes to watch this video where I highlight just three techniques from the same presentation. If you want the whole enchilada, read on.

Watch on Forbes:

Express your passion. Steve Jobs was passionate about design, he absolutely loved his new product, and he wore his enthusiasm on his black-mock sleeve. “It looks pretty doggone gorgeous,” he said with a big smile after showing the iPhone for the first time. Jobs often used words such as “cool,” “amazing,” or “gorgeous” because he believed it. Your audience is giving you permission to show enthusiasm. If you’re not excited about your idea, nobody else will be.

Create a Twitter-friendly headline. Jobs used a technique I’ve labeled the “Twitter-friendly headline,” a one-sentence summary of a product that perfectly captured the main message he wished to deliver. Shortly after showing the new phone, Jobs proudly proclaimed, “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” The headline, “Apple reinvents the phone” was the only sentence on the slide. He repeated the headline several times during the presentation. A Google search for the phrase turns up about 25,000 links, most of which are directly from articles and blog posts covering the launch presentation.

Stick to the rule of three. Jobs instinctively understood that the number “3” is one of the most powerful numbers in communications. A list of 3 things is more intriguing than 2 and far easier to remember than 22. Jobs divided his iPhone presentation into three sections. He spoke about the iPod functions of the new iPhone, the phone itself, and connecting to the Internet. Jobs even had some fun with three. He stepped on stage and said, “Today we are introducing three revolutionary products. The first, a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second, is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.” As the audience applauded, Jobs repeated the three ‘products’ several times. Finally he said, “Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, they are one device and we are calling it iPhone!”

Introduce a villain. All great stories have a hero and a villain. A Steve Jobs presentation was no exception. In 2007, why did the world need another mobile phone, especially from Apple? Jobs set up the narrative by introducing a villain—a problem in need of a solution: “Regular cell phones are not so smart and they are not so easy to use. Smartphones are a little smarter, but are harder to use. They are really complicated…we want to make a leapfrog product, way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super easy to use. This is what iPhone is.”

Sell the benefit. After expanding on the villain (the problem), Jobs introduced the hero (the benefit). The benefit included the new user multi-touch user interface. According to Jobs, “It works like magic. You don’t need a stylus. It’s far more accurate than any touch display that’s ever been shipped. It ignores unintended touches. It’s super smart. You can do multi-finger gestures on it. And boy have we patented it.”

Build simple, visual slides. The average PowerPoint slide has forty words. In the first three minutes of Steve Jobs’ iPhone presentation, he uses a grand total of nineteen words (twenty-one if you include dates). Those words are also distributed across about twelve slides. For more tips on using ‘picture superiority’ in your slide design, please read my earlier article on Jeff Bezos and the end of PowerPoint as we know it.

Tell stories. Before Jobs revealed the new phone, he spent a moment to review the history of Apple, telling a story that built up to the big event. “In 1984, Apple introduced the first Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPod. It didn’t just change the way we all listen to music. It changed the entire music industry.” Stories can be brand stories, customer stories, or personal ones. In one very funny moment, Jobs’ clicker failed to advance the slides. After a few seconds of trying to fix it, he paused and told a short story of a how he and Steve Wozniak used to pull pranks on students at Wozniak’s college dorm. Woz had invented a device that jammed TV signals and they used it to tease students when they were watching Star Trek. It brought some levity to the keynote, the problem was fixed, and Jobs effortlessly moved along.

Watch this clip

Prepare and practice excessively. The clicker snafu that I just described teaches another great lesson for all presenters. Jobs casually laughed off the glitch, told a story, and got back to his presentation when his team resolved the issue. He never missed a beat and certainly didn’t get flustered. Jobs was legendary for his preparation. He would rehearse on stage for many hours over many weeks prior to the launch of a major product. He knew every detail of every demo and every font on every slide. As a result the presentation was delivered flawlessly. People often tell me, “I’m not as smooth as Jobs was.” Well, neither was he! Hours and hours of practice made Jobs look polished, casual, and effortless.

Avoid reading from notes. The introduction of the iPhone lasted about 80 minutes. Not once did Jobs read from a teleprompter or notecards. He had internalized the content so well that he didn’t need notes. During the demos, however, he did have a very short list of bullet points hidden from the audience’s view. Those bullets served as reminders and they were the only notes he relied upon.

Have fun. When Jobs first told the audience that Apple was going to introduce a mobile phone he said, “Here it is.” Instead of showing the iPhone, the slide displayed a photo of an iPod with an old-fashioned rotary dial on it. The audience got a kick out of it, laughing and clapping. They had been played and Jobs was enjoying their reaction. There were many funny moments, including a crank call. Jobs was demonstrating the maps feature to show how easy it was to find a location and call the number. He found a Starbucks nearby and called it. A woman picked up the phone and said, “Good morning, Starbucks. How can I help you?” Jobs said, “I’d like to order 4,000 lattes to go, please. No, just kidding. Wrong number. Bye bye.” The audience loved it. I’ve never seen Jobs enjoy himself more in a keynote.

Inspire your audience. Jobs liked to end his keynotes with something uplifting and inspiring. At the end of the iPhone presentation he said, “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I’ve been so excited about today…There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ We’ve always tried to do that at Apple since the very, very beginning. And we always will.”

Steve Jobs educated, entertained, informed, and inspired his audiences in every presentation. So can you. It takes work, planning, and creativity, but if someone is willing to listen to your ideas it’s worth the effort to make it great.

Read more: Untold Stories About Steve Jobs: Friends And Colleagues Share Their Memories

Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of several books, including the international bestsellers The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs . His new book, The Apple Experience , is the first book to reveal the secrets behind the stunning success of the Apple Retail Store. Carmine has recently launched an eLearning course titled, The New Rules of Persuasive Presentations . Follow Carmine on Facebook or Twitter .

Carmine Gallo

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Watch Never-Before-Seen Footage of Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Computers in 1983

The Steve Jobs Archive today shared never-before-seen footage of 28-year-old Steve Jobs speaking at the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado. His speech was focused on the future of computers and how they would change daily life.

Steve Jobs Younger

The new page features an introduction from Ive, who led design at Apple for over two decades and was a close friend of Jobs:

Steve rarely attended design conferences. This was 1983, before the launch of the Mac, and still relatively early days of Apple. I find it breathtaking how profound his understanding was of the dramatic changes that were about to happen as the computer became broadly accessible. Of course, beyond just being prophetic, he was fundamental in defining products that would change our culture and our lives forever. On the eve of launching the first truly personal computer, Steve is not solely preoccupied with the founding technology and functionality of the product’s design. This is extraordinarily unusual, as in the early stages of dramatic innovation, it is normally the primary technology that benefits from all of the attention and focus. Steve points out that the design effort in the U.S. at the time had been focused on the automobile, with little consideration or effort given to consumer electronics. While it is not unusual to hear leaders talk about the national responsibility to manufacture, I thought it was interesting that he talked about a nation’s responsibility to design. In the talk, Steve predicts that by 1986 sales of the PC would exceed sales of cars, and that in the following ten years, people would be spending more time with a PC than in a car. These were absurd claims for the early 1980s. Describing what he sees as the inevitability that this would be a pervasive new category, he asks the designers in the audience for help. He asks that they start to think about the design of these products, because designed well or designed poorly, they still would be made. Steve remains one of the best educators I’ve ever met in my life. He had that ability to explain incredibly abstract, complex technologies in terms that were accessible, tangible and relevant. You hear him describe the computer as doing nothing more than completing fairly mundane tasks, but doing so very quickly. He gives the example of running out to grab a bunch of flowers and returning by the time you could snap your fingers – speed rendering the task magical. When I look back on our work, what I remember most fondly are not the products but the process. Part of Steve’s brilliance was how he learned to support the creative process, encouraging and developing ideas even in large groups of people. He treated the process of creating with a rare and wonderful reverence. The revolution Steve described over 40 years ago did of course happen, partly because of his profound commitment to a kind of civic responsibility. He cared, way beyond any sort of functional imperative. His was a victory for beauty, for purity and, as he would say, for giving a damn. He truly believed that by making something useful, empowering and beautiful, we express our love for humanity.

Head to "The Objects of Our Life" page to learn more about the speech that Jobs gave, and to view some related photos and exhibits from that time.

The full video of Jobs speaking can be found towards the bottom of the page.

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Top rated comments.

Timo_Existencia Avatar

Without Jobs, Woz would have had a long, unremarkable career as an engineer at HP (and maybe Agilent if he'd worked long enough to still be there at the split). Which isn't to dump on Woz - it's just that he had no passion to sell products the way Jobs did.

Analog Kid Avatar

Every time I get a new mail from Steve Jobs Archive, I understand my dislike Tim Cook more and more.

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