喬布斯在斯坦福大學(xué)的畢業(yè)典禮演講
史蒂夫·喬布斯(Steve Jobs)在斯坦福大學(xué)的演講中談到了他生活中的三次體驗(yàn)，這三次體驗(yàn)不僅在斯坦福大學(xué)的畢業(yè)生、也在硅谷乃至其他地方的技術(shù)同行中引起了巨大反響。尤其The Whole Earth Catalog提到的話，作為雜志，這是一種精神，一種氣質(zhì)。
喬布斯斯坦福大學(xué)的畢業(yè)典禮演講：求知若渴，大智若愚
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.
謝謝大家。很榮幸能和你們，來自世界最好大學(xué)之一的畢業(yè)生們，一塊兒參加畢業(yè)典禮。老實(shí)說，我大學(xué)沒有畢業(yè)，今天恐怕是我一生中離大學(xué)畢業(yè)最近的一次了。
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
今天我想告訴大家來自我生活的三個(gè)故事。沒什么大不了的，只是三個(gè)故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一個(gè)故事，如何串連生命中的點(diǎn)滴。
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.
我在里得大學(xué)讀了六個(gè)月就退學(xué)了，但是在18個(gè)月之后--我真正退學(xué)之前，我還常去學(xué)校。為何我要選擇退學(xué)呢?這還得從我出生之前說起。我的生母是一個(gè)年輕、未婚的大學(xué)畢業(yè)生，她決定讓別人收養(yǎng)我。她有一個(gè)很強(qiáng)烈的信仰，認(rèn)為我應(yīng)該被一個(gè)大學(xué)畢業(yè)生家庭收養(yǎng)。于是，一對律師夫婦說好了要領(lǐng)養(yǎng)我，然而最后一秒鐘，他們改變了主意，決定要個(gè)女孩兒。然后我排在收養(yǎng)人名單中的養(yǎng)父母在一個(gè)深夜接到電話，“很意外，我們多了一個(gè)男嬰，你們要嗎?”“當(dāng)然要!”但是我的生母后來又發(fā)現(xiàn)我的養(yǎng)母沒有大學(xué)畢業(yè)，養(yǎng)父連高中都沒有畢業(yè)。她拒絕在領(lǐng)養(yǎng)書上簽字。幾個(gè)月后，我的養(yǎng)父母保證會(huì)讓我上大學(xué)，她妥協(xié)了。
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 of 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 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 far more interesting.
這是我生命的開端。十七年后，我上大學(xué)了，但是我很無知地選了一所差不多和斯坦福一樣貴的學(xué)校，幾乎花掉我那藍(lán)領(lǐng)階層養(yǎng)父母一生的積蓄。六個(gè)月后，我覺得不值得。我看不出自己以后要做什么，也不曉得大學(xué)會(huì)怎樣幫我指點(diǎn)迷津，而我卻在花銷父母一生的積蓄。所以我決定退學(xué)，并且相信沒有做錯(cuò)。一開始非常嚇人，但回憶起來，這卻是我一生中作的最好的決定之一。從我退學(xué)的那一刻起，我可以停止一切不感興趣的必修課，開始旁聽那些有意思得多的課。
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the 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.
事情并不那么美好。我沒有宿舍可住，睡在朋友房間的地上。為了吃飯，我收集五分一個(gè)的舊可樂瓶，每個(gè)星期天晚上步行七英里到哈爾-克里什納廟里改善一下一周的伙食。我喜歡這種生活方式。能夠遵循自己的好奇和直覺前行后來被證明是多么的珍貴。讓我來給你們舉個(gè)例子吧。
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.