Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish（求知若饥，虚心若愚）
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.
今天，我很荣幸能和你们一起参加毕业典礼，斯坦福大学是世界上最好的大学之一。我从来没有从大学毕业。说实话，这是我离大学毕业最近的一次。今天我想给大家讲三个我生活中的故事。就是这样。没什么大不了的。只是三个故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事是关于连点成线的。
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?
我在里德学院(Reed College)读了6个月就退学了，但在我真正退学之前，我又旁听了18个月左右。那我为什么要退学呢?
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.
在我出生前就开始了。我的生母是一名年轻的未婚大学毕业生，她决定让别人收养我。她强烈地认为我应该被大学毕业生收养，所以一切都准备好了，我一出生就被一个律师和他的妻子收养。但当我出生后，他们在最后一刻决定要个女孩。所以我的生养父母(他们还在我的等候名单上)突然在半夜接到了一个电话:“我们这儿有一个不小心生出来的男孩;你想要他吗?他们说:“当然。”我的生母后来发现，我的养母从来没有上过大学，我的养父甚至连高中都没有毕业。她拒绝在最后的收养文件上签字。直到几个月后，我的父母答应我将来上大学，她才软化了态度。
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.
17年后，我真的上了大学。但我很天真地选择了一所几乎和斯坦福大学一样贵的学校，我父母都是工薪阶层，他们的积蓄都花在了我的学费上。六个月后，我看不出其中的价值。我不知道我这一生想做什么，也不知道大学能如何帮我找到答案。在这里，我花光了我父母一生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，相信一切都会好起来的。那时候很可怕，但现在回想起来，那是我做过的最好的决定之一。从我退学的那一刻起，我就可以不用上那些我不感兴趣的必修课了，我可以开始旁听那些看起来很有趣的课。
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 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:
这并不完全是浪漫的。我没有宿舍,所以我睡在地板上在朋友的房间,我回到可乐瓶5分钱存款来购买食物,我会步行7英里穿过市区,每个星期天晚上一顿好的一周在印度教克利须那派教徒殿。我很喜欢。我跟随自己的好奇心和直觉所遇到的很多事情，后来都被证明是无价之宝。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.
当时里德学院提供的书法课程也许是全国最好的。校园里的每一张海报，每一个抽屉上的标签，都是漂亮的手写体。因为我已经退学了，不用上正常的课程，所以我决定上一门书法课来学习如何写书法。我学到了衬线字体和无衬线字体，学会了如何在不同的字母组合之间改变间距，学会了如何做出优秀的版式。那是一种科学无法捕捉到的美丽、历史和艺术精妙，我觉得它很迷人。
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.
这一切在我的生活中都没有任何实际应用的希望。但十年后，当我们在设计第一台麦金塔电脑时，这一切又回到了我的脑海。我们把所有的东西都设计进了Mac。这是第一台有漂亮字体的电脑。如果我大学时没有旁听那门课，Mac就不会有这么多种字体，也不会有这么比例间距的字体。由于Windows只是复制了Mac，很可能没有个人电脑会有它们。如果我没有退学，我就不会旁听这门书法课，个人电脑也就不会有现在这么漂亮的字体了。当然，当我还在上大学的时候，想要把眼前的点点滴滴串连起来是不可能的。但十年后再回头看，一切都非常非常清楚。
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.
再说一遍，你不可能在展望未来的时候把点点滴滴串连起来;你只能在回顾的时候把它们联系起来。所以你必须相信，这些点点滴滴会在你的未来以某种方式串联起来。你必须相信某些东西——你的勇气、命运、生命、因果报应，等等。这种方法从来没有让我失望，它使我的生活完全不同。
My second story is about love and loss.
我的第二个故事是关于爱和失去。
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.
我很幸运——我很早就找到了我喜欢做的事情。20岁时，我和沃兹在父母的车库里创办了苹果公司。我们努力工作，十年后，苹果公司从那两个车库中的穷光蛋发展成为一家拥有4000多名员工、价值20亿美元的公司。在那之前的一年，我们刚刚发布了我们最好的产品——麦金塔电脑，而我刚满30岁。然后我被解雇了。你怎么会被自己创办的公司解雇呢?嗯，随着苹果的发展，我们雇了一个我认为很有天赋的人来和我一起管理公司，在最初的几年里，事情进展得很顺利。但后来我们对未来的看法发生了分歧，最后吵了起来。当我们这么做的时候，我们的董事会站在了他一边。所以在30岁的时候我被淘汰了。非常公开地。我整个成年生活的重心消失了，这是毁灭性的。
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.
有几个月我真的不知道该做什么。我觉得我让上一代的企业家们失望了——我把传递给我的接力棒弄丢了。我与戴维?帕卡德(David Packard)和鲍勃?诺伊斯(Bob Noyce)会面，试图为自己把事情搞砸而道歉。我的失败是众所周知的，我甚至想过逃离硅谷。但我渐渐明白了——我仍然热爱我所做的一切。苹果公司的事件丝毫没有改变这一点。我被拒绝了，但我仍然爱着她。所以我决定重新开始。
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. 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.
我当时没有意识到，但事实证明，被苹果公司解雇是发生在我身上最好的事情。成功的沉重被重新开始的轻松所取代，对每件事都不那么确定。它解放了我，让我进入了一生中最有创造力的时期之一。
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 retuned 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.
在接下来的五年里，我开了一家叫next的公司，还有一家叫皮克斯的公司，我爱上了一个了不起的女人，她后来成了我的妻子。Pixar制作了世界上第一个用电脑制作的动画电影——“玩具总动员”，Pixar现在也是世界上最成功的电脑制作工作室。后来，苹果公司收购了NeXT，我又回到了苹果公司，我们在NeXT开发的技术是苹果公司复兴的核心。我和劳伦有一个美好的家庭。
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. 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.
我非常肯定，如果我没有被苹果开除，这一切都不会发生。这是一剂苦药，但我想病人需要它。有时候，生活会给你当头一棒。不要失去信心。我确信唯一让我坚持下去的是我热爱我所做的。你必须找到你所爱的。你的工作和你的爱人都是如此。你的工作将会占据你生活的很大一部分，唯一能让你真正满意的方法就是去做你认为是伟大的工作。成就一番伟业的唯一途径就是热爱自己的事业。如果你还没有找到，继续找。不要停。当你用心去寻找时，你会知道的。而且，就像任何伟大的关系一样，随着岁月的流逝，它只会变得越来越好。所以继续寻找，直到你找到它。不要停。
My third story is about death.
我的第三个故事是关于死亡的。
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.
在我17岁的时候，我读到了一句话，大概是这样的:“如果你把每一天都当作生命中最后一天去生活的话，那么有一天你会发现你是正确的。”这句话给我留下了深刻的印象。从那时起，过了33年，我每天早晨都会对着镜子问自己:“如果今天是我生命中的最后一天，你会不会完成你今天想做的事情呢?”当答案连续很多次都是“不”的时候，我知道我需要改变一些事情了。
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.
“记住你即将死去”是我一生中遇到的最重要的箴言，它帮我做出了人生中的重大抉择。因为几乎所有的事情——所有的外界期望、所有的骄傲、所有对难堪或失败的恐惧——在死亡面前都会消失，只留下真正重要的东西。记住你即将死去，这是我所知道的避免陷入“你会失去某些东西”思维的最佳方法。你已经赤身裸体了。没有理由不跟随自己的内心。
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.
大约一年前，我被诊断出癌症。我在早上七点半做了一次扫描，扫描清楚地显示我的胰腺上有一个肿瘤。我甚至不知道胰腺是什么。医生告诉我，这几乎可以肯定是一种无法治愈的癌症，我的寿命不会超过3到6个月。我的医生建议我回家把事情安排好，这是医生对临终病人的忠告。这意味着你要试着在几个月内告诉你的孩子你未来十年要告诉他们的所有事情。它的意思是把所有的事情都安排妥当，这样你的家人就会尽可能的轻松。这意味着你要说再见了。
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.
我整天都带着那个诊断。那天晚上晚些时候，我做了一次活组织切片检查，医生把一个内窥镜从我的喉咙伸进去，穿过我的胃，进入我的肠子，用一根针在我的胰腺上的肿瘤上取了几个细胞。我被注射了镇定剂，但是我的妻子，当时在场，告诉我当他们在显微镜下观察这些细胞时，医生们开始哭泣，因为这是一种非常罕见的可以通过手术治愈的胰腺癌。我做了手术，现在好了。
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its 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:
这是我最接近死亡的一次，我希望这也是我未来几十年最接近死亡的一次。经历过死亡之后，我现在可以更肯定地对你们说:
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.
没有人想死。即使是想去天堂的人也不想为了去那里而死。然而，死亡是我们共同的目的地。没有人能逃脱。这是应该的，因为死亡很可能是生命最好的发明。它是生命变化的原动力。旧的不去，新的不来。现在的你们是新的，但不久的将来，你们将逐渐变成旧的，被清除。很抱歉这么戏剧化，但这是真的。
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 other’s 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.
你的时间有限，所以不要浪费时间去过别人的生活。不要被教条束缚——那是活在别人思考的结果里。不要让别人的意见淹没了你内心的声音。最重要的是，要有勇气跟随自己的内心和直觉。它们在某种程度上已经知道你真正想成为什么。其他的都是次要的。
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.
当我年轻的时候，有一本非常棒的杂志叫做《全球概览》，是我们那一代人的圣经之一。它是一个叫斯图尔特·布兰德的家伙在离这里不远的门洛帕克创造的，他用诗意的笔触把它带进了生活。那是在60年代后期，个人电脑和桌面出版还没出现，所以它都是用打字机、剪刀和宝丽来相机做出来的。它有点像平装版的谷歌，比谷歌早了35年:它是理想主义的，充满了整洁的工具和伟大的想法。
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.
斯图尔特和他的团队出版了几期《全球概览》，当它走到尽头时，他们出版了最后一期。那是20世纪70年代中期，我和你们一样大。最后一期的封底上是一张清晨乡间小路的照片，如果你有冒险精神的话，你可以自己找到这条路。下面写着:“保持饥饿。保持愚蠢。这是他们停刊时的告别语。保持愚蠢。我总是希望自己能这样。现在，在你们即将毕业、开始新生活的时候，我也这样祝愿你们。
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.求知若饥，虚心若愚