Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish - 刀目村的专栏 - CSDNBlog

Steve Jobs：Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
求知若饥，虚心若愚
Steve Jobs于2005年对史丹佛毕业生演讲全文

今天，很荣幸来到各位从世界上最好的学校之一毕业的毕业典礼上。我从来没从大学毕业过，说实话，这是我离大学毕业最近的一刻。
今天，我只说三个故事，不谈大道理，三个故事就好。
第一个故事，是关于人生中的点点滴滴如何串连在一起。
我在里德学院（Reed College）待了六个月就办休学了。到我退学前，一共休学了十八个月。那么，我为什么休学？（听众笑）
这得从我出生前讲起。
我的亲生母亲当时是个研究生，年轻未婚妈妈，她决定让别人收养我。她强烈觉得应该让有大学毕业的人收养我，所以我出生时，她就准备让我被一对律师夫妇收养。但是这对夫妻到了最后一刻反悔了，他们想收养女孩。所以在等待收养名单上的一对夫妻，我的养父母，在一天半夜里接到一通电话，问他们「有一名意外出生的男孩，你们要认养他吗？」而他们的回答是「当然要」。后来，我的生母发现，我现在的妈妈从来没有大学毕业，我现在的爸爸则连高中毕业也没有。她拒绝在认养文件上做最后签字。直到几个月后，我的养父母保证将来一定会让我上大学，她的态度才软化。
十七年后，我上大学了。但是当时我无知地选了一所学费几乎跟史丹佛一样贵的大学（听众笑），我那工人阶级的父母将所有积蓄都花在我的学费上。六个月后，我看不出念这个书的价值何在。那时候，我不知道这辈子要干什么，也不知道念大学能对我有什么帮助，只知道我为了念这个书，花光了我父母这辈子的所有积蓄，所以我决定休学，相信船到桥头自然直。
当时这个决定看来相当可怕，可是现在看来，那是我这辈子做过最好的决定之一。（听众笑）
当我休学之后，我再也不用上我没兴趣的必修课，把时间拿去听那些我有兴趣的课。
这一点也不浪漫。我没有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家里的地板上，靠着回收可乐空罐的退费五分钱买吃的，每个星期天晚上得走七哩的路绕过大半个镇去印度教的Hare Krishna神庙吃顿好料，我喜欢Hare Krishna神庙的好料。
就这样追随我的好奇与直觉，大部分我所投入过的事务，后来看来都成了无比珍贵的经历（And much of what I stumbled intoby following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be pricelesslater on）。举个例来说。
当时里德学院有着大概是全国最好的书写教育。校园内的每一张海报上，每个抽屉的标签上，都是美丽的手写字。因为我休学了，可以不照正常选课程序来，所以我跑去上书写课。我学了serif与sanserif字体，学到在不同字母组合间变更字间距，学到活字印刷伟大的地方。书写的美好、历史感与艺术感是科学所无法掌握的，我觉得这很迷人。
我没预期过学这些东西能在我生活中起些什么实际作用，不过十年后，当我在设计第一台麦金塔时，我想起了当时所学的东西，所以把这些东西都设计进了麦金塔里，这是第一台能印刷出漂亮东西的计算机。
如果我没沉溺于那样一门课里，麦金塔可能就不会有多重字体跟等比例间距字体了。又因为Windows抄袭了麦金塔的使用方式（听众鼓掌大笑），因此，如果当年我没有休学，没有去上那门书写课，大概所有的个人计算机都不会有这些东西，印不出现在我们看到的漂亮的字来了。当然，当我还在大学里时，不可能把这些点点滴滴预先串连在一起，但在十年后的今天回顾，一切就显得非常清楚。
我再说一次，你无法预先把点点滴滴串连起来；只有在未来回顾时，你才会明白那些点点滴滴是如何串在一起的（you can'tconnect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them lookingbackwards）。所以你得相信，眼前你经历的种种，将来多少会连结在一起。你得信任某个东西，直觉也好，命运也好，生命也好，或者业力。这种作法从来没让我失望，我的人生因此变得完全不同。（Jobs停下来喝水）
我的第二个故事，是有关爱与失去。
我很幸运－年轻时就发现自己爱做什么事。我二十岁时，跟SteveWozniak在我爸妈的车库里开始了苹果计算机的事业。我们拼命工作，苹果计算机在十年间从一间车库里的两个小伙子扩展成了一家员工超过四千人、市价二十亿美金的公司，在那事件之前一年推出了我们最棒的作品－麦金塔计算机（Macintosh），那时我才刚迈入三十岁，然后我被解雇了。
我怎么会被自己创办的公司给解雇了？（听众笑）
嗯，当苹果计算机成长后，我请了一个我以为在经营公司上很有才干的家伙来，他在头几年也确实干得不错。可是我们对未来的愿景不同，最后只好分道扬镳，董事会站在他那边，就这样在我30岁的时候，公开把我给解雇了。我失去了整个生活的重心，我的人生就这样被摧毁。
有几个月，我不知道要做些什么。我觉得我令企业界的前辈们失望－我把他们交给我的接力棒弄丢了。我见了创办HP的David Packard跟创办Intel的Bob Noyce，跟他们说很抱歉我把事情给搞砸了。我成了公众眼中失败的示范，我甚至想要离开硅谷。
但是渐渐的，我发现，我还是喜爱那些我做过的事情，在苹果计算机中经历的那些事丝毫没有改变我爱做的事。虽然我被否定了，可是我还是爱做那些事情，所以我决定从头来过。
当时我没发现，但现在看来，被苹果计算机开除，是我所经历过最好的事情。成功的沉重被从头来过的轻松所取代，每件事情都不那么确定，让我自由进入这辈子最有创意的年代。
接下来五年，我开了一家叫做NeXT的公司，又开一家叫做Pixar的公司，也跟后来的老婆（Laurene）谈起了恋爱。Pixar接着制作了世界上第一部全计算机动画电影，玩具总动员（ToyStory），现在是世界上最成功的动画制作公司（听众鼓掌大笑）。然后，苹果计算机买下了NeXT，我回到了苹果，我们在NeXT发展的技术成了苹果计算机后来复兴的核心部份。
我也有了个美妙的家庭。
我很确定，如果当年苹果计算机没开除我，就不会发生这些事情。这帖药很苦口，可是我想苹果计算机这个病人需要这帖药。有时候，人生会用砖头打你的头。不要丧失信心。我确信我爱我所做的事情，这就是这些年来支持我继续走下去的唯一理由（I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did）。
你得找出你的最爱，工作上是如此，人生伴侣也是如此。
你的工作将占掉你人生的一大部分，唯一真正获得满足的方法就是做你相信是伟大的工作，而唯一做伟大工作的方法是爱你所做的事（And the only way to do great work is to love what you do）。
如果你还没找到这些事，继续找，别停顿。尽你全心全力，你知道你一定会找到。而且，如同任何伟大的事业，事情只会随着时间愈来愈好。所以，在你找到之前，继续找，别停顿。（听众鼓掌，Jobs喝水）
我的第三个故事，是关于死亡。
当我十七岁时，我读到一则格言，好像是「把每一天都当成生命中的最后一天，你就会轻松自在。（If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right）」（听众笑）
这对我影响深远，在过去33年里，我每天早上都会照镜子，自问：「如果今天是此生最后一日，我今天要做些什么？」每当我连续太多天都得到一个「没事做」的答案时，我就知道我必须有所改变了。
提醒自己快死了，是我在人生中面临重大决定时，所用过最重要的方法。因为几乎每件事－所有外界期望、所有的名声、所有对困窘或失败的恐惧－在面对死亡时，都消失了，只有最真实重要的东西才会留下（Remembering that I'll be deadsoon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me makethe big choices in life. Because almost everything - all externalexpectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - thesethings just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is trulyimportant）。提醒自己快死了，是我所知避免掉入畏惧失去的陷阱里最好的方法。人生不带来、死不带去，没理由不能顺心而为。
一年前，我被诊断出癌症。我在早上七点半作断层扫描，在胰脏清楚出现一个肿瘤，我连胰脏是什么都不知道。医生告诉我，那几乎可以确定是一种不治之症，预计我大概活不到三到六个月了。医生建议我回家，好好跟亲人们聚一聚，这是医生对临终病人的标准建议。那代表你得试着在几个月内把你将来十年想跟小孩讲的话讲完。那代表你得把每件事情搞定，家人才会尽量轻松。那代表你得跟人说再见了。
我整天想着那个诊断结果，那天晚上做了一次切片，从喉咙伸入一个内视镜，穿过胃进到肠子，将探针伸进胰脏，取了一些肿瘤细胞出来。我打了镇静剂，不醒人事，但是我老婆在场。她后来跟我说，当医生们用显微镜看过那些细胞后，他们都哭了，因为那是非常少见的一种胰脏癌，可以用手术治好。所以我接受了手术，康复了。（听众鼓掌）
这是我最接近死亡的时候，我希望那会继续是未来几十年内最接近的一次。经历此事后，我可以比先前死亡只是纯粹想象时，要能更肯定地告诉你们下面这些：
没有人想死。即使那些想上天堂的人，也想活着上天堂。（听众笑）
但是死亡是我们共同的终点，没有人逃得过。这是注定的，因为死亡很可能就是生命中最棒的发明，是生命交替的媒介，送走老人们，给新生代开出道路。现在你们是新生代，但是不久的将来，你们也会逐渐变老，被送出人生的舞台。抱歉讲得这么戏剧化，但是这是真的。
你们的时间有限，所以不要浪费时间活在别人的生活里。不要被教条所局限--盲从教条就是活在别人思考结果里。不要让别人的意见淹没了你内在的心声。最重要的，拥有追随自己内心与直觉的勇气，你的内心与直觉多少已经知道你真正想要成为什么样的人（have the courage to follow yourheart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want tobecome），任何其它事物都是次要的。（听众鼓掌）
在我年轻时，有本神奇的杂志叫做《Whole Earth Catalog》，当年这可是我们的经典读物。那是一位住在离这不远的MenloPark的StewartBrand发行的，他把杂志办得很有诗意。那是1960年代末期，个人计算机跟桌上出版还没出现，所有内容都是打字机、剪刀跟拍立得相机做出来的。杂志内容有点像印在纸上的平面Google，在Google出现之前35年就有了：这本杂志很理想主义，充满新奇工具与伟大的见解。
Stewart跟他的团队出版了好几期的《Whole Earth Catalog》，然后很自然的，最后出了停刊号。当时是1970年代中期，我正是你们现在这个年龄的时候。在停刊号的封底，有张清晨乡间小路的照片，那种你四处搭便车冒险旅行时会经过的乡间小路。
在照片下印了行小字：求知若饥，虚心若愚（Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish）。
那是他们亲笔写下的告别讯息，我总是以此自许。当你们毕业，展开新生活，我也以此祝福你们。
求知若饥，虚心若愚（Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish）。
非常谢谢大家。 （听众起立鼓掌二分钟


Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencementfrom one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, Inever graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gottento a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. Nobig deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting thedots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but thenstayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before Ireally quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. Mybiological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decidedto put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should beadopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to beadopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I poppedout, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. Somy parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of thenight asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" Theysaid, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my motherhad never graduated from college and that my father had never graduatedfrom high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. Sheonly relented a few months later when my parents promised that I wouldgo to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did goto college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensiveas Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were beingspent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the valuein it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea ofhow 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 Idecided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It waspretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the bestdecisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop takingthe required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in onthe ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept onthe floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-centdeposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across townevery Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishnatemple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following mycuriosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let megive you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphyinstruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, everylabel on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I haddropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided totake a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serifand sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space betweendifferent letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that sciencecan't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in mylife. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintoshcomputer, 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 neverdropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have neverhad multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and sinceWindows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computerwould have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on thatcalligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderfultypography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forwardwhen I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You canonly connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dotswill somehow connect in your future. You have to trust insomething--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believingthat the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidenceto follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well- worn path,and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found whatI loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents'garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple hadgrown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion companywith over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, theMacintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I gotfired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Applegrew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run thecompany with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. Butthen our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we hada falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, andso at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focusof my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I reallydidn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let theprevious generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the batonas it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyceand tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very publicfailure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. Butsomething slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. Theturn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejectedbut 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 fromApple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Theheaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being abeginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one ofthe most creative periods in my life. During the next five years Istarted a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell inlove with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on tocreate the world's 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 and I returnedto Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart ofApple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful familytogether.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't beenfired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patientneeded 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 goingwas that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and thatis as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going tofill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfiedis to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do greatwork 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 whenyou find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better andbetter as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.
My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote thatwent 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 mirrorevery 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 theanswer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need tochange something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the mostimportant thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choicesin life, because almost everything--all external expectations, allpride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fallaway 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 avoidthe 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 at7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. Ididn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this wasalmost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I shouldexpect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised meto go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for"prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything youthought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a fewmonths. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that itwill be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say yourgoodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had abiopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomachinto my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cellsfrom the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me thatwhen they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor startedcrying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreaticcancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully,I am fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it'sthe closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, Ican now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was auseful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, evenpeople who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, andyet, 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 singlebest invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the oldto make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, nottoo long from now, you will gradually become the old and be clearedaway. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time islimited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trappedby 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,heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want tobecome. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called TheWhole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. Itwas created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in MenloPark, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in thelate Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so itwas all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it wassort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Googlecame along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and greatnotions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The WholeEarth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out afinal issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the backcover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning countryroad, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were soadventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." Itwas their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stayfoolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as yougraduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Thank you all, very much