“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”: Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech (Transcript & Audio)
“求知若饥,虚心若愚”:史蒂夫·乔布斯 2005 年斯坦福大学毕业典礼演讲(文字稿和音频)
“Stay hungry, stay foolish”
保持饥饿,保持愚蠢
The speech was delivered after Steve Jobs’ cancer diagnosis and successful treatment. This speech, viewed over 30 million times on YouTube, popularized the quotes “stay hungry, stay foolish” and “connect the dots looking back.”
这篇演讲是在史蒂夫·乔布斯被诊断出患癌症并成功治疗后发表的。这篇演讲在 YouTube 上被观看了超过 3000 万次,普及了“保持饥饿,保持愚蠢”和“回头连起来”的名言。
However, if you’ve read Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You like I have, then you might not agree with the idea of “follow your passion”.
然而,如果你像我一样读过卡尔·纽波特的书《如此出色,他们无法忽视你》,那么你可能不同意“追随你的激情”的观点。
That’s OK. 没关系。
Instead, I use this speech as a recurring reminder to sate my curiosity and to love learning. To allow myself to pursue my creative interests, even if there is no monetary reward in the short term. To loosen up on the planning and to let go because the dots “don’t connect looking forward, they connect looking back.”
相反,我将这篇演讲作为一个不断提醒自己满足好奇心和热爱学习的方式。即使短期内没有经济回报,也要让自己追求创造性的兴趣。放松计划,放手一搏,因为“点点滴滴不是前瞻性地连接,而是回顾性地连接”。
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在我们深入讨论之前,先来一条简短的消息:我通常写关于 web3、创造力和创作者经济的内容。如果这些内容对你感兴趣,你可能会喜欢我的每周通讯。请在下方订阅以获取更多文章,或者查看以前的版本以“试用再购买”。
Transcript 成绩单
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.
我很荣幸能够与你们一起参加你们从世界上最好的大学之一毕业典礼。说实话,我从来没有大学毕业。而这是我离大学毕业最近的一次。
Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it, no big deal. Just three stories.
今天,我想给你讲三个关于我的生活的故事。就这样,没什么大不了的。只是三个故事。
First story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事是关于连接点的。
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.
我在里德学院上了六个月后辍学,但之后又在那里逗留了大约 18 个月左右,然后才真正离开。
So why did I drop out? It started before I was born.
那么为什么我辍学了呢?这个问题在我出生之前就开始了。
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.
我的生母是一位年轻未婚的研究生,她决定将我送养。她非常坚信我应该被大学毕业生收养。所以一切都准备就绪,我将在出生时被一位律师和他的妻子收养。
Except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
除了当我出生时,他们在最后一刻决定他们真的想要一个女孩。
So my parents who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We've got an unexpected baby boy, do you want him?” They said, “Of course.”
所以我的父母在等候名单上,半夜接到一个电话,问道:“我们有一个意外的男婴,你们要吗?”他们说:“当然要。”
My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college, and that my father had never graduated from high school. 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.
我的生母后来发现我的养母从未大学毕业,而我的养父也从未高中毕业。她拒绝签署最终的领养文件。几个月后,当我的父母承诺我将上大学时,她才稍作让步。
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.
这是我生活的开始。17 年后,我确实上了大学。但是我天真地选择了一所几乎和斯坦福一样昂贵的大学。
And all of my working class parents savings were being spent on my college tuition.
而且我工薪阶层的父母所有的积蓄都花在了我的大学学费上。
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.
六个月过去了,我看不到其中的价值。我不知道我想要用我的生活做什么,也不知道大学会如何帮助我弄清楚。而我却在花光我父母一辈子积蓄的所有钱。
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.
好的。当时真的很吓人。但回想起来,那是我做过的最好的决定之一。
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.
我一退学,就可以停止上那些我不感兴趣的必修课,开始去上那些看起来更有趣的选修课。
It wasn't all romantic. 这并不都是浪漫的。
I didn't have a dorm room. So I slept on the floor and 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 Hari Krishna temple.
我没有宿舍。所以我睡在地板上和朋友的房间里。我回收可乐瓶,用五分钱的押金买食物。每个星期天晚上,我会步行穿过整个城镇七英里,去哈里克里什纳庙享用一顿好饭。
I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into, by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
我喜欢它。而我通过追随我的好奇心和直觉所遇到的许多事情,后来都证明是无价之宝。
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 calligraphic 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.
让我给你举一个例子。当时,里德学院可能是全国提供最好的书法教学的学校。整个校园,每一张海报,每一个抽屉上的标签都是精美的手写书法,因为我退学了,不需要上正常的课程。我决定上一门书法课,学习如何做这个。
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.
我了解了有衬线和无衬线字体,了解了在不同字母组合之间变化空间的量,了解了什么是优秀排版的要素。它是美丽的,历史悠久的,艺术上微妙的,科学无法捕捉到的。
And I found it fascinating.
我发现这很有趣。
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.
这一切在我生活中甚至没有一丝实际应用的希望。但是 10 年后,当我们设计第一台麦金塔电脑时,这一切又回到了我身边。我们将所有的东西都设计进了麦金塔电脑中。
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.
这是第一台具有漂亮排版的计算机。如果我从未参加过大学的那门课程,Mac 就永远不会有多种字体或比例间距字体。而且由于 Windows 只是复制了 Mac,很可能没有个人电脑会有这些功能。
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.
如果我从未辍学,我可能就不会参加那个书法班,个人电脑可能就没有现在这么美妙的排版。
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.
当我还在大学时,当然不可能预测未来的点点滴滴,但是 10 年后回顾起来,一切都变得非常非常清晰。再次强调,你无法在前方连接这些点,只能在回顾时连接它们。所以你必须相信这些点在未来会以某种方式连接起来。
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.
你必须相信某种东西,你的直觉、命运、生活、因果报应,无论是什么。因为相信点点滴滴将在未来连接起来,会给你信心去跟随内心,即使它把你带离了常走的道路。而这将会产生巨大的不同。
You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.
你无法在前方连接这些点,只能在回顾时连接它们。
My second story is about love and loss.
我的第二个故事是关于爱与失去。
I was lucky, I found what I love to do early in life was and I started Apple in my parent's garage when I was 20. We worked hard.
我很幸运,我在生活的早期就找到了我喜欢做的事情,并且在我 20 岁的时候在我父母的车库里创办了苹果公司。我们努力工作。
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 just released our finest creation, the Macintosh a year earlier, and I just turned 30.
在 10 年的时间里,苹果公司从我们两个人在车库里开始发展壮大,成为一家市值 20 亿美元、拥有 4000 多名员工的公司。我们刚刚在一年前发布了我们最好的创作,Macintosh,而我刚刚过了 30 岁生日。
And then I got fired.
然后我被解雇了。
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.
你如何被自己创办的公司解雇?嗯,随着苹果的发展,我们雇佣了一个我认为非常有才华的人与我一起经营公司。最初的一年左右,一切都很顺利。但是后来,我们对未来的愿景开始分歧。最终,我们发生了争执。
When we did our board of directors sided with him.
当我们做董事会时,我们支持他。
And 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.
所以在 30 岁时,我出柜了,而且是公开出柜。我整个成年生活的重心消失了。这真是毁灭性的。
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down that I dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.
我真的不知道该怎么办几个月。我觉得我让前一代的企业家失望了,我把接力棒掉了下来。
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.
我见到了大卫·帕卡德和鲍勃·诺伊斯,并试图为我犯下的错误道歉。我是一个非常公开的失败者,甚至考虑过逃离这个山谷。
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've been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
但是有一些东西慢慢地在我心中开始明朗起来。我仍然热爱我所做的事情。苹果公司的变故并没有改变这一点。我被拒绝了,但我仍然热爱。因此,我决定重新开始。
I didn't see it then. But it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.
我当时没有看到。但事实证明,被苹果解雇是对我来说最好的事情。
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.
成功的沉重感被重新成为一个初学者的轻盈感所取代,对一切都不再那么确定。这使我得以进入我生命中最具创造力的时期之一。
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.
在接下来的五年里,我创办了一家名为 NexT 的公司,另一家名为 Pixar 的公司,并爱上了一个了不起的女人,她后来成为了我的妻子。
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. 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, and Laureen and I have a wonderful family together.
皮克斯继续创造了世界上第一部计算机动画电影《玩具总动员》,现在是世界上最成功的动画工作室。在一个令人瞩目的事件中,苹果公司收购了 NexT,我回到了苹果。我们在 NexT 开发的技术是苹果当前复兴的核心,Laureen 和我有一个美好的家庭。
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.
我非常确定如果我没有被苹果公司解雇,这一切都不会发生。那是一种难以忍受的苦药。但我想病人需要它。
Sometimes life's gonna 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. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.
有时候生活会用一块砖头砸你的头。不要失去信心。我相信唯一让我继续前进的是我热爱自己所做的事情。你必须找到你所热爱的事情。这对工作和爱人都是真实的。
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 and don't settle.
你的工作将占据你生活的很大一部分。而唯一能真正满足的方式就是做你认为伟大的工作。而要做伟大的工作,唯一的方式就是热爱你所做的。如果你还没有找到它,继续寻找,不要安于现状。
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.
就像所有关乎心灵的事情一样,当你找到它时,你会知道。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,不要安于现状。
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.
当我 17 岁的时候,我读到了一句话,大概是这样说的:“如果你把每一天都当作是你最后一天来过,总有一天你肯定会对的。” 这给我留下了深刻的印象。
And 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?” And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
自那时起,过去的 33 年里,我每天早上都会照镜子问自己:“如果今天是我生命的最后一天,我是否愿意做我今天要做的事情?”每当连续几天的答案都是否定的时候,我就知道我需要改变一些东西。
“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
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.
记住我很快就会死去,这是我在生活中做出重大选择时遇到的最重要的工具。因为几乎所有的东西——所有的外部期望、所有的自豪感、所有的尴尬或失败的恐惧——在面对死亡时都会消失,只留下真正重要的东西。
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.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 [that] 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.
大约一年前,我被诊断出患有癌症。早上 7:30 我做了一次扫描,清楚地显示出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,这几乎肯定是一种无法治愈的癌症。并且我应该预计只能活不过三到六个月。
My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors code for “prepare to die”.
我的医生建议我回家整理好我的事务,这是医生的暗号,意思是“准备去世”。
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 will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day.
这意味着试图在短短几个月内告诉孩子们你原本以为还有十年时间才能告诉他们的一切。这意味着确保一切都妥善安排好,以便对你的家人来说尽可能轻松。这意味着告别。我整天都生活在那个诊断下。
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.
那天晚上,我进行了一次活检,他们通过我的喉咙、胃和肠道插入了一根内窥镜,然后在我的胰腺上插入了一根针,从肿瘤中取出了几个细胞。我被麻醉了。但是我的妻子告诉我,当医生在显微镜下观察细胞时,他开始哭了。
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. 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.
因为它被证实是一种非常罕见的胰腺癌,可以通过手术治愈。我接受了手术,幸运的是,现在我很好。这是我离死亡最近的一次经历。我希望在未来几十年里,这是我离死亡最近的一次经历,也是最后一次经历。
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.
我现在可以比死亡仅仅是一个有用但纯粹是智力概念时更有把握地对你说这句话了。没有人想死。即使是想去天堂的人,也不想为了到那里而死去。
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’s life's change agent, it clears out the old to make way for the new.
然而,死亡是我们所有人共同的归宿。没有人能够逃脱它。而这正是应该的。因为死亡很可能是生命中最好的创造。它是生命的变革者,它清除旧的,为新的铺平道路。
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.
现在的你是新的。但不久的将来,你将逐渐变成老的,并被清除掉。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 others opinions drown out your own inner voice.
你的时间有限。所以不要浪费它过别人的生活。不要被教条所困,那是活在别人思维的结果中。不要让他人的意见噪音淹没了你内心的声音。
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
最重要的是,要有勇气跟随你的内心和直觉。
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 Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park. And he brought it to life with his poetic touch.
他们不知怎么地已经知道你真正想成为什么。其他一切都是次要的。当我年轻的时候,有一本令人惊叹的出版物叫做《全地球目录》,它是我们这一代人的圣经之一。它是由一个名叫斯图尔特·布兰德的人在离这里不远的门洛帕克创造的。他用他的诗意之手将它带到了生活中。
This was in the late 60s before personal computers and desktop publishing. So it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google and paperback form 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
这是在 60 年代末,个人电脑和桌面出版之前。所以一切都是用打字机、剪刀和宝丽来相机完成的。它有点像谷歌和纸质书的形式,比谷歌出现的 35 年前。它充满理想主义,拥有许多方便工具和伟大的概念。
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.
斯图尔特和他的团队发布了几期《全地球目录》。然后当它完成使命后,他们发布了最后一期。
It was the mid 1970s and I was your age.
那是在 1970 年代中期,我和你一样年轻。
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,
在他们最后一期的封底上是一张清晨乡间小路的照片。如果你是如此冒险的人,你可能会发现自己在这样的路上搭便车。在照片下面,写着以下文字:
“Stay hungry, stay foolish”
保持饥饿,保持愚蠢
It was their farewell message as they signed off.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
保持饥饿。保持愚蠢。
And I've always wished that for myself. And now as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
而我一直希望这样的事情发生在我身上。现在,当你毕业开始新的旅程时,我也希望这样的事情发生在你身上。
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
保持饥饿。保持愚蠢。
Thank you all very much.
非常感谢大家。