文/斯蒂夫•乔布斯 译/杜然
苹果电脑的CEO斯蒂夫•乔布斯在今年斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲，读后令人不禁动容，其文并无华丽之色，也无英文演讲范例中惯用的排比。———译者
斯坦福是世界上最好的大学之一，今天能参加各位的毕业典礼，我备感荣幸。（尖叫声）我从来没有从大学毕业，说句实话，此时算是我离大学毕业最近的一刻。（笑声）今天，我想告诉你们我生命中的三个故事，并非什么了不得的大事件，只是三个小故事而已。
第一个故事 关于串起生命中的点点滴滴
退学是我这一生所作出的最正确的决定之一 connecting the dots（指一种小游戏：把标有序列号的点连起来，就构成一幅图画——译注）。 我在里德大学待了6个月就退学了，但之后仍作为旁听生混了18个月后才最终离开。我为什么要退学呢？故事要从我出生之前开始说起。我的生母是一名年轻的未婚妈妈，当时她还是一所大学的在读研究生，于是决定把我送给其他人收养。她坚持我应该被一对念过大学的夫妇收养，所以在我出生的时候，她已经为我被一个律师和他的太太收养做好了所有的准备。但在最后一刻，这对夫妇改了主意，决定收养一个女孩。候选名单上的另外一对夫妇，也就是我的养父母，在一天午夜接到了一通电话：“有一个不请自来的男婴，你们想收养吗？”他们回答：“当然想。”事后，我的生母才发现我的养母根本就没有从大学毕业，而我的养父甚至连高中都没有毕业，所以她拒绝签署最后的收养文件，直到几个月后，我的养父母保证会把我送到大学，她的态度才有所转变。
17年之后，我真上了大学。但因为年幼无知，我选择了一所和斯坦福一样昂贵的大学，（笑声）我的父母都是工人阶级，他们倾其所有资助我的学业。在6个月之后，我发现自己完全不知道这样念下去究竟有什么用。当时，我的人生漫无目标，也不知道大学对我能起到什么帮助。为了念书，还花光了父母毕生的积蓄。所以我决定退学。我相信车到山前必有路。当时作这个决定的时候非常害怕，但现在回头去看，这是我这一生所作出的最正确的决定之一。（笑声）从我退学那一刻起，我就再也不用去上那些我毫无兴趣的必修课了，我开始旁听那些看来比较有意思的科目。
这件事情做起来一点都不浪漫。因为没有自己的宿舍，我只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。可乐瓶的押金是5分钱，我把瓶子还回去好用押金买吃的。在每个周日的晚上，我都会步行7英里穿越市区，到HareKrishna教堂吃一顿大餐，我喜欢那儿的食物。
我跟随好奇心和直觉所做的事情，事后证明大多数都是极其珍贵的经验。我举一个例子：那个时候，里德大学提供了全美国最好的书法教育。整个校园的每一张海报、每一个抽屉上的标签，都是漂亮的手写体。由于已经退学，不用再去上那些常规的课程，于是我选择了一个书法班，想学学怎么写出一手漂亮字。在这个班上，我学习了各种字体，如何改变不同字体组合之间的字间距，以及如何做出漂亮的版式。那是一种科学永远无法捕捉的充满美感、历史感和艺术感的微妙，我发现这太有意思了。
当时，我压根儿没想到这些知识会在我的生命中有什么实际运用价值，但是10年之后，当我们设计第一款Macintosh电脑的时候，这些东西全派上了用场。我把它们全部设计进了Mac，这是第一台可以排出好看版式的电脑。如果当时我大学里没有旁听这门课程的话，Mac就不会提供各种字体和等间距字体。自从视窗系统抄袭了Mac以后，（鼓掌大笑）所有的个人电脑都有了这些东西。如果我没有退学，我就不会去书法班旁听，而今天的个人电脑大概也就不会有出色的版式功能。当然我在念大学的那会儿，不可能有先见之明，把那些生命中的点点滴滴都串起来。但10年之后再回头看，生命的轨迹变得非常清楚。再强调一次，你不可能充满预见地将生命的点滴串联起来。只有在你回头看的时候，你才会发现这些点点滴滴之间的联系。所以，你要坚信，你现在所经历的将在你未来的生命中串联起来。你不得不相信某些东西，你的直觉、命运、生活、因缘际会……正是这种信仰让我不会失去希望，它让我的人生变得与众不同。
第二个故事 关于爱与失去——被苹果开掉是我这一生所经历过的最棒的事情
我是幸运的，在年轻的时候就知道了自己爱做什么。在我20岁的时候，就和沃兹在我父母的车库里开创了苹果电脑公司。我们勤奋工作，只用了10年的时间，苹果电脑就从车库里的两个小伙子扩展成拥有4000名员工，价值达到20亿美元的企业。而在此之前的一年，我们刚推出了我们最好的产品Macintosh电脑，当时我刚过而立之年。然后，我就被炒了鱿鱼。一个人怎么可以被他所创立的公司解雇呢？（笑声）这么说吧，随着苹果的成长，我们请了一个原本以为很能干的家伙和我一起管理这家公司，在头一年左右，他干得还不错，但后来，我们对公司未来的前景出现了分歧，于是我们之间出现了矛盾。由于公
神奇人物
呵呵
做个神奇的人
成功的沉重被凤凰涅槃的轻盈所代替，每件事情都不再那么确定，我以自由之躯进入了我整个生命当中最有创意的时期。
你们的时间有限，所以不要把时间浪费在别人的生活里。不要被条条框框束缚，否则你就生活在他人思考的结果里。
支持
我也喜欢这几句
刚刚下载了原版演讲录音
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech
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 eighteen 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.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely 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 decisi##被过滤## 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.
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.
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 combinati##被过滤##, 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 that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was imposs
作者: yangtian 时间: 2019-4-11 22:42
人鱼不游泳 发表于 2005-12-2 23:18
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech
Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your comme ...
thanks
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