Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (with intro by President John Hennessy)

Do you agree that this is one of the greatest speeches of the last 50 years?

A very inspiring speech. His words help people during difficult times. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything". This is one of the best quotes I've ever heard in my life.

And now this speech is in the English textbook of Maharashtra state board of India! He was a great man! Salute to you!

It's so sad hearing him say about how he hopes to live for a few more decades :(

it's been 15 years,but still motivational 👌

Who is listening to this in 2024?

Great people need not great story, they make the story great.

"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." ~Steve Jobs

07:32 for speech

13 years past still the best motivational video for me. Legend.. he's a genius and his story is so ordinary yet extraordinary. RIP.

This one 22.00 mins video has changed millions of lives for better!

Best part of the speech "Have the courage to follow you heart & intuition, they already know what you truly want".

I've watched this clip a hundred times, and I cry each time he tells the story about death.

I watch this again since I’m going back to school, Thanks Steve for the motivation.

14 years on it stands out as one of greatest motivational speech ❤

Most inspiring speech I've ever heard. IBM said "Think." Apple said "Think differently."

This is not a speech. This is a encouraging story by hearing this a lot of peoples are think different, do different and trying to innovate something different. I'm inspired to do something different... Thanks Sir

Today is 17 Nov 2023 and after all these years no one has ever replaced him...an extraordinary man and I miss him... RIP Steve Jobs

I am honored to be with you today for your commencement for one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I’ve got into college graduation. Today, I wanna tell you 3 stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just 3 stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. 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? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young and unwed graduate student. And she decided to put me 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 last minute, that they really wanted a girl. So, my parents who are a waiting list, got a call in the middle of a 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 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 a 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 6 months, I couldn’t see the value on 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 saved in their entire life. So, I decided to drop out and trust that It all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required class that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that look far more interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room. So, I slept on the floor in friend’s rooms. I returned coke bottles for 5 cents deposits to buy food with. And, I walked 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get 1 good meal at a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and tuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you 1 example. Reed college at that time, offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus, every poster, every label, and every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I 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 type-faces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically settled 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, 10 years later, when we were designing the first Mackintosh computer, it all came back to me. And, we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with a beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in a single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typofaces, or proportionally spaced fonts. And, since the window 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 the personal computer 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 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forwards, you can only connect them, looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even wanna lead you off the well-known path. And, that will make all the difference.