June 12, 2005: Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivers a brilliant commencement speech to graduating students at Stanford University.
Packed with incredible insights, the motivational speech includes many memorable lines that capture the essence of Jobs’ incredible life — and provide a template for success through following your passions. And he does it all in less than 15 minutes.
Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech
Two decades after Jobs gave his inspirational address on a sunny California day at Stanford, it lives on as one of the most compelling commencement speeches of all time (and one of the best Steve Jobs moments ever).
Current Apple CEO Tim Cook paid homage to Jobs’ legendary address when he gave his own Stanford commencement speech in 2019. At one point, Apple even included the text of Jobs’ speech as an Easter egg on the Mac.
So, why did Jobs’ commencement address prove so memorable? In a move reminiscent of his similarly quotable Apple keynotes, Jobs kept things simple and delivered an elegant and impactful message. Reading from a sheet of paper, he focused on three things — in this case, episodes from his life that paved the way to his success — and tied it all together with some timeless wisdom.
“I want to tell you three stories from my life,” he told the graduating students. “That’s it, no big deal. Just three stories.”
As it turns out, it was a pretty big deal.
Story No. 1: Connecting the dots
The first story in Steve Jobs’ commencement speech began with his birth, his adoption by a middle-class couple, and a bizarre demand by his biological mother that led to him enrolling at Reed College, an expensive private school in Oregon. Jobs eventually dropped out of college, which freed him up to monitor courses he would never have taken before, like a calligraphy class that introduced him to serif and sans serif typefaces.
Ultimately, Jobs said, that led to the elegant way the original Macintosh displayed typefaces. And that changed the face of modern computing.
“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,” Jobs said. “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. 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.”
Story No. 2: Love and loss
For the second story in his commencement speech, Steve Jobs recounted the early days of his career in the computer industry. He discussed the love that he and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak had for building computers. And he described how that passion led to success — and then to stunning rejection, when he was forced out Apple following a failed boardroom coup.
“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,” Jobs said. “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.”
He then discussed his work at Pixar Animation Studios, which produced amazing movies (and made him a billionaire), and at Next Inc., where he developed the leadership skills (and the incredible software) that ultimately brought him back to Apple.
“Sometime life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick,” he said. “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. 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.”
Story No. 3: Death is the ultimate motivator
The third story in Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement speech concerned death, which he considered the ultimate motivator. He recalled hearing the timeless wisdom to live every day like it’s your last because someday you’ll be right at the tender age of 17. And he said he followed that advice every day, looking himself in the mirror each morning and asking himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
That cold assessment helped him focus on life’s truly important endeavors — and let loose of things that don’t matter.
“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,” he said. “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.”
He then went on to discuss his own highly publicized battle with a deadly form of pancreatic cancer, which he said he had been cured of. (Unfortunately, he hadn’t. He died of the disease six years later in 2011.)
A final imperative in Steve Jobs’ commencement speech: ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’
To end his epic Stanford commencement speech, Jobs recalled the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand’s hippie-oriented counterculture magazine/product catalog that shut down in 1972.
“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,” Jobs said. “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. Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Watch Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech in HD
In 2025, to mark the 20th anniversary of the celebrated speech, The Steve Jobs Archive published a high-definition version on YouTube.
As mentioned, it lasts less than 15 minutes and it’s absolutely packed with keen insights. It’s must-see viewing for Apple fans and anyone else seeking motivation.
Watch the speech now:
Also on this day in Apple history: A sneak peek at the iPhone
June 12, 2007: With iPhone frenzy hitting a fever pitch in the buildup to the device’s launch, journalist Walt Mossberg sends the Apple world into a tizzy by whipping out a prerelease unit during a speech. The Wall Street Journal columnist is one of a handful of tech writers given early access to Apple’s revolutionary smartphone so he can put it through its paces for a review. Read more: Today in Apple history: Walt Mossberg shows off his prerelease iPhone.