Stay hungry, stay foolish. 求知若饥,虚心若愚。
如果留意我博客的朋友,應該都有看到這句話在我的自我介紹欄目存在了好長一段時間了,另外,我的 QQ、旺旺、MSN等都有這個簽名。Stay hungry, stay foolish.(求知若饑,虛心若愚)
Stay hungry, stay foolish.這是喬布斯(蘋果公司創始人兼CEO Jobs)于2005年1月在斯坦福大學畢業典禮的演講中提及的一句經典話語。這次演講中,我很喜歡的另外一句話是“You've got to find what you love.And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.”
Jobs在stanford的這次演講,我最早是在07年左右看到的,當時就覺得不錯的。然后,隨著Apple公司在最近幾年異常迅猛的發展,是再次創造了一個神話,所以"Stay hungry, stay foolish“這句話為更多的人所知,且被不少人作為座右銘。
下面我附上演講英文原文和一篇我認為翻譯得不錯的中文版本吧。
英文原文地址:http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
中文翻譯版:http://higherfly.folo.cn/user1/283/archives/2009/62863.html
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, 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 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, unwed college 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 have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out 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 someday go to college.
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 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 of 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 decisions 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 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 5? deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 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 san 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, 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 this calligraphy class, and personal computers 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 ten 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, 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 had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. 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. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. 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.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. 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. 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 had been rejected, but 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 from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 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.
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. Pixar went on to create the worlds 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, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
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. Sometimes life hits 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 your 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. Don't settle. 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 until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
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, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have 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.
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. 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 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. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to 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 it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. 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 doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form. of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and 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, 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. 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 is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. 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 is quite true.
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. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication calledThe Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues ofThe Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. 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: "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.
Thank you all very much.
正文:?
我今天很榮幸能和你們一起參加畢業典禮,斯坦福大學是世界上最好的大學之一,而我至今尚未從大學中畢業。說實話,這也許是 我生命中離大學畢業最近的一天了。今天,我想告訴你們我生命中的三段經歷,并非什么了不得的大事件,只是三個小故事而已。?
生 命充滿因緣際會?
我在里德大學呆了6個月就退學了,但之后仍作為旁聽生混了18個月后才最終離開。故事要從我出 生之前說起。我的生母是一名年輕的未婚媽媽,我出生時她還在讀研究生,于是決定把我送給其他人收養。她堅持我應該被一對念過大學的夫婦收養,所以在我出生 的時候,她已經為我被一名律師和他的太太收養做好了萬全的準備。但在最后一刻,這對夫婦改變了收養一名男孩的主意。這時候選名單上的另外一對夫婦,也就是 我的養父母決定收養我。但事后,我的生母才發現養母根本就沒有從大學畢業,而養父甚至連高中都沒有畢業,所以她拒絕簽署最后的收養文件,直到幾個月后,我 的養父母保證會把我送到大學,她的態度才有所轉變。?
17歲那年,我愚蠢地選擇了一所幾乎和斯坦福大學一樣貴的學校。我父母處于藍 領階層,他們幾乎把所有積蓄都花在了我的學費上面。6個月之后,我發現自己完全不知道這樣念下去究竟有什么用,所以決定退學。當時做這個決定的時候我其實 是非常害怕的,現在回頭去看,這是我一生所作出的最正確的決定之一。從我退學的那一刻起,我就再也不用去上那些我毫無興趣的必修課了,并且開始旁聽那些看 來比較有意思的科目。?
但是這并不是那么羅曼蒂克。因為自己沒有宿舍,我只能睡在朋友房間的地板上;我去撿5美分的可樂瓶子,僅僅 為了填飽肚子;在星期天的晚上,我需要走7英里的路程,穿過整個城市,只是為了能吃上飯———這個星期惟一一頓好一點的飯。但是我喜歡這樣。我跟著我的直 覺和好奇心走,遇到了很多東西,此后被證明是無價之寶。?
由于已經退學,不用再去上那些常規的課程,于是我選擇了一個書法班,想學 學怎樣才能寫出一手漂亮字。在這個班上,我學習了各種襯線和無襯線字體,改變不同字體組合間距的方法,以及如何做出漂亮的版式。那是一種科學永遠無法捕捉 的充滿美感、歷史感和藝術感的微妙事物,這太有意思了。?
當時,我壓根兒沒想到這些知識在我的生命中會有什么實際運用價值。但是 10年之后,當我們設計第一款Macintosh電腦的時候,這些東西全排上了用場。我把當時我學的那些東西全都設計進了Mac。那是第一臺使用了漂亮印 刷字體的電腦。如果我當時沒有退學,就不會有機會去參加這個我感興趣的美術字課程,Mac也就不會有這么多豐富的字體,以及賞心悅目的字體間距。現在個人 電腦就不會有現在這些美妙的字型了。當我10年后回望當初這一切因緣際會時,真覺得生命非常神奇。?
當然,人不可能充滿預見地將生命的點滴串聯起來;只有在回頭看的時候,你才會發現這些點 點滴滴之間的聯系。所以,一定要堅信,你現在所經歷的將在你未來的生命中串聯起來。你必須相信某些東西:自己的直覺,命運,勇氣,因緣際會……正是這些信 仰,讓我不會失去希望,也讓我的人生變得與眾不同。?
在挫折面前不要停下腳步?
我是幸運的,在年輕的時候就知道了自己愛做什么。20歲的時候,我同斯蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克在我父母的車庫里開創了蘋果電腦公司。我們非常勤奮地工作。只用 了10年時間,由兩個窮光蛋組成的公司就擴展成擁有4000名員工的“龐然大物”,價值也達到20億美金。在公司成立的第9年,剛推出了我們最好的產品 ———Macintosh電腦,當時我剛過而立之年。?
然后,我就被炒了魷魚。?
一個人怎么可以被 他所創立的公司解雇呢?隨著蘋果的成長,我們雇用了一個很有天分的人和我一起管理這家公司,在頭一年,我們配合默契。但后來,我們對公司未來的前景出現了 分歧,于是兩人之間出現了矛盾。而公司的董事會站在他那一邊,所以在30歲的時候,我被踢出了局。?
在頭幾個月,我真不知道要做些 什么。我成了人人皆知的失敗者,也讓與我一同創業的人很沮喪,我甚至想過逃離硅谷。但曙光漸漸出現,我發現自己還是喜歡曾經做過的那些事情。雖然被拋棄 了,但熱忱不改。所以我決定,重新開始!雖然當時沒有看出來,但事實證明,被蘋果開掉是我這一生所經歷過的最棒的事情。因為,一個成功者的極樂感覺被一個 創業者的輕松感覺重新代替,我對任何事情都不那么特別看重。這讓我覺得無比自由,我的生命進入了一個最有創造力的階段。?
在接下來 的5年里,我開創了NeXT公司和Pixar公司,并且結識了后來成為我妻子的曼妙女郎勞倫斯。Pixar制作了世界上第一部完全數碼制作的電影——— 《玩具總動員2》,現在這家公司是世界上最成功的動畫制作公司之一。后來經歷一系列的事件,蘋果買下了NeXT,于是我又回到了蘋果,我們在NeXT研發 出的技術成為推動蘋果復興的核心動力之一。我和勞倫斯也擁有了美滿的家庭生活。?
我非常肯定,如果沒有被蘋果炒掉,這一切都不可能 在我身上發生。生活有時候就像一塊板磚拍向你的腦袋,但不要喪失信心。熱愛 所從事的工作,是一直支持我不斷前進的惟一理由。你得找出你的最愛,工作如此,愛人亦是如此。如果你到現在還沒有找到這樣一份工作,那么就繼續找。偉大的 工作只會在歲月的醞釀中越陳越香。所以,在你終有所獲之前,不要停下你尋覓的腳步。不要停下!?
把 每一天當作生命的終點?
在17歲那年,我讀過一句格言,大概內容是:“如果你把每一天都當成生命里的最后一天,你將在某一天發現原來一切皆在掌握之中。” 這句話 從讀到之日起,就對我產生了深遠的影響。在過去33年里,我每天早晨都對著鏡子問自己:“如果今天是我生命中的最后一天,我還愿意做我今天原本應該做的事 情嗎?”當一連好多天答案都是否定的時候,我就知道做出改變的時刻到了。?
所有的事情在面對死亡的時候,都將煙消云散,只留下真正 重要的東西。在我所知道的各種方法中,提醒自己即將死去也是避免掉入“畏懼失去”這個陷阱的最好辦法。而且這個方法能讓你直面自己的內心。人赤條條地來, 赤條條地走,沒有理由不聽你內心的呼喚。?
大約一年前,我被診斷出癌癥。在早晨7:30我做了一個檢查,掃描結果清楚地顯示我的胰 臟出現了一個腫瘤。我當時甚至不知道胰臟究竟是什么。醫生告訴我,幾乎可以確定這是一種不治之癥,頂多還能活3至6個月。大夫建議我回家,把諸事安排妥 當,這是醫生對臨終病人的標準用語。這意味著我得把今后10年要對子女說的話用幾個月的時間說完;這還意味著向眾人告別的時間到了。?
我整天和那個診斷書一起生活。直到有一天早上醫生給我做了一個切片檢查。我使用了鎮靜劑,太太在旁邊陪著我。結果,大夫們從顯微鏡下觀察了細胞組織之 后,驚訝得集體尖叫了起來。因為那是一種非常罕見的,可以通過手術治療的胰臟癌。?
這是我最接近死亡的一次,在經歷了這次與死神擦 肩而過的經驗之后,死亡對于我來說只是一項有效的判斷工具,并且只是一個純粹的理性概念。雖然我能夠更肯定地告訴你們:沒人想死;即使想去天堂的人,也是 希望能夠活著進去。?
你們還是新生代,但不久的將來你們也將逐漸老去,被送出人生的舞臺。很抱歉說得這么富有戲劇性,但生命就是如 此。你們的時間有限,所以不要把時間浪費在重復其他人的生活上。不要讓他人的觀點所發出的噪音淹沒自己內心的聲音。最為重要的是,要有遵從自己內心和直覺 的勇氣,它們可能已經知道你其實想成為一個什么樣的人。其他事物都是次要的。?
在我年輕的時候,有一本非常棒的雜志叫《全球目 錄》。這本雜志的創辦人是一個叫斯圖爾特·布蘭德的家伙,他把這本雜志辦得充滿詩意,但可惜壽命不長。那是在70年代中期,我當時正處在你們現在的年齡。 在這本雜志最后一期的封底,有一張清晨鄉間公路的照片,非常賞心悅目。如果你喜歡搭車冒險旅行的話,經常會碰到這種小路。在照片下面有一排字:“求知若 饑,虛心若愚。”這是他們停刊的告別留言。我也總是以此自省。現在,在你們畢業開始新生活的時候,我把這句話也送給你們。?
????求知若饑,虛心若愚。?
????非常感謝。
總結
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