Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech (2005): Summary and Key Points

Why people still watch it

Jobs gave this 15-minute address to Stanford's class of 2005, a year after surgery for pancreatic cancer. It is built as three short stories, and each one ends on a line people still quote: connecting the dots, don't settle, and stay hungry, stay foolish. It is one of the most-watched commencement speeches ever, and a common assignment in English and business classes.

Key points

• You can only connect the dots looking back. Dropping out of Reed College let him sit in on a calligraphy class with no practical use. Ten years later it shaped the typography of the first Macintosh. You have to trust that the dots will connect.
• Losing can be the start of something. Apple fired him at 30. He later called it the best thing that could have happened to him: the heaviness of success gave way to the lightness of being a beginner, and he went on to found NeXT and Pixar.
• Do work you love, and keep looking until you find it. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, don't settle.
• Remembering you will die clears away what doesn't matter. Facing cancer, he describes death as the best tool for making big choices, because fear of embarrassment or failure falls away. Don't live someone else's life.
• Stay hungry, stay foolish. The farewell message of the Whole Earth Catalog, which he passes on to the graduates.

Detailed summary

Story 1: Connecting the dots

Jobs was adopted at birth. His biological mother insisted that the adoptive parents send him to college, but after six months at Reed College he dropped out because he couldn't see the value and was spending his parents' savings. Staying on campus informally, he dropped in on a calligraphy class. Ten years later that knowledge went into the Macintosh, the first computer with beautiful typography. His point: you can't connect the dots looking forward, only looking back, so you have to trust your gut, destiny, life or karma.

Story 2: Love and loss

He started Apple in his parents' garage at 20. In ten years it grew into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees, and a year after releasing the Macintosh, at 30, he was fired by the board. He felt he had publicly failed. But he still loved the work, and the "lightness of being a beginner again" led to one of the most creative periods of his life: NeXT, Pixar, and meeting his wife. Apple later bought NeXT and he returned. The lesson he draws: find what you love, in work as in relationships, and don't settle.

Story 3: Death

At 17 he read a quote about living each day as if it were your last, and for 33 years he asked himself in the mirror whether he wanted to do what he was about to do that day. About a year before the speech he was diagnosed with a pancreatic tumor and told to get his affairs in order. It turned out to be a rare form curable with surgery. Death, he says, is "very likely the single best invention of life": your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life or let other people's opinions drown out your inner voice.

The ending

He closes with The Whole Earth Catalog, a publication he loved as a young man. Its final issue carried a photo of a country road with the words "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." That is his wish for the graduates.