3 Stories from Steve Jobs' Stanford Speech That Inspired Millions — and Are Going Viral Again

Story 1: He started at the beginning. He was adopted, and his biological mother only agreed to it when his parents promised he would go to college. So, 17 years later, he went. But it was expensive, and he quickly felt lost.

"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."

So, he made a scary decision, he dropped out. He stopped taking classes he had to take and started sitting in on classes that looked interesting. He had no money, slept on friends' floors, and returned soda bottles for food money. But he was free to explore.

One class he wandered into was calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting. He learned about different fonts and spacing. He thought it was fascinating, but completely useless for his future.

"But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me."

That "useless" class became the heart of the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful fonts. If he had never dropped out, he never would have taken that class, and personal computers might not have the typography they do today.

The lesson? "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." You have to trust that the things you do will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust your gut. "Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart."

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Story 2: Steve loved what he did. He started Apple in his parents' garage at age 20. The company grew into a giant worth billions. And then, at age 30, he was fired from his own company.

"How can you get fired from a company you started?" he asked. It was devastating. He felt he had failed publicly.

But slowly, he realized something important: "I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit." His love for the work was still there.

Getting fired was actually the best thing that could have happened. "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again." It freed him to enter one of his most creative periods. He started two new companies, NeXT and Pixar. He fell in love with his wife.

Later, Apple bought NeXT, and he returned to Apple. The technology from NeXT helped save the company. "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple."

The lesson? "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith." The only thing that keeps you going is loving what you do. "You've got to find what you love... If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."

Story 3: When he was 17, Steve read a quote: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."

It stuck with him. Ever since, he looked in the mirror every morning and asked himself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" If the answer was "no" too many days in a row, he knew he needed to change.

Thinking about death is the best way to avoid traps, he explained. "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 you will die is the best way to remember you have nothing to lose. "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

A year before this speech, he was diagnosed with cancer. A scan showed a tumor. The doctors told him it was incurable and that he had only months to live. He was told to go home and get his affairs in order to prepare to die.

Later that night, a biopsy showed it was a very rare, curable form of cancer. He had surgery and was okay.

This brush with death made his belief even stronger. "Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it." And that's a good thing, he said. "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."

His final advice was urgent: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life... 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."

He ended with a message from the back of a favorite publication from his youth. It showed a photo of an early morning country road and the words:

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."