Steve Jobs’s

Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech [VIDEO]

As web users, tech luminaries and President Obama publicly mourn the death of Apple founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, many of us at Mashable are privately revisiting Jobs’s June 2005 commencement address to Stanford University graduates.
It’s a simple, humble, narrative-driven speech, touching on his adoption, his decision to drop out of Reed College, getting fired from and then returning to Apple, and being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004. It’s also packed with oft-quoted advice, many pieces of which have appeared in our Twitter feeds since news of his passing was announced.

SEE ALSO: 15 Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes But what we predictably find most impactful watching the speech today is the parts that touch on death. “No one wants to die,” Jobs acknowledges. “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.”
And later, he advises, “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.”
He closed with a quote from Stewart Brand, founder of one of Steve Jobs’s favorite publications growing up, The Whole Earth Catalog: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”