毕业典礼英文演讲稿
Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want you to do something for me. Please, take a ood look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude.
"In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers.
"You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Lawrence 'Larry' Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not.
"Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet -- for now, anyway -- is a college dropout, and you are not.
"Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not.
"And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not.
"Hmm . . . you're very upset. That's understandable. So let me stroke your egos for a moment by pointing out, quite sincerely, that your diplomas were not attained in vain. Most of you, I imagine, have spent four to five years here, and in many ways what you've learned and endured will serve you well in the years ahead. You've established good work habits. You've established a network of people that will help you down the road. And you've established what will be lifelong relationships with the word 'therapy.' All that of is good. For in truth, you will need that network. You will need those strong work habits. You will need that therapy.
"You will need them because you didn't drop out, and so you will never be among the richest people in the world. Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to No. 10 or No. 11, like Steve Ballmer. But then, I don't have to tell you who he really works for, do I? And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a late bloomer.
"Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, 'Is there anything I can do? Is there any hope for me at all?' Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortar boards on your heads.
"Hmm... you're really very upset. That's understandable. So perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the silver lining. Not for you, Class of '00. You are a write-off, so I'll let you slink off to your pathetic $200,000-a-year jobs, where your checks will be signed by former classmates who dropped out two years ago.
"Instead, I want to give hope to any underclassmen here today. I say to you, and I can't stress this enough: leave. Pack your things and your ideas and don't come back. Drop out. Start up.
"For I can tell you that a cap and gown will keep you down just as surely as these security guards dragging me off this stage are keeping me down . . ."
(At this point The Oracle CEO was ushered off stage.)
【中文译文】：
耶鲁的毕业生们，我很抱歉——如果你们不喜欢这样的开场。我想请你们为我做一件事。请你---好好看一看周围，看一看站在你左边的同学，看一看站在你右边的同学。
请你设想这样的情况：从现在起5年之后，10年之后，或30年之后，今天站在你左边的这个人会是一个失败者;右边的这个人，同样，也是个失败者。而你，站在中间的家伙，你以为会怎样?一样是失败者。失败的经历。失败的优等生。
说实话，今天我站在这里，并没有看到一千个毕业生的灿烂未来。我没有看到一千个行业的一千名卓越领导者，我只看到了一千个失败者。你们感到沮丧，这是可以理解的。为什么，我，埃里森，一个退学生，竟然在美国最具声望的学府里这样厚颜地散布异端?我来告诉你原因。因为，我，埃里森，这个行星上第二富有的人，是个退学生，而你不是。因为比尔-盖茨，这个行星上最富有的人——就目前而言---是个退学生，而你不是。因为艾伦，这个行星上第三富有的人，也退了学，而你没有。再来一点证据吧，因为戴尔，这个行星上第九富有的人——他的排位还在不断上升，也是个退学生。而你，不是。
......你们非常沮丧，这是可以理解的。
你们将来需要这些有用的工作习惯。你将来需要这种'治疗'。你需要它们，因为你没辍学，所以你永远不会成为世界上最富有的人。哦，当然，你可以，也许，以你的方式进步到第10位，第11位，就像Steve。但，我没有告诉你他在为谁工作，是吧?
根据记载，他是研究生时辍的学，开化得稍晚了些。
现在，我猜想你们中间很多人，也许是绝大多数人，正在琢磨，'我能做什么? 我究竟有没有前途?'当然没有。太晚了，你们已经吸收了太多东西，以为自己懂得太多。你们再也不是19岁了。你们有了'内置'的帽子，哦，我指的可不是你们脑袋上的学位帽。
嗯......你们已经非常沮丧啦。这是可以理解的。所以，现在可能是讨论实质的时候啦——
绝不是为了你们，2000年毕业生。你们已经被报销，不予考虑了。我想，你们就偷偷摸摸去干那年薪20万的可怜工作吧，在那里，工资单是由你两年前辍学的同班同学签字开出来的。事实上，我是寄希望于眼下还没有毕业的同学。我要对他们说，离开这里。收拾好你的东西，带着你的点子，别再回来。退学吧，开始行动。
我要告诉你，一顶帽子一套学位服必然要让你沦落......就像这些保安马上要把我从这个讲台上撵走一样必然......(此时，Larry被带离了讲台)
毕业典礼英文演讲稿
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, its 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 retuned 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
[毕业典礼英文演讲稿]