乔布斯是个改变世界的传奇,解释乔布斯的成功,就必须了解他的思想。乔布斯通过 禅 找到了本心,找到归宿,充满对世界的洞察力,并借助心灵的力量顽强地改变了世界。本站小编分享关于乔布斯的英语故事，希望可以帮助大家!
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
这是苹果电脑公司兼皮克斯动画公司的CEO史蒂夫·乔布斯于2005年6月12日在斯坦佛大学毕业典礼上作的极富启发意义的演讲。
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?
在呆了六个月之后，我便从里德学院辍学了，但在那之后，我以旁听者的身份在学院里又呆了18个月才真正离开大学。那么，我为什么要辍学呢?
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.
话还要从我出生之前说起。我的生母是一个年轻的未婚大学毕业生，她决定把我送去别人家收养，并坚持认为，收养我的人必须是大学毕业生。在我出生前，所有关于收养我的事宜都已经安排妥当了。我本该被一个律师和他的妻子收养，但等到我真正出生了，他和他的妻子却在最后时刻决定他们真正想要的是个女孩。所以，我现在的养父母(他们当时在等候名单上)在半夜接到一通电话，“我们有一个意外出生的男孩，你们想收养他吗?”他们回答说，“当然想。”但后来，我的生母发现了我的养母不是大学毕业生，而我的养父甚至连高中都没有毕业，于是她拒绝在最终的收养文件上签字。几个月后，她才最后妥协了，因为我的养父母保证以后会送我去上大学。
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.
十七年过去了，我真地上了大学。但我却很天真地挑了一个和斯坦福大学一样学费昂贵的学校，光是学费就花掉了我养父母辛辛苦苦积攒多年的积蓄，他们只是工薪阶层。在学校待了六个月后，我看不出这学费花得值得。我不知道我的人生计划是什么，也不知道大学能够如何帮助我找到这一目标。而且，我在学校念书会花掉养父母一生的积蓄。于是，我决定辍学，并坚信这是一个正确的决定。当时，这是一个相当冒险的举动，但今天回头看看，那是我做出的最明智的决定之一。辍学之后，我马上逃离了那些我对之乏味的课程，转而开始旁听那些看起来很有趣的科目。
t wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, Ireturned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles acrosstown every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to bepriceless later on. Let me give you one example:
但事情也并非全是美好的。辍学后我就没有寝室了，因此，我睡在朋友房间的地板上。为了有钱吃饭，我把可乐瓶子退回商店，只为了那5美分的押金，每周星期天晚上，为了吃一顿好的大餐，我还要走7英里的路，到城镇另一头的印度哈而克利须那寺。但我热爱这种生活。而且，许多我出于好奇和直觉而偶然去做的事，后来也变证明是非常值得的。我来为你们举一个例子：
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the ughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully handcalligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decidedto take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san seriftypefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, aboutwhat makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way thatscience can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
当时，里德学院提供的恐怕是全国最棒的书法教育。走在校园里，每一幅贴在墙上的海报，每一张抽屉上的标签，都是漂漂亮亮的手写体。由于我辍了学，不用再去上常规课程，我便决定报名参加书法班，学写一手漂亮的字。在班里，我学到了灯芯体和衬线体，在不同字母组合间的间隙的变化，以及如何才能让印刷字体美观。那种美妙、古朴、艺术、微妙，是科学所不能达到的。我对之着了迷。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, whenwe were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it allinto the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in onthat single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionallyspaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computerwould have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on thiscalligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that theydo. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. Butit was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
在当时看来，这些事物仿佛于我的人生没有任何实际的应用。但十年之后，我在设计第一台苹果电脑时，它们都重新浮现在我的脑海里，我们在设计电脑时好好地运用了它们，使我们的苹果电脑成为了第一台精致排版的电脑。如果我当时没有去旁听书法班，苹果电脑就不会有多字体选择，字母间也不会有匀称的间隙。而且，由于Windows系统是借鉴了Mac系统的产物，如今所有的个人电脑都没有多字体选择和美妙的字母间隙，这也是有可能的。这些事情就像一个一个的点。当我还在学校时，是不可能看得出这些未来的来龙去脉的。但十年之后，再回头来看，一切就很明显了。
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them lookingbackwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You haveto trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never letme down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
你们也是一样，现在要将未来看透是不可能的，只有在将来，事物间的联系才会显现出来。因此，你们必须要相信，现在所学的东西总是能与未来联系起来的。而且，你们还得坚信一种东西，不管是直觉也好，命运也罢，甚至人生，或是因果循环，无论什么都好。我的这种信仰从来没有让我失望，我的生命中的所有转折都是它造成的。
关于乔布斯的英语故事：乔布斯争议不断的一生中鲜为人知的一段故事Among the many love-hate relationships that Steve Jobsengendered during his remarkable 56 years on earth, noneendured as long—nor was as fraught—as his connection withChrisann Brennan, Jobs’ first girlfriend and the mother of hisdaughter Lisa.
乔布斯辉煌的56年人生中有过很多爱恨纠缠的故事，但其中持续时间最长且最令他难堪的，应该是与初恋女友、女儿丽莎的生母克里斯安·布伦南的恩怨。
The pair met at age 17 in 1972, as students at Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., andBrennan’s stormy dealings with Jobs—over his initial denials of paternity, his treatment of Lisa, andhis limited financial support—continued until his death nearly four decades later. Brennan offeredher unsparing take on Jobs—and becoming an “object of his cruelty”—in a 2013 memoir, entitledThe Bite in the Apple.
1972年，17岁的乔布斯与布伦南在加州库比蒂诺的霍姆斯特德高中读书时结识。而因为乔布斯拒绝承认父亲的身份、他对待女儿丽莎的方式以及他提供的有限的经济支持，使布伦南与乔布斯的恩怨纠葛一直持续到乔布斯去世，长达四十多年。布伦南在2013年的一本回忆录《咬一口苹果》(The Bite in the Apple)中痛斥乔布斯，并讲述自己受到了“他的残忍对待”。
But one till-now-unrevealed chapter of their tortured history unfolded after the period covered byBrennan’s book, during the time when her ex- was achieving his highest renown and wealth. It’sthe story of how she asked Jobs, by then a billionaire, to repent for his “dishonorable behavior”with a $25 million payment to her—and another $5 million for their daughter, then 27.
但在两人不堪回首的往事当中，有一部分目前仍鲜为人知。那是在布伦南的回忆录截止的时间之后，当时她的前男友已经达到了声望和财富上的巅峰。布伦南要求当时已是亿万富翁的乔布斯向她支付2,500万美元，为自己的“不光彩行为忏悔”，还要求他向当时27岁的女儿支付500万美元。
Brennan, now 60, made her request in an undated, single-spaced, two-page letter, which she saysshe sent to Jobs in December 2005. She later provided a copy to Fortune (click here to readBrennan’s letter). A self-described “transmutational” painter and sculptor, Brennan was strugglingfinancially then, as she had throughout her adult life. Jobs, then 50 and the CEO of both AppleAAPL 0.22% and Pixar, was worth an estimated $3 billion.
现年60岁的布伦南在一封未注明日期、单倍行距、两页纸的信件中提出了上述要求。她声称自己在2005年12月将信寄给了乔布斯。后来，她向《财富》杂志提供了一份信件的副本。自称是“经过蜕变的”画家和雕塑家的布伦南，在当时经济拮据，而且她成年后的生活状况一直没有改善。而当时50岁的乔布斯，担任苹果公司和皮克斯动画的CEO，身家估计为30亿美元。
“I have raised our daughter under circumstances that were all together too tough andtougher than they needed to be,” Brennan wrote Jobs. “Obviously it was all the moreconfusing and difficult because you had so much money…thing is incomplete…ieve that decency and closure can be achieved through money. It is very simple.”
布伦南对乔布斯写道：“我在异常艰难的条件下将我们的女儿抚养成人，我们本不需要经历这样的磨难。很显然，更令人迷惑和难堪的是，你有那么多钱……有些事情是不完整的……我相信，通过金钱可以获得体面，让我得到解脱。就是这么简单。”
Jobs ignored her request, Brennan says. Months later, she began writing a memoir about theirrelationship.
布伦南称，乔布斯对她的要求视而不见。几个月后，她开始撰写回忆录，描述他们之间的关系。
More than three years after writing Jobs and asking for money, Brennan tried again. In 2009—sick,out of money, and living with friends—she contacted him again. This time Brennan offered toshelve the book (which she says Lisa didn’t want her to publish anyway) in exchange for a financialsettlement.
向乔布斯写信要钱三年多后，布伦南再次进行了尝试。2009年，疾病缠身、穷困潦倒的布伦南，借住在朋友家，因此她再次联系了乔布斯。这一次，布伦南提出用停止出书(她表示，丽莎也不希望她出版)来换取经济和解。
“I am asking you for the last time to please set up a trust for me for my life,” Brennanwrote Jobs on Sept. 26, 2009, according to emails she provided to Fortune. “I do notwant to cause conflict with you but I must do something. I have been ill for 3 years andI just do not have a choice anymore… one is going to be impressed with either ofus in this book and it will hurt Lisa who never deserved any of this. The choice is se consider providing me with $10,000 for a few months and working out a and I cannot talk because I am too ill and on a hair trigger…. Given mycircumstance, I am moving as fast as I can to have the money I need to live, it is eitheryou or the book.”
根据布伦南提供给《财富》杂志的电子邮件，她曾在2009年9月26日对乔布斯写道：“我最后一次请求你，为我设立一个信托机构，支持我的生活。我不想与你发生冲突，但我必须做一些事情。我病了三年，已经别无选择……没有人会对这本书里的我们两个产生好印象，而且这会给丽莎造成伤害，她不应该受到这样的对待。如何选择由你决定。请考虑一下为我提供10，000美元，帮我度过几个月时间，并为我设立一个信托机构。我们现在没法直接谈，因为我病得很重，而且情绪不稳定……鉴于我目前的情况，我必须尽快获得金钱来维持生计，要么通过你要么通过出书。”
“I don’t react well to blackmail,” Jobs wrote back that day, copying Lisa, then 31. “I will haveno part in any of this.”
乔布斯当天便回复称：“我不会被要挟。你的情况与我没有丝毫关系。”并且他将邮件抄送给了当时31岁的丽莎。
(In an email, Lisa declined a request to comment for this story. A spokesperson for Laurene PowellJobs, the Apple co-founder’s widow, said she would also have no comment.)
(丽莎在电子邮件中拒绝对这件事发表意见。乔布斯的遗孀劳伦·鲍威尔·乔布斯的发言人称，她对此也不作任何评论。)
After falling in love in high school, Jobs and Brennan, kindred counterculture spirits, had an on-again, off-again romance over five years. They never married, but lived together for parts of thattime. He got her pregnant at age 18—by their agreement, she had an abortion—then again, whenshe was 23.
高中时，乔布斯与布伦南因为对反主流文化精神志趣相投而陷入爱河，两人经历了长达五年分分合合的恋情。他们没有结婚，但大部分时间住在一起。布伦南在18岁时怀孕，但根据两人的协议，她做了流产。23岁的时候，布伦南再次怀孕。
Lisa was born in May 1978. Jobs, who had launched Apple and was already wealthy, would give hisdaughter’s name to one of Apple’s first personal computers. Yet he went to great lengths to denypaternity for more than two years, while Brennan cleaned houses, waited tables, and went onwelfare. At one point, Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn’t be Lisa’s fatherbecause he was “sterile and infertile,” and lacked “the physical capacity to procreate a child.” (Hehad three more children after marrying Powell in 1991.)
1978年5月，丽莎出生。当时，乔布斯创建了苹果公司，已经非常富有，他以女儿的名字来命名第一台苹果个人电脑。但在超过两年时间里，他一直在想方设法否认父亲的身份，与此同时，布伦南却在做保洁员和餐厅服务员，并且要接受政府救济。乔布斯甚至在一份签字的法院公文中发誓，他不可能是丽莎的生父，因为他“无法生育”，不具备“生育孩子的身体能力。”(他在1991年与鲍威尔结婚后生了三个孩子。)
After a lawsuit forced Jobs to take a paternity test, leading to a court order to provide childsupport and reimburse the state for its welfare costs, Jobs began paying $500 a month. Applewent public a month later, giving Jobs a personal net worth of more than $225 million. While Jobsrarely visited his daughter for years, bought a mansion, and drove a Mercedes, Brennan struggledto make ends meet. In a published essay, Lisa, who became a writer, later recalled how her father“would stop by our house some days, a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours.”
一次诉讼迫使乔布斯进行了亲子鉴定，法院据此责令他支付孩子的抚养费，并赔偿国家的福利支出，从那时候开始，乔布斯每月支付500美元。一个月后，苹果公司上市，乔布斯的个人净值超过2.25亿美元。虽然乔布斯多年来会偶尔去看望女儿，并且买了一处房产和一辆奔驰汽车，但布伦南依旧经济拮据，入不敷出。后来，已经成为作家的丽莎在一篇文章中回忆称，她的父亲“隔一些日子便会来我们家，就像下凡的天神一样，在家里待几分钟或者几个小时。”
Brennan says later Jobs apologized for the way he’d treated her and Lisa. After developing a closerrelationship with his daughter—who legally changed her name to Lisa Brennan-Jobs at age nine—he increased his support “in small increments,” eventually to $4,000 a month, says Brennan. “Hewas cheap as he could be. He under-provided for everything. It was always like pulling teeth to gethim to step up.”
布伦南说，乔布斯后来曾为自己对待她和丽莎的方式道歉。布伦南称，随着与女儿的关系愈加亲密，乔布斯也开始“少量地”增加抚养费，最后达到每个月4,000美元。他们的女儿在九岁时正式更名为丽莎·布伦南-乔布斯。“他非常小气。各个方面都是如此。要让他多支付抚养费非常困难。”
Over the years after their daughter’s birth, Jobs bought Brennan two cars and a $400,000 house,paid Lisa’s private school tuition, and at times offered other financial help. Despite this, Brennan filedfor bankruptcy in 1996. During high school, Lisa lived with her father (and his family) for the firsttime. In a second essay, Lisa wrote: “Growing up I’d been very poor, very rich, and sometimes inthe middle.”
女儿出生几年后，乔布斯为布伦南买过两辆车和一栋价值40万美元的房子，为丽莎支付了私立学校的学费，不时还会提供其他经济支持。尽管如此，布伦南还是在1996年申请了破产。高中期间，丽莎第一次与父亲(和他的家人)住在一起。在第二篇文章中，丽莎写道：“在我成长的过程，我曾经非常贫穷，也非常富有，有时候介于二者中间。”
Jobs’ money—and his favor—could be withdrawn at a moment’s notice. After a summertimeconflict with Lisa, back home from Harvard, Jobs stopped supporting her and refused to pay hercollege tuition. Lisa moved in with a married couple down the street, who covered the tuition; Jobsdidn’t repay them for years.
但乔布斯可能随时收回他的钱和好感。一年夏天，乔布斯与丽莎出现矛盾，从哈佛大学回到家后，他便停止了对女儿的资助，并拒绝支付她的大学学费。丽莎不得不搬到了街道尽头的一对夫妇家中，他们为她支付了学费;乔布斯多年来一直没有偿还这笔费用。
One e-book edition of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Jobs quotes him saying that hedidn’t attend his daughter’s 2000 Harvard graduation because Lisa “didn’t even invite me.” In fact,according to Brennan and two other sources, his daughter did invite him and he did attend. (According to a newspaper account at the time, Jobs used his daughter’s graduation to getexcused from jury duty.)
沃尔特·艾萨克森在经授权的乔布斯自传电子版中提到，乔布斯曾说他不会出席女儿2000年哈佛大学毕业典礼，因为丽莎“根本没有邀请我”。事实上，据布伦南和另外两位知情人士透露，丽莎邀请了乔布斯而且乔布斯也出席了典礼。(根据当时一份报纸的报道，乔布斯曾用女儿的毕业典礼为借口来逃避陪审员义务。)
After Brennan pointed out to Jobs that his official Apple biography described him as living in SiliconValley “with his wife and three children”—“Lisa was so upset,” says Brennan—he changed it in July2001 to “three of his four children.” In December 2004, it was changed back to “three children.”
布伦南曾向乔布斯指出，他的苹果公司官方个人简介中形容他在硅谷“与妻子和三个孩子住在一起”，“丽莎为此非常生气”——于是在2001年7月，乔布斯将其改为“四个孩子中的三个”。2004年12月，又被修改回“三个孩子”。
In 2005, Brennan was again in financial distress. Although she and Jobs rarely spoke at that point,she wrote him, asking for an “acknowledgement gift” large enough to end her money troublesforever.
2005年，布伦南再次陷入财务困境。虽然当时她和乔布斯鲜有联系，但她还是写信给乔布斯，要求他提供一大笔“谢礼”，帮她永远摆脱经济困境。
“By raising our daughter and raising her well, I have provided you with a means to having arelationship with her now,” wrote Brennan, explaining why she believed she deserved the payment. “I never turned her against you. I think you might have taken this for granted, but it should meana great deal to you…
布伦南写道：“我抚养女儿长大，并将她培养成才，并且我现在为你提供了一条途径，帮你与她保持和睦的父女关系。”她解释了自己为什么应该得到这笔钱。“我从未让她与你为敌。我想你可能一直认为这是理所当然的，但这对你应该有重要的意义……”
“I think you have made a lot of money for a lot of people over the years yet I wonder ifanyone has done as much for you as I have with Lisa and done so without the full andsustained support that this work has realistically required.”
“多年来，你帮助很多人赚到了许多钱，但是否有人曾像我和丽莎那样为你付出这么多，而且我做这一切，并没获得实际需要的任何充分的、持续的支持。”
Brennan said she had arrived at the figure of “$25 million net” after years of consideration. She alsorequested $5 million for Lisa, and said she planned to give their daughter another $5 million out ofher payment.
布伦南称，经过多年的考虑，她认为最终的数字为“2,500万美元”。并且她要求乔布斯支付给丽莎500万美元，她也会从自己得到的部分中再拿出500万美元给他们的女儿。
“It may make sense that when one goes through a traumatic experience over so many years thatthere is a need for truth and reconciliation for real closure to take place. This letter is the truth andmoney and appreciation represent reconciliation. I should have received the peaceful experiencesthat wealth provides so I could provide for Lisa as she was growing up… me this balances what Ihave done for you.”
“一个人经历过如此长时间的悲惨遭遇，需要用真相和和解才能实现真正的解脱。这封信便是真相，而钱和感激则代表了和解。我本应该获得财富带来的平和的生活，供养丽莎成长……我认为，这笔钱足以弥补我为你所做的一切。”
“I am requesting we close this chapter forever,” Brennan added. “Money is the only meaningfulthing that can do it at this point. All the years that I have lost as a result of a sort of theft fromdishonorable behavior can heal and be forgiven.”
布伦南补充道：“我请求我们将这一页永久地翻过去。目前，金钱是唯一有意义的方式。多年来，因为一个窃贼的不光彩行为让我失去的一切，都可以得到弥补和谅解。”
Brennan says Jobs never responded to her letter.
布伦南说乔布斯没有回信。
Her 2009 payment request, however—offered as an alternative to publishing her memoir—brought his immediate, angry response.
但她在2009年的要求，即要么付钱要么出版回忆录，立刻引来了乔布斯愤怒的回应。
“I am not trying to black mail you,” Brennan replied. “Please try to see that I wouldprefer to resolve things and that I have asked you, maybe poorly, to help before. Ihave been without a home for over a year and I [am] ill and I am fried. It would beconvenient for me to die but even this does not happen. I am stuck with a body and alife, I need to do something.”
布伦南回复称：“我并不是想勒索你。请你明白，我更愿意解决问题，而且我之前曾经请求你的帮助，或许方式有些不妥。我无家可归已经一年时间，而且疾病缠身，没有工作。可能死了对我来说更好，但我还没死成。我无法摆脱这幅躯体和这样的生活，我需要做些什么。”
Lisa’s own relationship with Jobs remained volatile into adulthood, leading to long periods wherethey didn’t speak to one another. But Lisa was at her father’s bedside when Jobs died at home inPalo Alto, on October 5, 2011, at 56.
即便丽莎长大成人之后，她与乔布斯的关系也时好时坏，两人曾有很长时间没有联系。但2011年10月5日，56岁的乔布斯在帕洛阿尔托的家中去世时，丽莎便陪伴在乔布斯的身边。
Brennan’s conflict continued with his widow. Days after Jobs’ death, from pancreatic cancer,Brennan published an essay in Rolling Stone, where she recalled their early, free-spirited romance—as well as the “all-too-often despotic jerk Steve turned into as he rose to meet the world.” This,Brennan says, got her “uninvited” from a private memorial service for Jobs on the Stanfordcampus.
但布伦南与乔布斯遗孀的冲突仍在继续。乔布斯因胰腺癌去世几天之后，布伦南在《滚石》杂志上发表了一篇文章，回忆了早年与乔布斯自由奔放的恋情，以及“随着乔布斯的成功，他如何变成一个专横的恶人”。布伦南称，这篇文章导致她“没有获邀”参加在斯坦福大学校园为乔布斯举办的私人追悼会。
In January 2014, she wrote Laurene Powell Jobs a certified letter, urging her to do what hewouldn’t, through a generous settlement from his estate.
2014年1月，她给劳伦·鲍威尔·乔布斯写了一封挂号信，要求她完成乔布斯未做的事情，慷慨地从他的遗产中拿出一部分与她进行和解。
“Your loyalty to Steve does not mean loyalty to his hatreds,” Brennan wrote. “….I simply neverdeserved the years of poverty and justifications he built up against me…
布伦南写道：“你对史蒂夫的忠诚并不意味着也要忠于他的仇恨。……我不应该经受这些年的贫困，以及他为了对付我我给出的那些理由……”
“You are in a position to help me without harm to your own life situation andchildren… you can find your way to helping so that I, as Lisa’s mother, can live indignity and peace, we don’t need to tell anyone… could be very quietly and legallydone.”
“你有机会帮助我，并且不会影响到你自己的生活和孩子……如果你能帮助我，作为丽莎的母亲，我可以得到体面平和的生活，我们不需要告诉任何人……这一切可以在私底下根据法律完成。”
In his estate, Jobs left their daughter a multi-million-dollar inheritance, which Lisa has used to helpsupport her, according to Brennan. But Brennan says she never received a response to her letterfrom Powell Jobs. She ended her plea to Steve Jobs’ widow this way: “It is awkward between us formany reasons, but I do want you to know that I deeply appreciate what you must have gonethrough during all the years of Steve’s illness and then his death. I know you loved him very truth, so did I.”
乔布斯在遗嘱中为他们的女儿留下了数百万美元的遗产，据布伦南表示，丽莎一直在用这笔钱资助她的生活。但布伦南表示，她始终没有收到鲍威尔·乔布斯的回信。在给乔布斯遗孀的信件结尾，她这样写道：“出于许多原因，我们之间的关系有些尴尬，但我真心希望你能明白，史蒂夫患病多年以及他的离世让你经历的痛苦，我非常理解。我知道你非常爱他。事实上，我也爱他。”
关于乔布斯的英语故事：乔布斯向你讲述人生的三个故事之一:我辍学了Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
谢谢大家。很荣幸能和你们，来自世界最好大学之一的毕业生们，一块儿参加毕业典礼。老实说，我大学没有毕业，今天恐怕是我一生中离大学毕业最近的一次了。
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
今天我想告诉大家来自我生活的三个故事。没什么大不了的，只是三个故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事，如何串连生命中的点滴。
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six 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 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've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later 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 go to college.
我在里得大学读了六个月就退学了，但是在18个月之后--我真正退学之前，我还常去学校。为何我要选择退学呢?这还得从我出生之前说起。我的生母是一个年轻、未婚的大学毕业生，她决定让别人收养我。她有一个很强烈的信仰，认为我应该被一个大学毕业生家庭收养。于是，一对律师夫妇说好了要领养我，然而最后一秒钟，他们改变了主意，决定要个女孩儿。然后我排在收养人名单中的养父母在一个深夜接到电话，“很意外，我们多了一个男婴，你们要吗?”“当然要!”但是我的生母后来又发现我的养母没有大学毕业，养父连高中都没有毕业。她拒绝在领养书上签字。几个月后，我的养父母保证会让我上大学，她妥协了。
This was the start in my life. 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 of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all 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 far more interesting.
这是我生命的开端。十七年后，我上大学了，但是我很无知地选了一所差不多和斯坦福一样贵的学校，几乎花掉我那蓝领阶层养父母一生的积蓄。六个月后，我觉得不值得。我看不出自己以后要做什么，也不晓得大学会怎样帮我指点迷津，而我却在花销父母一生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并且相信没有做错。一开始非常吓人，但回忆起来，这却是我一生中作的最好的决定之一。从我退学的那一刻起，我可以停止一切不感兴趣的必修课，开始旁听那些有意思得多的课。
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 five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven 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.
事情并不那么美好。我没有宿舍可住，睡在朋友房间的地上。为了吃饭，我收集五分一个的旧可乐瓶，每个星期天晚上步行七英里到哈尔-克里什纳庙里改善一下一周的伙食。我喜欢这种生活方式。能够遵循自己的好奇和直觉前行后来被证明是多么的珍贵。让我来给你们举个例子吧。
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 sans-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.
当时的里德大学提供可能是全国最好的书法指导。校园中每一张海报，抽屉上的每一张标签，都是漂亮的手写体。由于我已退学，不用修那些必修课，我决定选一门书法课上上。在这门课上，我学会了“serif”和"sans-serif"两种字体、学会了怎样在不同的字母组合中改变字间距、学会了怎样写出好的字来。这是一种科学无法捕捉的微妙，楚楚动人、充满历史底蕴和艺术性，我觉得自己被完全吸引了。
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.
当时我并不指望书法在以后的生活中能有什么实用价值。但是，十年之后，我们在设计第一台 Macintosh计算机时，它一下子浮现在我眼前。于是，我们把这些东西全都设计进了计算机中。这是第一台有这么漂亮的文字版式的计算机。要不是我当初在大学里偶然选了这么一门课，Macintosh计算机绝不会有那么多种印刷字体或间距安排合理的字号。要不是Windows照搬了 Macintosh，个人电脑可能不会有这些字体和字号。
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
要不是退了学，我决不会碰巧选了这门书法课，个人电脑也可能不会有现在这些漂亮的版式了。
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--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
当然，我在大学里不可能从这一点上看到它与将来的关系。十年之后再回头看，两者之间关系就非常、非常清楚了。你们同样不可能从现在这个点上看到将来;只有回头看时，才会发现它们之间的关系。所以你必须相信，那些点点滴滴，会在你未来的生命里，以某种方式串联起来。你必须相信一些东西——你的勇气、宿命、生活、因缘，随便什么——因为相信这些点滴能够一路连接会给你带来循从本觉的自信，它使你远离平凡，变得与众不同。
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