Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech: Rhetorical Analysis and Main Points

The famous commencement speech to Stanford graduates “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” is direct proof that Steve Jobs was a talented public speaker. 

From the article, you will learn what principle this motivational speech is built on and what rhetorical and stylistic devices Steve Jobs used.

Why did Steve Jobs Give the Commencement Address at Stanford

Steve Jobs, like no other, knew what success is. But he also was well aware of how difficult it is to find yourself, your purpose, and your dream job. 

Over the 56 years of his life, Jobs mastered several professions (without graduating from university), founded not one, but three companies – Apple Computer, NeXT, and Pixar Animation Studios.

Absolutely deservedly and rightly so, Steve Jobs was invited to Stanford University, California. Stanford is ranked among the top universities in the world. Therefore, Steve Jobs faced quite a challenge – with his motivational speech to help students make the right choice and to direct them to the right path.

Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address

Photo: stanford.edu

On June 12, 2005, Steve Jobs gave his famous commencement speech “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish!” to Stanford graduates. 

Did you know?

The text of Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address is hidden in the Apple.txt system file on Mac.

“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.”

This is how Steve Jobs begins his famous speech: clearly, honestly, and frankly, thus disposing to himself and focusing everyone’s attention.

Of course, Steve Jobs was a gifted public speaker (remember his successful presentations of Apple products). Therefore, like any professional speaker, Jobs used rhetorical devices, figures, and literary tropes in his speeches.

Read more about rhetorical devices in the post “How to Write a Persuasive Essay and Article: Complete Guide”.

Structure of Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech

Steve Jobs’ speech has a classic structure and consists of 3 parts:

1. Introduction. 

The introduction includes a greeting and a short preface:

“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.”

2. The main part.

These are the three stories from Steve Jobs:

“The first story is about connecting the dots.”

“My second story is about love and loss.” 

“My third story is about death.”

At the end of each story, Steve Jobs draws a conclusion and emphasizes the main idea. For example:

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. 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.”

3. Conclusion:

“On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.”

The Tone of Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech

The tone of the commencement address and the style of presentation are informal (colloquial) with elements of slang:

“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.” 

Steve Jobs knows and understands his audience very well, talks about simple but important things: family and studies, friends and love, career, ups and downs, life and death.

Steve Jobs’ speech lasted 15 minutes – the perfect time by all the canons of an oratory.

Rhetorical Analysis of the Commencement Speech: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Steve Jobs used three modes of persuasion in his Stanford commencement address – ethos, logos, and pathos.

Ethos

Used ethos to build trust and gain the favor of the public:

“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.” 

“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.”

“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 world’s 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 returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.”

Logos

Logos is a mode of persuasion using logic, common sense, and reason:

“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 4,000 employees.”

“But 10 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. 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.”

Pathos

Steve Jobs used pathos to emotionally amplify his speech and evoke the necessary response from the public:

“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.”

“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 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.” 

“About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.”

“No one wants to die. 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.”

What Rhetorical Devices (Figures and Tropes) Did Steve Jobs Use in Stanford Commencement Speech

In addition to the basic modes of persuasion, Steve Jobs, a brilliant speaker, used several rhetorical devices in his motivational speech. Let’s consider some of them:

1. The rule of three is a rhetorical device that involves the expression of thoughts through three words or phrases. 

Of course, the most striking example of the rule of three is the idea of the commencement speech itself – three stories from Steve Jobs’ life. 

More examples of the rule of three (triad):

• “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.” 

• “It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.” 

• “This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras.” 

• “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.”

2. Antithesis is the opposition of words, concepts, and images that are interconnected by common features (contrast):

“If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class…” 

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” 

“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner.”

“I had been rejected, but I was still in love.”

“because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life…It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

3. A rhetorical question is a question-statement that does not require a direct answer:

• “I really quit. So why did I drop out?” 
• “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?” 

4. Anaphora is the repetition of the same initial words or sound combinations:

• “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” 
• “It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.” 
• “No one wants to die. 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.”
• “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 I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.” 

5. Lexical repetition is a stylistic figure that consists of the deliberate repetition of the same word or speech construction in a visible section of the text:

• ” Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

• “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.” 
• “about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.” 
• “But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.”
• “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. 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.”
• “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.”
• ” 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.”
• “Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.”
• “This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades.” 

6. Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonants in several words:

• “I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life.”
• “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.” 
• “all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death…” 

7. Comparison:

“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.” 

8. Metaphor is a hidden comparison, the use of words in a figurative sense based on similarity and analogy with the characteristics of some object or phenomenon (a waterfall of stars, a wall of fire, a pearl of art, a bear of a problem).

Metaphor gives imagery to speech, helps to keep the listener’s attention, and influences their imagination:

• “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” 
• “the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.” 
• “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.”
• “these things just fall away in the face of death…” 
• “This was the closest I’ve been to facing death…” 
• “There is no reason not to follow your heart”. 

9. Parallelism is the identical or the same construction of various words or sentences of the text:  

• “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. 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.”
• ” 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.”
• “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life… Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
• “It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.” 

Steve Jobs’ Commencement Speech: 5 Key Points

In conclusion, I would like to highlight 5 main points that Steve Jobs wanted to convey to graduates of Stanford University:

1. Listen to your heart, do not follow someone else’s advice.
2. Sometimes you just need to “go with the flow” – to trust God, fate, intuition, or circumstances. And then, looking back – into the past, you will be able to understand why all these events happened in your life.
3. Sometimes the worst thing that happened in your life can lead to the best events and changes in the future.
4. Do you want to be happy? Love what you are doing.
5. The memory of death cleanses a person of all that is unnecessary. Our time is limited. So always “stay hungry, stay foolish”.

Text of Steve Jobs’ commencement speech

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