Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Key ideas

Jobs built the speech around three stories. The first is about connecting the dots: he dropped out of Reed College after six months but stayed on informally, sitting in on classes that interested him, including calligraphy. Ten years later that class shaped the typography of the first Macintosh. His point is that you can only connect the dots looking backward, so you have to trust that they will connect later.

The second story is about love and loss. He started Apple with Steve Wozniak in his parents' garage and was then pushed out of the company he had founded. He describes that as the best thing that could have happened, because it replaced the weight of success with the lightness of starting again; he went on to found NeXT and to build Pixar. The lesson he draws is to find work you love and not to settle until you do.

The third story is about death. About a year earlier he had been diagnosed with cancer, and he describes remembering that he will die as the best tool he knows for avoiding the trap of thinking you have something to lose. He closes with the farewell message from the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog, which gives the speech its title.

Summarised in our own words; watch the full speech below.