Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

The Stanford Commencement
Jobs kept his continuing battle with the cancer secret—he told everyone that he had been “cured”
—just as he had kept quiet about his diagnosis in October 2003. Such secrecy was not surprising; 
it was part of his nature. What was more surprising was his decision to speak very personally and 
publicly about his cancer diagnosis. Although he rarely gave speeches other than his staged 
product demonstrations, he accepted Stanford’s invitation to give its June 2005 commencement 
address. He was in a reflective mood after his health scare and turning fifty.
For help with the speech, he called the brilliant scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin (
A Few Good Men, 
The West Wing
). Jobs sent him some thoughts. “That was in February, and I heard nothing, so I 
ping him again in April, and he says, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and I send him a few more thoughts,” Jobs 
recounted. “I finally get him on the phone, and he keeps saying ‘Yeah,’ but finally it’s the 
beginning of June, and he never sent me anything.”
Jobs got panicky. He had always written his own presentations, but he had never done a 
commencement address. One night he sat down and wrote the speech himself, with no help other 
than bouncing ideas off his wife. As a result, it turned out to be a very intimate and simple talk, 
with the unadorned and personal feel of a perfect Steve Jobs product.
Alex Haley once said that the best way to begin a speech is “Let me tell you a story.” Nobody 
is eager for a lecture, but everybody loves a story. And that was the approach Jobs chose. “Today, 
I want to tell you three stories from my life,” he began. “That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.”
The first was about dropping out of Reed College. “I could stop taking the required classes that 
didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.” The second 
was about how getting fired from Apple turned out to be good for him. “The heaviness of being 
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.” 
The students were unusually attentive, despite a plane circling overhead with a banner that 
exhorted “recycle all e-waste,” and it was his third tale that enthralled them. It was about being 
diagnosed with cancer and the awareness it brought:
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. 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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking 
you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
The artful minimalism of the speech gave it simplicity, purity, and charm. Search where you 
will, from anthologies to YouTube, and you won’t find a better commencement address. Others 
may have been more important, such as George Marshall’s at Harvard in 1947 announcing a plan 
to rebuild Europe, but none has had more grace.
A Lion at Fifty

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For his thirtieth and fortieth birthdays, Jobs had celebrated with the stars of Silicon Valley and 
other assorted celebrities. But when he turned fifty in 2005, after coming back from his cancer 
surgery, the surprise party that his wife arranged featured mainly his closest friends and 
professional colleagues. It was at the comfortable San Francisco home of some friends, and the 
great chef Alice Waters prepared salmon from Scotland along with couscous and a variety of 
garden-raised vegetables. “It was beautifully warm and intimate, with everyone and the kids all 
able to sit in one room,” Waters recalled. The entertainment was comedy improvisation done by 
the cast of