Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone 4 in San Francisco in 2010. - Photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times

In 2005, Steve Jobs made a commencement speech at Stanford University, a speech that appealed to young people (and not-so-young people) to never give up on their dreams, to follow their passions, and to take setbacks as temporary, never permanent. He started Apple from a garage, built the company up into a US$2 billion enterprise, then got fired from the company he created.

In his words, “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 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. ”

And his message to all: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”

Read the commencement text in full here:  ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

Or watch the video here:

Steve Jobs\’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (with intro by President John Hennessy)