演讲作为一种语体,可以追溯到古希腊时期。演讲以其独特的魅力在各个领域比如在科技、法律、政治等方面以及生活中发挥着很重要的作用。下面是小编带来的励志人生英语演讲文章，欢迎阅读!

励志人生英语演讲文章1

I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most startups don't, and I wasn't sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie, also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row, told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well, out of an umbrella and aluminum foil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

我告诉妻子麦肯琪说我想辞去工作，然后去做这件疯狂的事情，很可能会失败，因为大部分创业公司都是如此，而且我不确定那之后会发生什么。麦肯琪告诉我，我应该放手一搏。她也是从普林斯顿毕业的，现在就坐在第二排那里。在我还是一个男孩儿的时候，我是车库发明家。我曾用水泥填充的轮胎，不太好用的太阳灶，一把雨伞和铝箔以及用来诈骗兄弟姐妹的报警器制作了一个自动关门器。我一直想做一个发明家，麦肯琪支持我追随内心的激情。

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job."

我当时在纽约一家金融公司工作，同事是一群非常聪明的人，我的老板也很有智慧，我很钦佩他。我告诉我的老板说我想开办一家在网上卖书的公司。他带我到中央公园漫步良久，认真地听我讲完，最后说：“听起来真是一个很好的主意，但是对那些目前没有谋到一份好工作的人来说，这个主意会更好。”

That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm pround of that choice.

这一逻辑对我而言颇有道理，他说服我在做出最终决定之前再考虑48小时。那样想来，这个选择确实很艰难，但是最终，我决定拼一次。我认为自己不会为尝试后悔，为失败遗憾，倒是有所决定但完全不付诸行动会一直煎熬着我。在深思熟虑之后，我选择了那条不太安全的道路，去追随我内心的激情。我为那个决定感到骄傲。

励志人生英语演讲文章2

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. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

很荣幸和你们一起参加世界上最好的一所大学的毕业典礼。说实话，我大学没毕业，这是我第一次离大学毕业这么近。今天，我想给大家讲我人生中的三个故事，不谈别的，也不讲大道理，三个故事就好。

The first story is about connecting the dots.

第一个故事讲的是把生命中的点滴串连起来。

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?

我在里德学院只读了六个月就退学了。此后便在学校里旁听，又过了大约一年半，我彻底离开。那么，我为什么退学了?

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'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. This was the start in my life.

这得从我出生前讲起。我的生母是一名年轻的未婚在校研究生，她决定将我送给别人收养。她非常希望收养我的是有大学学历的人，所以把一切都安排好了，决定我一出生就将我交给一对律师夫妇收养。没想到我才刚刚出生，那对夫妻却决定收养一名女孩。就这样，我的养父母——他们的名字当时还在登记册上——半夜三更接到一个电话：“我们这儿现在有一个没人要的男婴，你们要吗?”“当然要。”他们回答。但是，我的生母后来发现我的养母不是大学毕业生，我的养父甚至高中都没毕业，所以就拒绝在最后的收养文件上签字。不过，每过几个月她就心软了，因为我的养父母许诺日后一定送我上大学。这就是我生命的起点。

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.

十七年后，我真的上了大学。但是当时我幼稚地选了一所学费几乎和斯坦福大学一样昂贵的学校，而我的养父母只是工薪阶层，他们倾其积蓄为我支付了大学学费。过了六个月后，我却看不出上大学有什么意义。我既不知道自己这一生想干什么，也不知道念大学是否能帮我弄明白这一点，而且在那儿我会花光父母一辈子节省下来的钱。

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.

所以，我决定退学，并坚信日后会证明我这样做是对的。当年做出这个决定时心里很害怕，但现在回想起来，这还真是我有生以来做出的最好的决定之一。一退学，我就可以不再选那些我一点儿都不感兴趣的必修课，开始旁听一些看上去有趣得多的课。

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:

那种日子一点儿都不浪漫。我没有宿舍，只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。我去退还可乐瓶，用那五分钱的押金来买吃的。每个星期天晚上我都要步行七英里，走到城那头的黑尔·科里施纳礼堂去吃每周才能享用一次的美餐。我喜欢那里的饭菜。我凭着好奇心和直觉所做的许多事情后来都证明是无价的。我来给大家举个例子。

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.

当时，里德学院的书法课大概是全国最好的。校园里所有的公告栏和每个抽屉的标签上的字都非常漂亮。因为我已经退学，不用正常上课，所以我决定选修书法课，学学怎么写出漂亮的字。

I learned about serif and san-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. 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.

我学习写带短截线和不带短截线的字体，根据不同字母组合调整其间距，并学习怎样把版式调整得更好。这门课太棒了，既有历史价值，又有艺术造诣，这一点科学就做不到，我觉得它妙不可言。当时我并不指望书法在我以后的生活中能有什么使用价值。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Macintosh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。

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 that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

要不是 Windows 照搬了 Macintosh, 个人电脑可能不会有这些字体和字号。要是我当初没有退学，我绝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。当然，我在大学里不可能从这些点滴上看到它与将来的关系，十年之后再回头看，两者之间的关系就非常、非常清楚了。

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.

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，你们要相信这些点滴迟早会连接在一起。你们必须相信某些东西——勇气、命运、生命、以及因果报应，等等。要相信，这些点会为你铺平前进的道路，会给与你听从自己的心声的自信，会引导你走自己的路，然后取得成就。

My second story is about love and loss.

我的第二个故事是关于好恶与得失。

I was lucky—I found what I loved to do early in life. 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 ofus in a garage into a two billion dollar company with over 4000 employees. We'd just releasedour finest creation—the Macintosh—a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I gotfired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hiredsomeone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first yearor so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually wehad a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. And so at 30, I was out.And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it wasdevastating.

幸运的是，我在很早的时候就发现自己喜欢做什么。我在20岁的时候和沃兹(苹果公司创始人之一)在我父母的车库里办起了苹果公司。我们干的很卖力，十年后，苹果公司从车库里只有我们两个人的小公司发展成为一个拥有20亿美元资产、4,000余名员工的大企业。那时，我们刚刚推出了我们最好的产品——Macintosh电脑——那是在第9年，我刚满30岁。可接下来，我被解雇了。你怎么会被自己办的公司解雇呢?是这样的，随着苹果公司越做越大，我们聘请了一位我认为非常有才华的人和我一起管理公司。在开始的一年多时间里，一切都很顺利。可是，随后我们两人对公司前景的看法开始出现分歧，最后我们反目了，而董事会站在了他那一边。所以在30岁那年，我离开了公司，而且这件事闹得满城风雨。我失去了成年后的整个生活重心，这使我心力交瘁。

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation ofentrepreneurs down—that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met withDavid Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a verypublic failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowlybegan to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed thatone bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

一连几个月，我真的不知道该怎么办。我感到自己给老一代的创业者丢脸了——因为我扔掉了交到自己手里的接力棒。我去见了戴维·帕卡德(惠普公司创始人之一)和鲍勃·诺伊斯(英特尔公司创建者之一)，想为把事情搞得这么糟糕说声道歉。这次失败弄得沸沸扬扬，我甚至想过逃离硅谷。但是，渐渐地，我开始有了一个想法——我仍然热爱我过去做的一切。在苹果公司发生的这些风波丝毫没有改变这一点。我虽然被拒之门外，但我仍然深爱我的事业。于是，我决定从头开始。

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.

虽然当时我并没有意识到，但事实证明，被苹果公司炒鱿鱼是我一生中碰到是最好的事情。尽管前景未卜，但从头开始的轻松感取代了成功的沉重感。这使我轻松踏入了一生中最富有创造力的时期之一。

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, and I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

在此后的五年里，我开了一家名叫NeXT的公司和一家叫皮克斯的公司，我还爱上了一位了不起的女人，后来娶了她。皮克斯公司推出了世界上第一部电脑制作的动画片《玩具总动员》，它现在是全球最成功的动画制作室。世道轮回，苹果公司买下NeXT后，我又回到了苹果公司，我们在NeXT公司开发的技术成了苹果公司这次重新崛起的核心。我和劳伦娜也建立了美满的家庭。

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometime life. 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 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—and 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, don't settle.

我确信，如果不是被苹果公司解雇，这一切绝不可能发生。这是一剂苦药，可我认为良药苦口利于病。有时生活会给你当头一棒，但不要灰心。我坚信让我不断前行的唯一力量就是我热爱我所做的一切。所以，我们一定得知道自己喜欢什么，选择爱人时如此，选择工作时也如此。工作将是生活中的一大部分，让自己真正满意的唯一办法，是做自己认为有意义的工作。做有意义的工作的唯一办法，是热爱自己的工作。如果你们还没有发现自己喜欢什么，那就不断地去寻找，不要急于做出决定。就像一切要凭感觉去做事情一样，一旦找到了自己喜欢的事，感觉就会告诉你。就像任何一种美妙的东西，历久弥新。所以说，要不断寻找，直到找到自己喜欢的东西。不要半途而废。