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Steve Jobs Speech: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

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.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 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?

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 have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out 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 someday go to college. 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. 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 interesting.

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 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 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: 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. I learned about serif and sans 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 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. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

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.

My second story is about love and loss 

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 of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. 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? 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 felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. 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. 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. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

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. 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. 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.

My third story is about death

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

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.

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. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. 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.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: 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. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. 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 most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. 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.

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Elon Musk Speech: Future, A.I. and Mars

In life, we've seen, within this part of the world, great people, like Al-Khawarizmi who invented algorithm. Globally, Newton. Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Albert Einstein and Elon Musk. See, you are in rush, You want to go to places that nobody has been. You are re-inventing a certain industry, from the rocket industry with SpaceX to the car industry with Tesla. What's your life mission? Why do you do whatever you do? Sure, first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. And I'm having a really great time with my kids in Dubai. It's really been fantastic. I really encourage anyone who hasn't been to visit, what a great city! Thank you. And, in terms of the motivations, I used to like this sort of... kind of a long version of the explanation but... essentially, when I was a kid I was wondering, what's the meaning of life? Like, why are we here? What is it all about? And I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we're able to ask these questions. And... So, I think there are certain things that are necessary to ensure that the future is good. And... some of those things are in the long term having long term sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation. And to be a space exploring civilization. And for humanity to be out there among the stars. And be a multi-planetary species. I think that being a multi-planetary species and being out there among the stars is important for the long-term survival of humanity.

And, that's one reason, kind of like life insurance for life collectively. Life as we know it. But then the part that I find personally most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure, and it makes people excited about the future. If you consider two futures, one where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens. Or another future where we are out there on many planets, maybe even going beyond the solar system. I think that space invasion is incredibly exciting and inspiring. And there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point? There's got to be things that people find inspiring, and make life worth living. So, what is life for you? I mean, you look at our life, and I heard you before speaking. Is it a dream? Is it real? Is it a million deal? What is life for Elon Musk? I find that as I get older I find that question to be maybe more and more confusing or troubling or uncertain. Particularly when you see the advancement of something like video games. You know, 40 years ago, you had video games, the most advanced video game would be like Pong, when you had two rectangles and a dot. And you're like batting it back and forth. - I played it. - Yeah, me too, exactly. - Us all. - It sort of dates you a little bit. Yeah, we both played the same game. And that was like a pretty fun game at the time. But now, you can see a video game that's photo-realistic, almost photo-realistic, and millions of people playing simultaneously. And, and you see where things are going with virtual reality. And augmented reality and... if you extrapolate that out into the future with any rate of progress at all, like keeping 0.1% of something like that a year, then eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality. They'll be so realistic you won't be able to tell the difference between that game and reality as we know it. And then, it seems like, well, how do we know that that didn't happen in the past? And that we're not in one of those games ourselves? Interesting. Interesting. I mean, it could be.

Everything is possible in life. I mean there's... Yeah, particularly like things tend to be accelerating to something. Isn't it? I mean, if we look at our life, it seems in the past 100 years life has been accelerating quite fast. - Yeah. - In the past 20 years. - It's getting faster and faster. - Is it more slow? So, my question is really, how will life be 20, 30, 50 years from now? Our education, our transport. How do you see it? Well, I think this is one of those things that are quite difficult to predict. When you think of, say, the first controlled power flight was in 1903 with the Wright Brothers. And then, 66 years later we put the first people on the moon. I mean, if you asked people, say, in 1900, what are the odds of landing on the moon they would've said that's ridiculous. If you try to talk to them about the internet they wouldn't know what the heck you're even... What are you talking about? Like, this sounds so crazy. But today, with a hundred-dollar device you can video-conference with anyone in the world. On the other side of the world, and if you have a Wi-Fi connection, it's basically free. You're free to have an instant visual communication with anyone, or even with millions of people. You know, with social media you can communicate to millions of people simultaneously. So, and you can google something and ask any question. It's like an oracle of wisdom, that you can ask almost any questions and get an instant response. It would be incredibly difficult to predict these things in the past. Even the relatively recent past. So, I think the one thing that we can be quite certain of is that any predictions we make today for what the future will be like in 50 years will be wrong That's for sure. I think directionally, I can tell you what I hope the future has, as opposed to maybe what it will be. This may just be wishful thinking. I mean I hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, Jupiter. I hope we're traveling frequently throughout the solar system, perhaps preparing for missions to nearby star systems. I think all of that is possible in 50 years. And I think it's going to be very exciting to do that. And, I think we'll see autonomy and artificial intelligence advance tremendously. Like that's actually quite near term. My guess is in probably 10 years, it will be very unusual for cars to be built that are not fully autonomous. - 10 years. - 10 years from now? Yeah. I think almost all cars built will be able of full autonomy in about 10 years. As it is, the Tesla cars that are made today, have the sensor system necessary for full autonomy. And we think probably enough compute power to be safer than a person. So, it's mostly just the question of developing the software and uploading the software. And if it turns out that more compute power is needed, we can easily upgrade the computer. And, so that's all Teslas built since October last year. And other manufacturers will follow and do the same thing. So, getting in a car will be like getting in an elevator. You just tell it where you want to go and it takes you there with extreme levels of safety. And that will be normal, that will just be normal. Like, for elevators, they used to be elevator operators. You get in, there will be a guy moving a lever. Now, you just get in, you press the button and that's taken for granted. So, autonomy will be wide-spread. I think one of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. And I don't mean narrow AI, like, vehicle autonomy I would put in the narrow AI class. It's narrowly trying to achieve a certain function. But deep artificial intelligence, or what is sometimes called artificial general intelligence, where you can have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth. This, I think, is a dangerous situation. Why is it dangerous? I mean, there are two views, one view is that artificial intelligence will help humanity, and there's another school of thought that artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity. - Why is that? - I think it's both. You know, it's like... one way to think of it is imagine we're going to be visited... imagine you're very confident that we're going to be visited by super intelligent aliens, in let's say 10 years or 20 years at the most. - Super intelligent. - So, you think within 20 years...

- Yeah... - we'll have aliens on Earth? Well, digital super intelligence will be like an alien. - It will be like an alien. - Yeah. But my question is, do you think there is other intelligent life outside the Earth? It seems probable. I think this is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy, is, where are the aliens? Maybe they are among us, I don't know. Some people think I'm an alien. Not true. - Not true. - But maybe we are aliens. Maybe we aliens. I mean, if you look at this part of the world. Yeah. They believe that human beings are not from Earth, they came from somewhere else. Eve and Adam came from somewhere else to Earth. So, in a way, human beings are aliens to this land. Do you think we'll make contact with aliens within the next 50 years? Well, that's a really tough one to say. If there are super intelligent aliens out there, they're probably already observing us. That would seem quite likely and we're not smart enough to realize it. But I can do some back of the envelope calculations and... any advanced alien civilization that is at all interested in populating the galaxy, even without exceeding the speed of light, even if you're only moving at, say, 10 or 20 per cent of the speed of light, you could populate the entire galaxy in let's say 10 million years. Maybe 20 million years max. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Once you said you wanted to die on Mars. Why? To be clear, I don't want to die on Mars. It's like, if... we're all going to die someday, and if you're going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars? You know, if you're born on Earth, why not die on Mars? Seems like may be quite exciting. But, I think given the choice between dying on Earth and dying on Mars, I'd say, yeah, sure, I'll die on Mars. But it's not some kind of Mars death wish. And if I do die on Mars, I just don't want to go on impact.

Let's come back to Earth, actually. You tweeted that you are building a tunnel under Washington D.C. Why? What is it? - It's a secret plot. - Okay. - Just between us. - Nobody helps you? Yeah, exactly, let's keep that a secret. I think this is going to sound a little... I mean, it seems like so much trivial or silly, but... I've been saying this for many years now but I think that the solution to urban congestion is a network of tunnels under cities. And when I say that I don't mean a 2-D plan of tunnels, I mean tunnels that go many levels deep. So, you can always go deeper than you can go up. Like, the deepest mines are deeper than the tallest buildings. So, you can have a network of tunnels that is 20, 30, 40, 50 levels, as many levels as you want, really. And so, given that, you can overcome the congestion situation in any city in the world. The challenge is how do you build tunnels quickly and at low cost and with high safety? So, if tunnel technology can be improved to the point where you can build tunnels fast, cheap and safe, then that would completely get rid of any traffic situations in the cities. And so, that's why I think it's an important technology. And, Washington D.C., L.A and most of the major American cities, most major cities in the world suffer from severe traffic issues. And it's mostly because you've got these buildings which are, these tall buildings that are 3-D and you have a road network that is one level. And then, people generally want to go in and out of these buildings at the exact same time. So, then, you get the traffic jam. Let's come back to... your year in Dubai. The first time I met you it was the 4th of June 2015, at your office in SpaceX. And, I asked you would you have a presence in UAE? And your answer was: I'm busy with China. Maybe not in the near future, and almost a year and a half later, we are here, seems time goes quite fast. Why now? I think actually things are going really well in China. So, we have some initial challenges figuring out charging and service infrastructure and various other things, but now it's actually going really well, and... so the timing seems to be good to really make a significant debut in this region, starting in Dubai. In your opinion, what is the new disturbing thing that will come next in technology? What's next in technology? - What's next in technology? - That will disturb the way we live, the way we think, the way we do business. Well, the most near to impact from a technological standpoint is autonomous cars, like fully self-driving cars. I'd say that's going to happen much faster than people realize. so, and that's... it's going to be a great convenience to be in an autonomous car, but there are many people whose job is to drive. So, if... in fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people is driving in various forms. And so, then we need to figure out new rules for what do these people do. But it will all be very disruptive and very quick. I should characterize what I mean by quick. Because there are... Quick means different things to different people. There are about two billion vehicles in the world. Approaching in fact 2.5 billion cars and trucks in the world. The total new vehicle production capacity is about a hundred million. Which makes sense, because the life of a car or truck before it's finally scraped is about 20-25 years. So, so the point at which we see full autonomy appear will not be the point at which there is massive societal upheaval, because it will take a long time to make enough autonomous vehicles to disrupt employment. So, that disruption I'm talking about will take place over about 20 years. Still, 20 years is a short period of time to have I think something like 12 to 15 per cent of the world force be unemployed. Thank you. This is the largest global government summit we have over 139 governments here. If you want to advise government officials to be ready for the future, what three pieces of advice can you give them? Well, I think the first bit of advice is to really play close attention to... the development of artificial intelligence. I think this is, we need to be just be very careful in... how we adopt artificial intelligence, and to make sure that researchers don't get carried away, because sometimes what happens is that scientists can get so engrossed in their work, they don't necessarily realize the ramifications of what they're doing. So, I think it's important for public safety that we... you know, governments keep a close eye on artificial intelligence and make sure that it does not represent a danger to the public. Let's see, secondly I would say we do need to think about transport in general. And, there's the movement towards electric vehicles, sustainable transport, I think that's going to be good for many reasons, but again, not something that happens immediately, that's going to happen slower than the self-driving vehicles. Because that's probably something that happens over 30 or 40 years. The transition to electric vehicles. So, thinking about that in context... the demand for electricity will increase dramatically. So, currently, in terms of total energy usage in the world, it's about 1/3, about 1/3 transport, about 1/3 heating. So, over time that will transition to almost all... not all, but predominantly electricity, which means that the demand for electricity will probably triple. So, it's going to be very important to think about how do you make so much more electricity And... It seems they'll have an easy job, that's it, there are no more challenges for them. No, well, I think maybe... these things do play into each other a little bit, but what to do about mass unemployment? This is going to be a massive social challenge. And I think ultimately will have to have some kind of universal basic income I don't think we're going to have a choice. - Universal basic income. - Universal basic income. I think it's going to be necessary. So, it means that unemployed people will be paid across the globe. - Yeah. - Because there are no jobs. Machines, robots are taking over. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. That's simply... And I want to be clear, these are not things that I wish would happen. These are simply things that I think probably will happen. And so, if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, then we need to say what are we going to do about it.

And I think some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary. Now, the output of goods and services will be extremely high. So, with automation, there will come abundance. There will be... almost everything will get very cheap. The... So... I think the biggest... I think we'll just end up doing a universal basic income. It's going to be necessary. The harder challenge, much harder challenge, is how do people then have meaning? Like a lot of people they derive their meaning from their employment, so, if you don't have... if you're not needed, if there's not a need for your labor, how do you... what's the meaning? Do you have meaning? Do you feel useless? That's a much harder problem to deal with. And then how do we ensure that the future is going to be the future that we want? That we so like. You know, I mean do think that there's a potential path here which is, I'm really getting into science fiction or sort of advanced science stuff. But, having some sort of merger with biological intelligence, and machine intelligence. To some degree, we are already a cyborg. You think of like the digital tools that you have, your phone and your computer, the applications that you have. Like the fact that as I mentioned earlier you can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google or from other things. And, and so you already have a digital touchery layer. I say touchery because you can think of the limbic system, kind of the animal brain or the primal brain and then the cortex, kind of the thinking, planning part of the brain, and then your digital self as a third layer. So, you already have that, and I think if somebody dies, their digital ghost is still around. All of their e-mails and the pictures that they posted and their social media. That still lives, even if they died. So, over time I think we'll probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. And it's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and your digital... the digital extension of yourself. Particularly output, and, if anything is getting worse, you know, we used to have keyboards that we used a lot, now we do most of our input through our thumbs, on a phone. And, that's just very slow. A computer can communicate at a trillion bits per second, but your thumb can maybe do maybe 10 bits per second or a hundred if you're being generous. So, some high bandwidth interface to the brain I think will be something that helps achieve symbiosis, between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem. I'm getting pretty esoteric here, I don't know is this is... It's close, we got it. Always you think out of the box. Your ideas are so huge. You want to go to space, you decided to go to space, you did it. You decided that you wanted to land your rocket back, - you failed, 7 times, 8 times? - Yeah, something like that. - Then it landed. - 4 times that I care to count. How do you come with these ideas? Sometimes they are pushing the human limit. You are always pushing the human limit, why? Well, I... I think about what technology solution is necessary in order to achieve that particular goal, and then try to make as much progress in that direction as possible. So, in the case of space flight, the critical breakthrough that's necessary in space flight, is rapid incomplete reusability of rockets. Just as we have for air crafts. You can imagine that if an air craft was a single use, almost no one would fly. Because you can buy like, say, 747 might be... 250 million Dollars, 300 million Dollars, something like that. You need two of them for a round trip. But nobody is going to pay millions of Dollars for a ticket to fly. To do air travel. So, but because you can re-use the air craft tens of thousands of times, the... Air travel becomes much more affordable. And, the same is true of rockets. Our rocket costs... 60 million Dollars, roughly. So, a capital cost if it can be used once in 60 million Dollars. But if the capital cost if it can be used a thousand times is 60 thousand Dollars.

So, then if you can carry a lot of people for a flight, then you can get the cost of space flight to be something not far from the cost of air flight. So, it's truly fundamental, because earth gravity is quite deep. Earth has a fairly high gravity. The difficulty of making a rocket reusable is much greater than the difficulty of making an air craft reusable. That's why a fully reusable rocket hasn't been developed that far. But if you use the most advanced materials, the most advanced design techniques, and you get everything just right, then I'm confident that you can do a fully reusable rocket. Fortunately, if Earth gravity was even 10 per cent stronger, I would say it wouldn't be impossible. You need a team around you to deliver a lot of ideas. How do you choose your team? Based on what? Well, I suppose honestly that it tends to be a gut feeling more than anything else. So, when I interview somebody, the main questions are always the same. What do you ask? I say: Tell me the story of your life. And, the decisions that you made along the way and why you made them. And then, and also tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them. And, that question I think is very important, because... the people that really solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it. They know the little details. And the people that pretended to solve the problem, they can maybe go one level and then they get stuck. So, what was your biggest challenge in life? Biggest challenge in life? - No challenge? - Well, no, there's a lot of them. I'm trying to sort which is the worst. I think just thinking about how to spend time. One of the biggest challenges I think is making sure you have a corrective feedback loop, and then maintaining that corrective feedback loop over time, even when people won't to tell you exactly what you want to hear.

- That's very difficult. - Yes. Time is over. I'll ask you just one last question. If you allow me. In the World Government Summit we have so many people from... so many young people actually from across the Globe. If you have an advice to them, young people globally who want to be like Elon Musk. What's your advice to them? I think that probably they shouldn't want to be. - You? - I think it sounds better than it is. Okay. Yeah, it's not as much fun being me as you'd think. - I don't know. - You don't think so? It could be worse, for sure. But it's... I'm not sure I want to be me. Okay. But... You know, I think my advice is if you want to make progress in things, I think that the best analytical framework for, I'll say in the future is physics. I'd recommend studying the thinking process around physics. Like, not just the equations, the equations are certainly very helpful, but the way of thinking in physics, it's the best framework for understanding things that are counter–intuitive. And, you know, always take the position that you are to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong over time. One of the biggest mistakes people generally make and I'm guilty of it too is wishful thinking. You know, like you want something to be true, even if it isn't true. And so you ignore the things that... You ignore the real truth, because of what you want to be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid. And like I said, it's certainly one that I find myself in, having problems with. But, if you just take that approach of that you're always to some degree wrong and your goal is to be less wrong. And solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends. Like, friends, if somebody loves you they want the best for you. They don't want to tell you the bad things. So, you have to ask them and say: I do really want to know. And then they will tell you.

 Thank you very much.

It's been... It's great for the World Government Summit to have a legend, who's creating the future for humanity, to share his thoughts, his ideas, his visions, challenges, and his hope for life. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

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Emma Watson Speech: Gender Equality

I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We want to end gender inequality—and to do that we need everyone to be involved. 

This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for gender equality. And we don’t just want to talk about it, but make sure it is tangible. I was appointed six months ago and the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop. For the record, feminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.” I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called “bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys were not. When at 14 I started being sexualized by certain elements of the press. When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear “muscly.” When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings. I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive. Why is the word such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights. No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality. These rights I consider to be human rights but I am one of the lucky ones. My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn’t assume I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influencers were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists who are changing the world today. And we need more of those. And if you still hate the word—it is not the word that is important but the idea and the ambition behind it. Because not all women have been afforded the same rights that I have. In fact, statistically, very few have been. In 1995, Hilary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly many of the things she wanted to change are still a reality today. But what stood out for me the most was that only 30 per cent of her audience were male. How can we affect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation? Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49 years of age; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality either. We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled. Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom. I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too—reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves. You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN. It’s a good question and trust me, I have been asking myself the same thing. I don’t know if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better. And having seen what I’ve seen—and given the chance—I feel it is my duty to say something. English Statesman Edmund Burke said: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men and women to do nothing.” In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt I’ve told myself firmly—if not me, who, if not now, when. If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you I hope those words might be helpful. Because the reality is that if we do nothing it will take 75 years, or for me to be nearly a hundred before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates it won’t be until 2086 before all rural African girls will be able to receive a secondary education. If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists I spoke of earlier. And for this I applaud you. We are struggling for a uniting word but the good news is we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I am inviting you to step forward, to be seen to speak up, to be the "he" for "she". And to ask yourself if not me, who? If not now, when? 

Thank you. 

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Priyanka Chopra Speech: Full Power of Women

Good afternoon, and thank you and, wow. I am so privileged and so honored to be sharing this afternoon with all of you and these incredibly amazing women that are being honored today. I'd like to extend my congratulations to each one of you, Octavia, Michelle, Kelly, Patty, and all fifty women that have been included in the impact report. Your achievements not just inspire me but also so many others to work harder to be better and to make a dent wherever we can. So, I'm very, very proud to be standing alongside you. So, in life you know there are moments when you stop and ask yourself: “How did I get here?” Like: “Why am I standing here?” Well, this is definitely one of those moments for me and I find myself going back to the beginning, back to my roots. I was born to incredible parents, amazing parents who served as doctors in the Indian Army. I was the first born and as far back as I can remember I made my parents very proud and happy 99% of the time. Okay, slight exaggerations of personal achievements are allowed from time to time, don't you think? My brother was born a few years later and even then, nothing changed for me. We were both given equal opportunities, and I want to emphasize this, I want to really emphasize this for you because I don't think a lot of people might understand that being equal might seem very normal but where I come from India and a lot of developing countries around the world more of not this is an exception. It's actually a privilege.

 My first experience of the glaring disparity between boys and girls came at a very, very young age. I grew up in a middle-class family with extremely philanthropic parents who constantly reminded me and my brother how lucky we were and how giving back to those who were less fortunate was not a choice it was a way of life. Simple. I was seven or eight years old when my parents started taking me on these visits in a traveling clinic to developing communities around and villages around the city that we lived in called Bareilly. We were packed into this ambulance and would my parents would provide free medical care to people who couldn't afford it. My job at the age of eight was an assistant pharmacist. I would count all the medicines put them in an envelope and give it out to patients, and I really took my job very seriously, very seriously. But the more I went on these expeditions, the more I began to notice the simplest things that distinguished a boy from a girl or a man from a woman. For example, girls were pulled out of school when they hit puberty because they were considered ready for marriage and babies. That's 12 and 13 while boys still enjoyed their childhood. Or basic human rights such as health care were denied just because they were women. Let this, let's call this whole experience trigger number one for me. Fast-forward a few years and many, many triggers in between. Like a producer-director for example early on in my career, I must have been about 18 or 19, telling me that if I didn't agree to the ridiculous terms or painfully low salary in his movie that he would just replace me because girls are replaceable in the entertainment business. That was a memorable one. Made me decide to make myself irreplaceable. But I think what really moved the needle for me and ultimately led me to create the Priyanka Chopra foundation for health and education and around the same time partner with UNICEF was an encounter with my housekeeper’s daughter. About 12 years ago I came home from set early one day and she was sitting in my library reading a book and she must have been eight or nine years old and I knew she loved reading. So, I asked her, I was like, this is, I mean, it's a weekday why aren't you in school? And she said: “Oh, I don't go to school anymore.” So, I went and asked her mother and I said, you know: “Why isn't she in school?” And her mom said that her family couldn't afford to send her and her brother's to school, so they chose the boys. The reason, she would eventually get married and it would be a waste of money. I was completely blown, and it shook me to my core. Eventually, I decided to cover the cost of her education so that she could continue to learn because education is a basic human right. And a huge necessity especially today. From that point on I was determined to make a difference and as many children's lives as I could. In whatever big or small way that I could contribute. There's a really, really beautiful quote that I read recently, and I think it's absolutely appropriate to say, to explain what I'm trying to say today. “The hand that rocks the cradle, the procreator, the mother of tomorrow; a woman shapes the destiny of civilization. Such is the tragic irony of fate, that a beautiful creation such as a girl child is today one of the gravest concerns facing humanity.” Girls have the power to change the world. It is a fact and yet today girls are more likely than boys never to set foot in a classroom. Despite all the efforts and progress made over the last two decades. More than, I'm just gonna give you a stat, more than 15 million girls of primary school age will never learn how to read or write compared to 10 million boys. Primary school it's the beginning of our future. Over the last 11 years, I have witnessed firsthand the incredible work that UNICEF does for children around the world. Especially victims and survivors of child marriage, displacement, war, sexual violence. But there is still so much work to do. And for me, that is the fuel to my fire. The reason I'm so committed to this cause and that is where my passion stems from because I know that a girl’s education not just empowers families but communities and economies. A result of her education we all do better. It's just as simple as that. As entertainers and influencers sitting in this room I feel that is our social responsibility to be a voice for the voiceless, which is why I applaud each and every woman in this room for being such a badass. For using your platform and your voice to contribute to change and for ensuring that there is not even one lost generation as long as we are alive. I'd like to thank variety and all of you for encouraging me and all of us in this room to keep going and fighting on. 

Thank you so much.

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Malala Yousafzai Speech: Nobel Peace Prize

Who is Malala Yousafzai?

The Pakistani activist for female education, and human rights gives her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as the youngest recipient ever.

Famous Quotes

One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world

 When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful

Education is education. We should learn everything and then choose which path to follow." Education is neither Eastern nor Western, it is human.

 Speech Start

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim.

 In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent. Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norweigan Nobel Committee. Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award. Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthen and inspire me. I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth - which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam. And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave. I am proud, well, in fact, I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the youngest person to receive this award. Along with that, along with that, I am pretty certain that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers. I want there to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I are still working on that. I am also honored to receive this award together with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been a champion for children's rights for a long time. Twice as long, in fact, than I have been alive. I am proud that we can work together, we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani, they can work together and achieve their goals of children's rights. Dear brothers and sisters, I was named after the inspirational Malalai of Maiwand who is the Pashtun Joan of Arc. The word Malala means grief-stricken", sad", but in order to lend some happiness to it, my grandfather would always call me Malala – The happiest girl in the world" and today I am very happy that we are together fighting for an important cause.

This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want an education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change. I am here to stand up for their rights, to raise their voice… it is not time to pity them. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time, the last time, so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education. I have found that people describe me in many different ways. Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban. And some, the girl who fought for her rights. Some people, call me a "Nobel Laureate" now. However, my brothers still call me that annoying bossy sister. As far as I know, I am just a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting a quality education, who wants to see women having equal rights and who wants peace in every corner of the world. Education is one of the blessings of life—and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the 17 years of my life. In my paradise home, Swat, I always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations. We had a thirst for education, we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals, which some people think only boys can. But things did not remain the same. When I was in Swat, which was a place of tourism and beauty, suddenly changed into a place of terrorism. I was just ten that more than 400 schools were destroyed. Women were flogged. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares. Education went from being a right to being a crime. Girls were stopped from going to school.

When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too. I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one. I decided to speak up. We could not just stand by and see those injustices of the terrorists denying our rights, ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them: Have you not learned, have you not learned that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill one person it is as if you kill the whole humanity? Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon him, the prophet of mercy, he says, do not harm yourself or others". And do you not know that the very first word of the Holy Quran is the word Iqra", which means read"? The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today, on our school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win. We survived. And since that day, our voices have grown louder and louder. I tell my story, not because it is unique, but because it is not. It is the story of many girls. Today, I tell their stories too. I have brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, from Nigeria and from Syria, who share this story. My brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were also shot that day on our school bus. But they have not stopped learning. And my brave sister Kainat Soomro who went through severe abuse and extreme violence, even her brother was killed, but she did not succumb. Also my sisters here, whom I have met during my Malala Fund campaign. My 16-year-old courageous sister, Mezon from Syria, who now lives in Jordan as a refugee and goes from tent to tent encouraging girls and boys to learn. And my sister Amina, from the North of Nigeria, where Boko Haram threatens, and stops girls and even kidnaps girls, just for wanting to go to school.

Though I appear as one girl, though I appear as one girl, one person, who is 5 foot 2 inches tall if you include my high heels. (It means I am 5 foot only) I am not a lone voice, I am not a lone voice, I am many. I am Malala. But I am also Shazia. I am Kainat. I am Kainat Soomro. I am Mezon. I am Amina. I am those 66 million girls who are deprived of education. And today I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of those 66 million girls. Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important to them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school. Dear sisters and brothers, today, in half of the world, we see rapid progress and development. However, there are many countries where millions still suffer from the very old problems of war, poverty, and injustice. We still see conflicts in which innocent people lose their lives and children become orphans. We see many people becoming refugees in Syria, Gaza, and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we see families being killed in suicide attacks and bomb blasts. Many children in Africa do not have access to education because of poverty. And as I said, we still see, we still see girls who have no freedom to go to school in the north of Nigeria. Many children in countries like Pakistan and India, as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned, many children, especially in India and Pakistan are deprived of their right to education because of social taboos, or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labor. One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who had always been a bold and confident girl, dreamed of becoming a doctor. But her dream remained a dream. At the age of 12, she was forced to get married. And then soon she had a son, she had a child when she herself was still a child – only 14. I know that she could have been a very good doctor.

But she couldn't ... because she was a girl. Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls quality education, everywhere, anywhere in the world and to raise their voices. The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan—especially in my home of Swat and Shangla. In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls. And it is my wish and my commitment, and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to school and get a quality education and to get this opportunity to fulfill their dreams. This is where I will begin, but it is not where I will stop. I will continue this fight until I see every child, every child in school. Dear brothers and sisters, great people, who brought change, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi, once stood here on this stage. I hope the steps that Kailash Satyarthi and I have taken so far and will take on this journey will also bring change – lasting change. My great hope is that this will be the last time, this will be the last time we must fight for education. Let's solve this once and for all. We have already taken many steps. Now it is time to take a leap. It is not time to tell the world leaders to realize how important education is - they already know it - their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action for the rest of the world's children. We ask the world leaders to unite and make education their top priority. Fifteen years ago, the world leaders decided on a set of global goals, the Millennium Development Goals. In the years that have followed, we have seen some progress. The number of children out of school has been halved, as Kailash Satyarthi said. However, the world focused only on primary education, and progress did not reach everyone. In the year 2015, representatives from all around the world will meet in the United Nations to set the next set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. This will set the world's ambition for the next generations.

The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science, and Physics? Leaders must seize this opportunity to guarantee a free, quality, primary and secondary education for every child. Some will say this is impractical, or too expensive, or too hard. Or maybe even impossible. But it is time the world thinks bigger. Dear sisters and brothers, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call strong" are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools are so hard? We are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We have reached the moon 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars. Then, in this 21st century, we must be able to give every child quality education. Dear sisters and brothers, dear fellow children, we must work… not wait. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It is our duty. Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last, let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials. Let this be the last time that a girl or a boy spend their childhood in a factory. Let this be the last time that a girl is forced into early child marriage. Let this be the last time that a child loses life in war. Let this be the last time that we see a child out of school. Let this end with us. Let's begin this ending ... together ... today ... right here, right now. Let's begin this ending now.
Thank you so much.