An article created of Steve Jobs’ quotes, mostly taken from a speech to the graduating class at Stanford, crossed my desk and I want to share some of them with you.
These from the departing Chairman of Apple, who is battling cancer, as he has been for some time:
1) “About finding work: Don’t settle. Find work you love.”
2) “Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the fact of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
3) “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
4) “Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products…We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and, as another consequence, we’ll make some money. But we’re really clear about what our goals are.”
5) (1984, on the release of the Macintosh computer): “We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it’s always the next dream.”
6) (On being fired by Apple) “It 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…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.”
7) “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…Going to bed at night saying ‘We’ve done something wonderful. That’s what matters to me.’”
8) “I want to put a ding in the Universe.”
9) ““Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent…Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know?”