Steve Jobs was a genius. He changed the world. I recommend everyone read his biography written by Walter Isaacson. A person's life can change reading the biography with heart. Jobs told Isaacson he never worried about money. Jobs lived a simple life at Reed College and in India. Jobs became rich after Apple went public. Moreover, Jobs promised himself the money didn't ruin his life.
Jobs told Isaacson his thoughts about growing old and the future months before Jobs was fired from Apple: Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back. . . . If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye, I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (p 189-190)
Jobs was brave to destroy; in other words, out of the old and in with the new. Jobs accepted iPhones might cannibalize iPods or iPads might cannibalize laptops. "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will," said Jobs. (p 408)
Listen to Jobs' commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 on YouTube: Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. Some of the highlights include the following: (1) 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. (2) Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. (3) 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.
I admit I cheated today's top ten. The quotes above are good top ten quotes. I want to mention all of his good quotes totaling greater than ten. Enough said. Here are the top ten Steve Jobs quotes:
10. Picasso had a saying--'good artists copy, great artists steal'--we have always been shameless . . . stealing great ideas.
9. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Um, once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
8. Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.
7. When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life--and your life is just to live inside your world. Try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life.
6. 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 other's 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.
5. Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.
4. 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.
3. I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis . . . intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.
2. You're born alone, you're going to die alone. And what exactly is it do you have to lose. There's nothing.
1. The journey is the reward.
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