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.
Interpretation
Acknowledging mortality helps prioritize what truly matters in life.
In this quote, Steve Jobs emphasizes the power of recognizing our own mortality as a way to clarify what is genuinely important in life. By confronting the reality of death, we can strip away societal pressures, pride, and fears, allowing us to focus on our core values and make significant life choices that align with those values.
In practice
A motivational speech illustrating how to live authentically.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
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.
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.
the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Slow but steady wins the race.
If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.
I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
Find out who you are and be that person. That's what your soul was put on this Earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth and everything else will come.
You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flowers in your veins,_x000D_ till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and_x000D_ perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than_x000D_ so, because men and women are in it who are every one sole heirs as well_x000D_ as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight, as misers do in gold, and_x000D_ kings in scepters, you never enjoy the world.
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