Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
Interpretation
This quote encourages individuals to pursue meaningful work instead of settling for mundane tasks.
Steve Jobs challenges the listener to reflect on their life choices, emphasizing the importance of striving for significant achievements rather than merely conforming to societal expectations or engaging in trivial pursuits. The quote suggests that one's life should be aimed at making impactful contributions that could potentially change the world rather than being limited to ordinary tasks, such as selling a simple product.
In practice
This quote could be used to inspire students at a graduation ceremony to pursue careers that make a difference.
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.
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.
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.
Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, "Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night." You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.
You fail by default when you live so cautiously you never fail.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy
I learned early in sports that to be effective - for a player to play the best he can play - is a matter of concentration and being unaware of distractions, positive or negative.
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
I can't never stop nobody, can't knock nobody hustle.
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