"Death is very likely the best invention of life," he said in the
speech. "All pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things
just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly
important." Steve Jobs
How many of us can embrace death this way? To see it in a positive light for a new life to begin. Even when we quarrel about what life after death maybe, what matters is what is left behind. How important, truly, are the footprints and hand prints we have left behind. Yesterday was a solemn day because the world lost a brilliant mind. One that constantly seeks greatness to make this world a better place. I did not blog about his death yesterday, because I could not. I have never known this person and he, me. Yet so much of his greatness surrounds me and universally. So I cannot help but felt a weird sense of loss.
It is so ironical to watch images of protestors in NYC targeting the top 1% rich people and their influences. Yet when one of them dies, everyone stopped to mourn his death. Do they really know what they are protesting against or for? Is it not just envy cloak in social justice?
Do we really want to stop rewarding someone as brilliant as Steve Jobs? Limit the potential Steve Jobs that could follow? Are we really upset that he is a billionaire and not deserving of his fortune? Can we not trust him to allocate his resources towards re-investing and creating more jobs, philanthropy etc that we need to make him surrender a major hunk of it to the government? Do we really want the government to tax majority of our income and make investment decisions like Solyndra?
Steve Jobs left us with not only a multitude of inventions. But more importantly, he left us an attitude - to always be the best we can be. So extreme religious cracker heads back off, this man lives everyday this verse from the bible, Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 10 : "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might". Also, not your job to judge Jobs. God can do that. So Margie Phelps can be-clowns herself. All I say is, "hey Steve, when your enemies are using your invention to attack you, it is the highest compliment".
Read this fabulous article on the top 10 Lessons Steve Jobs have taught us.
Here is a great consolidation of Jobs's quotes via thejournal.ie
On computers - Playboy, 1 Feb, 1985
"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."
Steve Jobs
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| This 1977 file photo shows Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as he introduces the new Apple II in Cupertino, California |
It is so ironical to watch images of protestors in NYC targeting the top 1% rich people and their influences. Yet when one of them dies, everyone stopped to mourn his death. Do they really know what they are protesting against or for? Is it not just envy cloak in social justice?
Do we really want to stop rewarding someone as brilliant as Steve Jobs? Limit the potential Steve Jobs that could follow? Are we really upset that he is a billionaire and not deserving of his fortune? Can we not trust him to allocate his resources towards re-investing and creating more jobs, philanthropy etc that we need to make him surrender a major hunk of it to the government? Do we really want the government to tax majority of our income and make investment decisions like Solyndra?
Steve Jobs left us with not only a multitude of inventions. But more importantly, he left us an attitude - to always be the best we can be. So extreme religious cracker heads back off, this man lives everyday this verse from the bible, Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 10 : "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might". Also, not your job to judge Jobs. God can do that. So Margie Phelps can be-clowns herself. All I say is, "hey Steve, when your enemies are using your invention to attack you, it is the highest compliment".
Read this fabulous article on the top 10 Lessons Steve Jobs have taught us.
Here is a great consolidation of Jobs's quotes via thejournal.ie
On computers - Playboy, 1 Feb, 1985
On design - BusinessWeek, 25 May, 1998It takes these very simple-minded instructions – ‘Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number’ – but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
The best sales line ever? - The line he used to lure John Sculley into becoming Apple’s CEO, according to Odyssey: Pepsi to AppleIt’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
On character - Apple Confidential 2.0Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
On good design - BusinessWeek, 25 May, 1998I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.
On his outlook - The Wall Street Journal, 25 May, 1993That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
On his role at Apple - BusinessWeek, 25 May, 1998Being 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.
Having pride in your product - Playboy, 1 Feb, 1985This is not a one-man show. What’s reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there’s a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they’re not losers. What they didn’t have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now.
He’ll always come back - Playboy, 1 Feb, 1985Playboy: “Are you saying that the people who made PCjr don’t have that kind of pride in the product?”Jobs: “If they did, they wouldn’t have made the PCjr.”
Have faith in the future – Stanford commencement speech, June 2005I’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.
On your working life – Stanford commencement speech, June 2005You 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.
On the importance of death - Stanford commencement speech, June 2005Your 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.
Don’t sit still – NBC Nightly News, May 2006No 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.
On Following your dreamI think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
"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."
Steve Jobs