STEVE JOBS

STEVE JOBS
Quotes from his 2005 commencement address
at Stanford University.

“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, 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, because believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.” -- Steve Jobs, 2005 commencement address, Stanford University.

On starting over…”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.”

“Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick, don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only 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 work as it is for your lovers. 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 and 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, don’t settle.”

“I’ve 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’m 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.”

“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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

On “Getting your affairs in order”.

“No 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’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

“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.”

“Stay hungry, stay foolish…I’ve always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin a new I wish that for you…stay hungry, stay foolish.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=featured