Steve Jobs: inspiration and motivation for others

"Being 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." - Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993

We all were sad and devastated when we heard the news about Steve Jobs passed away on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011. He died at 56 years old, too young to die, some people said, but we should be thankful that he is now free from all the pain caused by the pancreatic cancer he had. Even up until now, the people in the whole world are still mourning. But one thing that we have to remember him, most of all, he left us with such an amazing legacy on technology. He didn’t waste his life for someone else’s dream, but his own.

Here are some of his classic quotes that might give you some inspiration and motivations:

“You 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.” – Stanford University, June 12, 2005

“The problem is in hardware you can’t build a computer that’s twice as good as anyone else’s anymore. Too many people know how to do it. You’re lucky if you can do one that’s one-and-a-third times better or one-and-a-half better. And then it’s only six months before everybody else catches up. But you can do it in software. As matter of fact, I think that the leap that we’ve made is at least five years ahead of anybody.” –  Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994

“design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked.” – Wired, February 1996

“Picasso had a saying. He said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.” – PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires,” June 1996

“We’re trying to compete with piracy. We’re trying to pull people away from piracy and say, “You can buy these song legally for a fair price.” If the price goes up people will go back to piracy, then everybody loses. The labels make more money from selling tracks on iTunes than when they sell a CD. There are no marketing costs for them. If they want to raise the price it just means they’re getting a little greedy.” – Associated Press, September 20, 2005

“I think people want to enjoy their entertainment when they want it and how they want it, on the device that they want it on. So ultimately, that’s going to drive the entertainment companies into all sort of different business models… If you’re a content company, that’s a great thing – more people wanting to, you know, enjoy your content more often in more different ways, that’s why you’re in business. But the transitions are hard sometimes.” – All Things Digital Conference, May 30, 2007

(source: Steve Jobs: A Collection of His Classic Quotes, Billboard.biz)

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