01 Oct Top 10 quotes by Steve Jobs and the Stanford Speech
There are people who inspire, stories worth telling and characters to learn from. Today we bring to our blog 10 best quotes from Steve Jobs and the analysis of the famous speech he gave at Stanford. A man who changed the world through technology.
We can often feel discouraged at work, there are uncreative days where everything is depressing, the long meetings or even the bitter coffee from the machine... I guess it is something normal, it has happened to all of us. There are other days where you feel like you are going to eat the whole world, a day when you wake up with the desire to make a huge discovery or simply where you feel fulfilled.
A good motivation is to follow the example of creatives, managers or artists who have had a clear passion for their work and who have changed the world with clear ideas and tired hands.
The best quotes by Steve Jobs
Today we compile 10 motivational quotes from Steve Jobs, a man who not only changed technology worldwide but also knew how to deal with a professional life full of problems. Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with two colleagues in the garage of his house and at the age of 25 he was already a multimillionaire. Despite having a difficult childhood and not being able to finish his university studies due to lack of income, Jobs did not lack the desire to learn, work and improve himself.
It should be noted that Steve Jobs was not kicked out of Apple, but that he himself decided to leave the company he had founded due to creative differences; he was aiming high and decided to bet on the Pixar production company, which he raised to the category of one of the best animation companies in the world(Disney acquired it)... Steve Jobs died young (aged 56) of pancreatic cancer, but his life, his story and his message have transcended time and frontiers. These are some of the phrases that reflect the spirit of this creative man.
"Given our admiration for Jobs and that new biographies and phrases attributed to the creator of Apple appear regularly, we added 5 phrases to the 5 we already had published."Sentence 1
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"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you think is great work and the only way to do that is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. As with everything that has to do with the heart, you'll know it when you've found it."
In this sentence, the Californian entrepreneur paraphrases Confucius: "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life". While it is true that loving what you do is a privilege that few can take advantage of; not everyone can work on their dream, in some cases it may even sound utopian but his quote encourages us to at least look for it.
Sentence 2
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"Be a benchmark of quality. Some people are not used to an environment where excellence is accepted".
I love this phrase, it's definitely our favourite one at The Shed Cobecause it reflects exactly the heart of a good entrepreneur. Society has been losing values in general, but particularly in the workplace, standards of human quality and work-life balance have been lost, and the ambition for money has increased.
If you go with the sole idea of working to earn millions of euros, whether in your first, second or third job, you will end up in a loop of despair and ignorance because enjoyment at work goes beyond a bank account.
You have to focus your life on what you believe and think it will make you happy and where you are going to get the best out of yourself because the cemetery is full of unhappy mediocre people with accounts of many zeros. You have to change the chip and start to find yourself, leave the quantity and volume of work aside and start to think about how to look for the quality of what you live for.
Sentence 3
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"Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is better than two doubles." In the morning when you wake up and look in the mirror ask yourself "if today was my last day, would I want to do what I'm doing?"
How many times have you looked in the mirror and asked yourself if you like what you are doing? Not many, to be honest, but if your answer is yes, congratulations because you are on the road to happiness. If not, don't worry, everything has a solution, but start rethinking what you are doing.
For Steve Jobs, life is quality and it should be like that for all of us. Work is part of our life, and it is essential that there is harmony between life and work; it is a path, a process in which we learn to relativise mistakes and smile at successes, without losing our enthusiasm and tenacity.
Sentence 4
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"I want to leave my mark on the universe."
I guess it's something we all aspire to but deep down it has nothing to do with being famous, having money or being asked for selfies in the street, it's more the satisfaction of having managed to enjoy your life and your work, you can leave your mark even in the little things, in your office, in your colleagues or in the people around you. There are many types of universe, the point is to create your own universe and be the one who writes your story...
Sentence 5
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"Think different"... much more than a slogan."
We all live surrounded by projects, businesses and products that are essentially clones or distillations of other projects, other businesses and other products. They are "I can make that too" products. Steve Jobs made sure that Think DifferentSteve Jobs ensured that Apple's famous slogan was not an empty concept, not a declaration of intent, but a true company philosophy. This is precisely Jobs' greatness: he really thought and acted differently, and as a result, he made millions of people from different cultures rethink their relationship with technology in a new way.
Phrase 6
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"I am convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones is sheer perseverance."
This quote attributed to Steve Jobs resonates with me the most. Being an entrepreneur is challenging, and it's easy to give up and move on to something new. But the biggest part of being successful is having the resilience to endure the tough times without giving up.
Phrase 7
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" Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. "
We are all aware that it is easy to jump on the cart and follow what the majority does, but what is complex, what creates true leaders are those who contribute ideas that are out of the ordinary and set a new standard.
Phrase 8
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"Don't let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your inner voice"
It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the thoughts and opinions of others. But if you spend too much time being aware of others' opinions, you're going to lose the spark of creativity.
Phrase 9
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"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
In order for you to fulfill your purpose, the world needs you to be who you want to be. Trying to copy someone else or act like someone you are not will only limit your contribution to the world.
Phrase 10
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"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people are not used to an environment where excellence is expected .."
Jobs was known for having extremely high standards for himself and his employees at Apple. At times this made him unpopular, and caused conflict with others he worked with. But he was always committed to delivering quality and maintaining a level of excellence.
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Stanford Speech Analysis
And finally, we leave this video of the Steve Jobs' famous speech at Stanford Universityand its detailed analysis.
In his Stanford graduation speech, Steve Jobs delivers an important message. He uses a few brief statements distributed with wise originality. He also devotes a lot of space to the sender, i.e. himself, highlighting very broad aspects of his life that have had a lot to do with the content of the message. And finally, he links the situation of the listeners to the content of the message. Let us pay attention to the way in which the three aspects of the text are assembled in the text.
First point: the message
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The message, which dissects Steve Jobs into four strands:
1) Seek what you are. " Don't stop"... "don't stop"... "keep hungry...go wild" in the search for what you are.
2) Avoid harmful outside opinions. " Do not allow the noise of other people's opinions to silence your inner voice.
3rd) Find what you are by looking at the realities of your past (which he calls points), because they are the ones that will "somehow appear in your future".
4th) Find what you love. " Follow your heart and intuition " "Because somehow you already know what you really want to become".
Second point: the sender
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The sender of the message, Steve Jobs himself. He introduces himself to listeners at various points in his life where he has sought, found and loved. His Reed College experience failed in his general studies and succeeded in learning calligraphy. "I started attending (only) the classes that were interesting to me". His job as the creator of Apple in a garage, from which he was fired. The founding of NeXT and Pixar, from which, when Apple bought them, he found himself with the same ambition as when he started out. And finally, his encounter with death due to pancreatic cancer, which he managed to overcome. The dramatic accents of his description make the content he conveys extraordinarily powerful: "All pride, all fear of shame or failure, disappears at death's door".
Third point: the addressees
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Finally, the recipients of the message. With two epithets: graduates and young people. Graduates "from one of the most prestigious universities in the world". Not like me - Steve Jobs, to be specific - who never graduated. Young people: "Right now you are the new, but one day soon you will be the old. And you will be eliminated.
In everything Jobs says, my preference lies in the narration of his experiences linked to the content of the message.
"... connect the dots by looking into the future; you can only connect them by looking into the past. Therefore, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect to your future. You have to trust in something, anything.
Don't lose faith. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I was doing. You have to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for love. Work will fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly fulfilled is to do what you think 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 stop. As with matters of the heart, you will know when you have found it. And just like any important relationship, it gets better as the years go by. So keep looking. And don't stop.
Do not allow yourselves to be trapped by dogmas, do not live by the results of other people's thinking. Do not allow the noise of other people's opinions to silence your inner voice. Most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, because somehow you already know what you really want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Stay hungry. Stay mad.
On the cover: image from the film Steve Jobs.
Beatriz de la Rosa
Madrileña, journalist, broadcaster and dubber. She started at the university newspaper, has trained at Europa Press and writes for Actuall.com. She is committed to life and believes that creativity is intelligence having fun.