My Favorite Quotes

STEVE JOB'S AMAZING WORDS:
"Death is very likely to be the single best invention of life because death is life's change agent"

Commencement speech at Stanford University, 2005

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.

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.

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. 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.

Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad-hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.


Interview with Fortune magazine, 2000

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

My position coming back to Apple was that our industry was in a coma. It reminded me of Detroit in the 70s, when American cars were boats on wheels.

That'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.
Interview with Wired, 1996

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that. But it's a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light - that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to change the world to be important.
Interview with Wall Street Journal, 1993

"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."

Steve Jobs was a uniquely recognizable, charismatic and idiosyncratic leader. Here are some of the traits that made him the world's most talked about chief executive.
Knowing what you want before you want it

Steve Jobs with Macbook Air

Steve Jobs was not a fan of market research. He famously said "You can't just ask customers what they want then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

Instead, he relied on his own instinct for refining existing technologies, developing new products and packaging them in a way that people would want to use.

Before the iPod appeared in 2001, there was relatively little interest in MP3 music players. Those products that did exist were chunky, often fiddly to use, and were largely bought by early adopter tech enthusiasts.

So appealing were gadgets such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad that the public quickly engaged with them. That was due, in no small part, to Steve Jobs' ability as a salesman - explaining his products simply in a way that everyone could understand.

Reality distortion field
Steve Jobs and image of Phil Schiller

Steve Jobs knew how to work a crowd. He could build excitement around technologies which, sometimes, were neither new nor world changing.

When the iPad 2 launched, a large part of his presentation was dedicated to the device's "smart cover" - a square of vinyl with magnetic hinges. Yet it garnered significant media coverage.

Even seasoned journalists were not immune, with many finding that it took them several hours recovery time to fully make sense of the announcements.

The phenomenon was named the "reality distortion field". No other Apple executive has, as yet, demonstrated Steve Jobs' ability to generate it.

The uniform
Steve Jobs in jeans and turtleneck

For the past decade, Steve Jobs almost always wore the same outfit.

From top to bottom, it was a black St. Croix mock turtleneck sweater, blue Levi 501 jeans, and New Balance 991 trainers.

The items may reflect his minimalist tastes, or perhaps his flair for personal as well as corporate branding.

Mr Jobs does not appear to have spoken publicly about his choice of clothing, although he is said to have told friends that he did not care about his appearance.

This was not always the case. During the 1980s he would regularly make public appearances in flashy Italian suits, and was even known to wear a colourful bow tie.

His distinctive appearance was often parodied by comedians.
Attention to detail
iPad

Apple is so secretive that little is known about its internal design processes, however stories do leak out, and most of those tell of Steve Jobs' fanatical attention to detail.

Google executive Vic Gundotra tells of the time that his company was partnering with Apple to put Google Maps on the iPhone.

Mr Gundotra received a personal call from Steve Jobs on a weekend, expressing displeasure that the second letter "o" was the wrong shade of yellow.

While British designer Jonathan Ive is responsible for the overall look and feel of products such as the iMac, iPod and iPhone, many of the company's patents bear both his and Steve Jobs' names.

Philosophy
Steve Jobs with globe image

Steve Jobs was undoubtedly a product of 1960s and 1970s counter-culture California.

As a young man, he travelled to India to stay in an ashram. Eastern philosophy would continue to be a part of his life, and he remained a Buddhist for the rest of his life.

Mr Jobs also admitted taking LSD around the same time. He called the experience "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life," according to John Markoff's book "What the dormouse said: How the sixties counterculture shaped the personal computer industry".

Money appeared to matter little to Steve Jobs. He told the Wall Street Journal: "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."

Music lover
Bob Dyland and Joan Baez

Steve Jobs' music tastes were well known from his product launches.

Singles and albums would regularly flash across the screen of new Macs or iPhones.

The Beatles and Bob Dylan were two of his favourite artists. Getting the rights to sell the fab four's music through iTunes became a long running saga which was eventually resolved in November 2010.

Mr Jobs' top 10 albums, listed on the Apple social music service Ping, also included Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, American Beauty by The Grateful Dead and Who's Next by The Who.

His had a more personal connection to one particular musical icon, having briefly dated Dylan's ex-girlfriend, singer Joan Baez.

One more thing...

Sometimes you have to save the best for last. Steve Jobs regularly did that when launching products.

Having unveiled a raft of new gadgets, just as guests were getting ready to leave, he would utter the now famous words "One more thing..."

When he did so, there was always a mischievous smile. It was part of his genius as a showman.

One more things have included the Powerbook G4, iPod touch and Facetime video calling.

Steve Jobs' successor, Tim Cook opted not to do a one more thing at the launch of the iPhone 4S in October 2011.

It is unclear if the tradition will continue after Steve Jobs, meaning we may have seen the last ever one more thing.


QUOTES FROM OTHERS
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. -Einstein

L'imagination est plus importante que le savoir. Car le savoir est limité à ce que que l'on connait et ce que l'on comprend, alors que l'imagination embrasse le monde entier, et tout ce qu'il y a à connaitre et à comprendre. -Einstein

"It is better to remain silent and be presumed a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead. - Erma Bombeck
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who come alive.

Ne demandez pas ce dont le monde a besoin. Demandez ce qui te donne goût à la vie, et faites-le. Parce que le monde a besoin de gens qui aiment la vie.

Ultimately, the only way to experience the richness of life is to live in an attitude of gratitude, to appreciate what you have and what you can give, the best way to ensure your happiness is to assist others in experiencing their own.-- Anthony Robbins

Finalement, la seule façon de faire l'expérience de la richesse de la vie est de vivre avec une attitude de gratitude, d'apprécier ce que l'on a et ce que l'on peut donner, et la meilleure façon d'assurer votre propre bonheur c'est d'aider les autres à apprécier leur propre bonheur.-- Anthony Robbins

It is in darkness that one finds the light. When we are in sorrow that this life is nearest to all of us. --Meinter Echart.

C'est dans l'obscurité que l'on trouve la lumière, c'est quand on est dans le chagrin que cette vie est la plus proche de nous tous.-- Meinter Echart.

There are so many people out there who will tell you that you can't. What you've got to do is turn around and say, Watch me!

Picasso: I put in my paintings everything I love. Too bad for the other things, they'll just have to work it out between themselves.
Je mets dans mes tableaux tout ce que j'aime. Tant pis pour les choses, elles n'ont qu'à s'arranger entre elles.  

I've spent my whole life learning how to draw like a child.
J'ai mis toute ma vie à apprendre à dessiner comme un enfant. 

Inside every child there is an artist. The problem is to learn how to remain an artist when we grow up.
Dans chaque enfant il y a un artiste. Le probleme est de savoir comment rester un artiste en grandissant.  

I always try to do what I don't know how to do, that's how I hope to learn how to do it.
J'essaie toujours de faire ce que je ne sais pas faire, c'est ainsi que j'espère apprendre à le faire. (fin des citations de Picasso).

You only get one go at life, so take a little time out of your day to make sure you’re getting what you want out of it. It's a beautiful life.
On n'a qu'un seul essai à la vie, alors prenons un peu de temps chaque jour de vous assurer que vous y trouvez ce que vous voulez. La vie est si belle.


"I shall still be unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying."
--from Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy


“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

"Si le blé me file du bonheur, je me ferai peut-être agriculteur."


The only thing that stands between a man, and what he wants from life, is often merely the will to try it, and the faith to believe that it is possible.

If you wouldn't risk it all, you don't want it bad enough.

There are 3 kinds of people in this world. Those who watch things happen, those who make things happen and those who wonder, what happened.

We cannot remember things that we do not observe. After something is observed, either by sight or hearing, in order to be remembered it must be associated in our minds with something we already know or remember.

If you can't keep thinking up better ways of doing it, then you're dead!

"Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence."-- Unknown

Anticipate something awesome. 
Or something tiny that makes you smile. The point is to look forward to something each day, whether it’s enjoying your morning java or counting down to an exotic vacation. Practicing this will keep your mind from focusing on what could go wrong that day. 

When you start feeling bad about your life, remember The Pursuit of Happiness.

We mostly see what we have learned to expect to see.

Many of us whip and defeat our aspirations simply because we concentrate on why we can't when the only thing worthy of our mental concentration is why we can.

Experiments have demonstrated that people generally retain memory of pleasant things more accurately, and for a longer time, than memory of unhappiness.


So many of us put off personal happiness waiting for some external result like "I'll be happy when I lose weight, when I pay off my debts, when I get a better job." The truth is, you deserve to enjoy your fabulously imperfect life right this very minute!

When you stop putting off happiness, you start attracting happy people, healthy relationships, exciting and new opportunities. Instead of postponing joy until something external happens, today's the day to start celebrating the joy in your everyday life.


It’s just this little thing here and that little thing there.” Well, the great things of the universe are made up of lots of little things all put together. Great things come from little things—little endeavors, little choices, little deeds of kindness, and little decisions to do the right thing.

 A measure of the greatness of someone is what they do when no one is looking, and what sort of conviction they have to make the loving choice.

Be the person you want to be with.

Don’t end up with someone, choose him! Engage your self-respect gland already.

Enjoy life, do things you enjoy and don’t do things you don’t. It really is that simple.

Philip Larkin said ‘Life is first boredom then fear.’ If you are at some point bored of a weekend, take a moment to consider the things you’re afraid of, and how that affects the life you have.

There’s an infinite feedback loop of people not getting what they want becaues they’re too scared to ask for it.

Falling in love is the subconscious recognition of the embodiment of our most cherished ideals in someone else.

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." --Agatha Christie


Creativity is imagination coupled with both intent and effort.--Sam Caumons
Dont make your happiness depend on things that you cant depend on...

“You decided you would not be defined by where you come from but by where you want to go, by what you want to achieve, by the dreams you hope to fulfill....Nobody has handed you a thing. But that also means that whatever you accomplish in your life, you will have earned it. Whatever rewards and joys you reap, you’ll appreciate them that much more because they will have come through your own sweat and tears, products of your own effort and your own talents. You’ve shown more grit and determination in your childhoods than a lot of adults ever will. That’s who you are.” -President Barack Obama

"The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful." e.e. cummings

"The only unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."- John F. Kennedy

When you move like a jellyfish
Rhythm don't mean nothing
You go with the flow
You don't stop - Jack Johnson

"We believe in hips, not hip bones. -Slimfast

“Pooh Bear”, he said, “if there’s ever a tomorrow when we’re not together, there’s something you must remember:
- You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
“But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you.”--Pooh’s Grand Adventure - The Search for Christopher Robin

The secret is that there is no secret'. We must all face our problems, there are no real gurus with all the answers. Life is complex, difficult, unpredictable, confusing - fun sometimes - harrowing and depressing at others. We have to find temporary solutions in ourselves." - Sheldon Kopp

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.- Dr. Seuss

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.- Eleanor Roosevelt

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. - Max Ehrmann

Here's a truth about the truth. The truth hurts so we lie. - Meredith Grey's Anatomy.

Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things. - Randy Pausch

The future belongs to the artists and the Chinese. So, if you're not Chinese, you'd better learn how to draw. -- Mr Hugh MacLeod


Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep alone under the stars. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no whenever you don't want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you're doing here.--Eve Ensler

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.--Nathaniel Hawthorne


Moliere---
The more one loves
The more one should object...

to every blemish,every least defect.
Were I this lady, I would soon get rid,
Of lovers who approved of all i did,
And by their slack indulgence and applause
Endorsed my follies and excused my flaws.
Rostand, Edmond

"Man is the plaything of chance and passion-to some it is given, and others have to struggle"
Franz Peter Schubert

"Happiness is not man's natural state...but what if it could be made to be so..."
George Orwell

Henry David Thoreau
"Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions.
Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
 A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements
 of mankind.
"...But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..."

"Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child,
for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?""
"...As if you could kill time without injuring eternity..."

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

"I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do...We are made to exaggerate the importance
of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!...How vigilant we are! determined not
to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly
say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.
So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways
as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate;
but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant."

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding,
I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.

Confucius--"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know,
that is true knowledge."

Elbert Hubbard--The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.

Learn to see mistakes as opportunities.

Josiah Gilbert Holland--"You are worthy to yourself what you are capable of enjoying,
you are worthy to society the happiness you are capable of imparting."

Your personal value depends entirely upon your possesion of religion...a man whose aims are low, whose motives are selfish, who has in his heart no adoration for the great God no love of Christ, whose will is not subordinate to the Supreme will--gladly and gratefully--who has no faith, no tenable hope of a happy immortality, no strong-armed trust that with his soul it shall be well in all the future, cannot be worth very much to himself...

...a locomotive off the track is woth nothing to its owner or the public so long as it is off the track.
 The conditions of its legitimate and highest value are not complied with. It cannot be operated
satisfactorily to the owner, or usefully to the public, becuase it is not where it was intended to run
 by the man who made it.

Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus Christ.

And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.--from 'les miserables',victor hugo

Supreme cleverness is knowledge of the real value of things
-La Rochefoucauld, François. Maxims

"The love of justice," suggests La Rochefoucauld, "in most men is merely the fear of suffering injustice."

Music must never offend the ear; it must please the hearer. In other words, it must never cease to be music.--Attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for." - Socrates

“Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies [are] so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.” - Blaise Pascal


Live your life without regret, don't be someone who they'll forget & never regret something that once made you smile.

If you harbour negative feelings toward others and yet expect them to be friendly to you, you are being illogical.

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

"Whether you think you can or you think you can't--you're right."

"Be content with your lot. One cannot be first in everything."

'When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy". They told me I didn't understand the assignment. I told them they didn't understand life.' -- John Lennon

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." Marilyn Monroe

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!" Audrey Hepburn

"I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles." Audrey Hepburn

It doesn’t matter one bit what the cause of your pain, aggression or general attitude problem is. Disappointing childhood? Join the queue. String of failed relationships? You’re not the only one. Awkward cultural background? Honey, I’m Jewish. Cry me a fucking river. It doesn’t matter what got you there. Why not just change today and get unfucked up already.-- Belle de Jour

"I’m old enough to know better, but too young to care."

"When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you."

"When in doubt, laugh."

"It’s about moving on & pushing yourself to open doors, to try something new. Turning lights on in different rooms. Be inspired by a tree or an idea or a song or love. Make the whole room breathe. If we can just embrace a lack of control & provide a structure that’s not rigid, but flexible enough to incorporate its unpredictability, there’s a whole new world of possibilities we can explore. Don’t fight the universe."--from Emma Bulajewski


Cesca: When you’re right, no one remembers. When you’re wrong, no one forgets.
You can't have everything... where would you put it?

Time that you enjoy wasting, was not wasted... - John Lennon

I've found that when you want to know the truth about someone that someone is probably the last person you should ask." I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. Haiters are your biggest fans.

You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other. - Carl Sagan

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals—that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.—Honore De Balzac


"If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you."-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky


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

Life is an occasion; rise to it...

Things that we're afraid of show us what we're made of in the end...

The illusion of appearing effortless requires the most work of all...

My one quarrel is with words. This is the reason I hate vulgarism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for...

The world is a stage, the play is just badly cast...

The public can forgive anything except brilliance...

Being too open minded will only make your brains fall out...

Genius is born, not paid...

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.--Dr. Napoleon Hill

You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.--Zig Ziglar

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.--Mark Twain

"If life gives you lemons make lemonade. Then go out and find someone whose life is given vodka and have a party. "

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe

Between what I think, what I want to say, what I think I say, what I say, what you wanted to hear, what you thought you heard, what you actually heard, what you want to understand, and what you understand,there are 10 different ways to misunderstand each other. Keep trying anyway...
--Bernard Werber



MY VERY OWN QUOTES AND WISDOM...

you know it's bad when even in your dream you go on facebook...

No comments:

Post a Comment