source_id: Stanford commencement address

text: Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

provenance: verified

context: Third story (death) of the Stanford speech.


text: Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

context: Immediately follows q001 in the speech.


text: The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

context: Second story (love and loss).


text: You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

context: First story (connecting the dots), after the calligraphy anecdote.


text: I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

context: Second story, on the 1985 ouster.


text: Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

context: Second story.


text: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

context: Closing words — he is quoting the farewell message of the Whole Earth Catalog, and says so in the speech; not his own coinage.


source_id: Macintosh development, via Frank Rose, West of Eden

text: Real artists ship.

context: Mac-team rallying cry, 1983–84.


source_id: Playboy interview

text: We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make 'me too' products.

context: On the Macintosh bet.


source_id: Recruiting pitch to John Sculley

text: Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

context: As recounted in Sculley's Odyssey; date approximate.


source_id: Apple retreat

text: It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

context: To the Mac team; date approximate (September 1982 retreat).


source_id: Wired interview

text: Creativity is just connecting things.

context: From 'Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing.'


source_id: WWDC keynote

text: We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It's pretty great.

context: Closing sentiment, WWDC 2004.


source_id: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (biography)

text: I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.

context: Said to Isaacson after the Nexus One launch; date approximate.


text: It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.

context: Said at age 29; ironic in light of his post-40 run.


text: 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.

context: Stanford's site blocked fetch this session; transcript at the URL.


text: 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.


text: If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.

context: He presents it as a quote he read at seventeen, source unnamed.


text: You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.


text: The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.

context: On the years after the 1985 firing.


text: 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.


text: Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.


text: For the past 33 years, I have 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 am 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.


text: 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.

context: Immediately precedes q003 in the speech.