054862 05: The NeXT senior staff poses for a photograph October 12, 1988 in San Francisco, CA. Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers, left the company after a power struggle with John Sculley to create NeXT corporation. (Photo by Liaison)
In 1994 the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association interviewed Apple founder Steve Jobs. At the time Jobs was President & CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and working for NeXT, the company he co-founded in 1985. The intereview featured Jobs outlining a vision for success and life:
“When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
“The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
“I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
And on failing:
“Most people never pick up the phone, most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act. And you gotta be willing to fail… if you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”
Spotter: BrianPickings
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