When I heard that as motto for his life Steve Jobs had chosen “THINK DIFFERENT”, then I realized that it is very much alike the motto I have chosen for my own life SAPERE AUDE! It contains in a nutshell Immanuel Kants admonition to have the courage to think of your own and not follow the thoughts of others.
In a documentary of the Silicon Valley Historical Association (Steve Jobs Visionary Entrepreneur) he said the following words which I would like to share here:
“The thing I would to say is:
When you grow up you tend to get told 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 life, have fun, save a little money.
That is a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is: everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were not smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
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. Its to shake off the erroneous notion that life is there and you’re gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change its, 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, because it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
In 1997 Apple started a great advertisement campaign under the motto “THINK DIFFERENT”
Here’s to the crazy ones!
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs died on October 5th in 2011.
He was spared to see how in the world since then the dark side of irrationality is rising and threatens to make people forget what it means to be hu-man, homo deus.
“Don’t you know that you are all sleeping Gods. We are created in God’s image and likeness. If I were not. God were not God.” (Master Eckhart, 1260-1328).