by fsiefken | 2025-08-14 21:50:34+00:00
Some quotes relevant quotes from the net/youtube:

"I didn’t want to be corrupted, ever, in my life. I thought this out when I was 20 years old. A lot of basic ethics is truth and honesty, and I’m going to be an honest person. I’m not going to be corrupted to where I do things for the sake of money. I don’t want to be in that group (chasing power and wealth), I just want to have a nice life, a good life, maybe better than a typical engineer. But I gave away a lot of my money. I’m very comfortable with who I am, I’m not one of those private jet people. Part of my philosophy was everything you do should have an element of fun in it. I came up with the formula for happiness, what life is about. Happiness to me is smiles minus frowns, H=S-F. Increase your smiles, do a lot of fun things, enjoy entertainment, talk with people, make jokes. That’s creativity." -- The Guardian interview, 3 May 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/may/03/wisdom...

"My starting point was the desire to be a good person. So, I came up with a lot of different values, largely based on truth being the most important thing of all, and the value of what's called ethics. And I just said, I want to be in the middle, where I can associate with the maximum number of people. People are one of the most important parts of this life. Who you are, who your friends are, how you can talk to them—it was important to me because I was shy; I was an outsider. And I wanted to be in the middle, not one of these extreme "way up" people where you can only deal with other "way up" type people. Part of my thinking, was to be open-spirited to people. Part of that was not to build a hierarchy. [..] I wanted to build a philosophy, not a hierarchy. Just say, "Hey, I'm going to present how I think," and if somebody else has a different way of thinking, they just have a different mind. They're not bad, they're just different. So I developed a lot of these different philosophies for life, including things like the desire to make the world better with technology and computers. So, I didn't forget who I was. After a bit of success happened, it also goes to your head; you want to have more value and more money. That's good, that's fine. But I was just one who never sought those goals. I never wanted to be so above everybody else that I would kind of forget them and shove them aside. [..] I think more people should know who they are, decide who they are, think about it, and decide to be that person they want to be." -- Encuentro Nacional Coparmex 2017 in Queretaro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZVPz3T-8JA

"Seth Rogen, who portrayed Woz in the 2015 movie Steve Jobs, described him to Variety as “immensely lovable,” “sweet, compassionate, caring” and “the kind of guy you want to give a hug to.” Throughout his career – in numerous interviews and in iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon, his memoir written with Gina Smith – Wozniak has always been a fount of knowledge and wisdom, whether speaking on subjects like innovation and entrepreneurship, the importance of honesty, or Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory. Think of them as aphorisms by Woz or, as we like to think of them, Woz-isms."

3 Woz-isms:

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me – they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone – best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it!”

“You need to believe in yourself. Don’t waver. There will be people – and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet – who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong. So a new idea – a revolutionary new product or product feature – won’t be understandable to most people because they see things so black and white. Maybe they don’t get it because they can’t imagine it….Don’t let these people get you down.”

“Start out with tiny projects that aren’t worth any money in the world, but that’s how you develop your brain and that’s how you learn. Every project you work on in your life – I just look at my own life as an example – is the prior project and a little better and a little more. And every technique you come up with for doing things better you keep forever in your head.” -–Interview with Prof. Alan Brown"

https://www.zurich.com/media/magazine/2022/the-wise-words-of...