The question

What have you come to understand about what it means to be human?

Originally asked

Krista Tippett, to her guests, On Being

Krista Tippett uses this as a recurring, sometimes-closing On Being question; the wording is intentionally adapted to each guest.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Steve Jobs

Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't. That's going to break people's hearts. I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die.

Gary Wolf, Wired 4.02, February 1996 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 31 →
Alex Honnold Rock climber; first person to free solo El Capitan
Well, don’t you think that we are all like that? I mean in some ways the deepest fear for a lot of people is getting to the end of their life and think that they did it wrong.
Recorded 52 Insights, 14 January 2019 source ↗
Agnès Varda Film director, photographer and installation artist
How people need the possibility of sharing, of not being alone. It’s bad to be poor, but it’s difficult to be alone.
Recorded Kiva Reardon, cléo, 11 April 2018 source ↗
Tony Judt Historian and essayist
I was forced to think very hard about what it meant to be me, what it means to be a person who is only a brain. Pascal's 'thinking reed' really does capture it, because I'm just a bunch of dead muscles thinking.
Recorded Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 8 January 2010 source ↗
Kurt Vonnegut Novelist and essayist
In our lives, we do our best to serve our community well, behave decently, and treat people well.
Recorded Christopher R. Blazejewski, Interview, The Harvard Crimson, 12 May 2000 source ↗

More from Steve Jobs

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Question How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? Failure & regret
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. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
Recorded Stanford University 114th Commencement, Stanford News (Stanford University), 12 June 2005 source ↗
Question When was the last time you changed your mind about something? Change of mind
I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent. It's a political problem.
Recorded Gary Wolf, Wired 4.02, February 1996 source ↗
Question What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore? Time & hindsight
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.
Recorded Stanford University 114th Commencement, Stanford News (Stanford University), 12 June 2005 source ↗
Question What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Time & hindsight
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don't blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life.
Recorded Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, 20 April 1995 source ↗

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Richard Ford, Kate Bowler, Alex Honnold, Oliver Sacks, Henry R. Kravis, Jacqueline Novogratz

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