Published Apr 18, 2024

Your Last Night On Earth? How Steve Jobs’ Decided To Pursue His Wife– His Top Ten Most Important Things in Life

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Finding Inspiration in Steve Job's Quotes

Steve jobs passed away from a rare form of pancreatic cancer nearly 13 years ago, but he’s thankfully left behind empowering words on what really matters in life— like finding love, spending time with family, and making change in the world. And we’re looking back on 10 of his quotes that can easily inspire anyone who reads them.
Jobs died from a rare form of pancreatic cancer after doctors discovered pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors by chance, following a scan of his kidneys for potential kidney stones. The pancreas is near the kidneys. These tumors occur in the pancreas but can also occur elsewhere in the body. Neuroendocrine tumors and typical pancreatic cancers come from different types of cells, are treated differently and have different symptoms.
Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease that is difficult to detect because symptoms including jaundice and weight loss typically present at a later stage in the cancer’s development.
Resilience, like Steve Jobs had, is an important trait to have in the face of adversity such as cancer. SurvivorNet spotlighted this important cancer-fighting trait in the film “Resilience,” streaming on SurvivorNet. It follows the lives of three athletes who are living with a health challenge yet overcame adversity.

Tech guru Steve Jobs, who passed away from a rare form of pancreatic cancer nearly 13 years ago at age 56, certainly changed the world as we know it and left us with empowering words on what really matters in life— like finding love, spending time with family, and making change in the world.

The titan of tech and Apple co-founder, died of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs). However, his inspirational sayings live on, and we’ve put together some of our favorite quotes of his.

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and initially underwent alternative treatment methods like plants, acupuncture and dietary changes before opting for surgery nine months after his diagnosis. It has been speculated that his postponement of the conventional surgery treatment may have shortened his life span. He passed away on October 5, 2011.

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Jobs, a father of four to Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Eve Jobs, Reed Jobs, and Erin Jobs, is remembered for his part in the evolution of modern technology, something he did at a young age. In fact, he co-founded Apple at age 21, later left to launch Pixar Animation Studios, known for films like “Toy Story” and “A Bug’s Life”

It’s truly remarkable how much Jobs accomplished over the course of his life. Although he dropped out of school in 1972 due to financial issues, he always embraced the mantra that you can do anything you set your mind to. He never encouraged dropping out of school, however, he was an incredible example of how resilience amid adversity is key to success.

Here are our favorite Steve Jobs quotes to give you all the inspiration you need on what really matters in life:

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
“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.”
“You’ve got to find what you love and that is as true for work as it is for lovers. 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. And the only way to do great work is to love what what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you’ve found it.”
“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’s 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 who 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.”
“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
“I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she’d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we’ve been together ever since.”
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on, but that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the one hundred other good ideas there are. You have to pick carefully.”
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures.”
“God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth.”
“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”

Learning about Steve Jobs’ Type of Cancer: Pancreatic Cancer

In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; the specific type of pancreatic cancer he had included neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). Your pancreas has cells that secrete hormones such as insulin, and those cells become malignant.

Doctors discovered Jobs’ cancer via a CT scan of his kidneys (the pancreas is near the left kidney). Jobs said in his biography that his urologist wanted him to get the scan due to a prior issue with kidney stones. They found a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of the disease.

Steve Jobs (left) and Steve Wozniak, co-founders of Apple, 1977. (Photo by Tom Munnecke/Getty Images)

These tumors occur in the pancreas but can also occur elsewhere in the body. Neuroendocrine tumors and typical pancreatic cancers come from different types of cells, are treated differently and have different symptoms.

With pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, even if they’ve spread outside the pancreas, people can live somewhat longer than the clinical form of pancreatic cancer, which is why Jobs survived for a reasonably long time at eight years.

Dr. Renuka Iyer of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center previously told SurvivorNet that NETs are brain and hormone-related cancers.

“That’s one thing that’s different about this disease, is the fact that it can produce hormones,” Dr. Iyer said. “Some [NETs] produce hormones like insulin.” Because of their hormone production NETs can be found anywhere in the body, but most commonly in the gastrointestinal tract.

There are many ways to treat NETs (primarily surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation), and specialists can offer different options.

Dr. Iyer tells SurvivorNet that surgery is the number one preference for treatment, when possible. “Even if it has spread if it is at stage four it can be surgically removed.”

Drugs also work for treatment, and Dr. Iyer says that drugs used to block the hormone signals and slow the cancer spread are effective. “We used targeted agents, targeted radiation. Radiologists have options to offer where they can burn these tumors or put other particles in the liver to try to attack [the tumor].” (The most common type of NETs are found in the liver.)

Within the past ten years, a new tool has been developed to detect these cancers a NET spot scan. This specialized scan has advanced the ability to detect NETs. “With better ways to find them and measure them, it is helping to move the field along,” Dr. Iyer said.

Dr. Allyson Ocean On Why Pancreatic Cancer Is So Hard To Treat

Jobs refused potentially life-saving surgery and opted for alternative treatments instead. These included the use of plants, acupuncture, and making dietary changes. However, nine months after the diagnosis, Jobs eventually opted for surgery. But many have likened his use of alternative therapies to his shortened his lifespan by postponing the life-prolonging conventional treatment of surgery.

When Jobs was nearing death, he sketched device designs on a notepad. He was thankful for his life and family and worked to the end. He also was known to put his wife first over all else.

On the day he met his wife, Laurene Powell, he called his sister Mona Simpson and said, “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”

“His abiding love for Laurene sustained him,” Simpson said. “He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.”

His last words, according to his sister, as he gazed off past his wife and four children were: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

Through the Darkest Time of Your Life, a Beautiful Gift Can be Revealed

Meanwhile, pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease that is difficult to detect because symptoms including jaundice and weight loss typically present at a later stage in the cancer’s development. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Dr. Anirban Maitra, the co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains what he typically sees when patients develop this disease.

“Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen often doesn’t have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas,” he says. “By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain or diabetes, it’s often very late in the stage of the disease.”

Detecting Pancreatic Cancer Early Is Crucial

Parents, siblings and children of someone with pancreatic cancer are considered high risk for developing the disease because they are first-degree relatives of the individual. PGVs (pathogenic germline variants) are changes in reproductive cells (sperm or egg) that become part of the DNA in the cells of the offspring. Germline variants are passed from parents to their children and are associated with increased risks of several cancer types, including pancreatic, ovarian and breast cancers. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11 and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer.

Resilience Through Adversity

We love how Steve Jobs understood the importance of love, family, and quality time throughout his busy life and his battle with pancreatic cancer, which is why we’d like to point out how SurvivorNet specializes in covering the lives of people who overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Often, seeing the positive helps them maintain their resilience.

Dr. Zuri Murrell, an oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously spoke to SurvivorNet about the role of a positive outlook on survival rates, saying, “I’m pretty good at telling what kind of patient are going to still have this attitude and probably going to live the longest, even with bad, bad disease. And those are patients who, they have gratitude in life.”

Resilience is an important trait, but not the easiest to build. The ultimate goal is not to avoid tough times, but to be able to bounce back from them. And yet, when they are faced with an overwhelming, life-changing situation, how do people shift their view? How do they learn to see the problem as temporary, rather than permanent, and figure out a solution?

It’s complicated, because building resilience is more about your mental and emotional fortitude than anything else. According to the American Psychological Association, “the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.” In other words, resilience is not something you’re born with, which should be encouraging. Instead, after every challenge in your life, you build more and more resilience to those hard times.

You can build resilience the way you build muscle – through patience and steady exercise of the skill. Here are some lessons taken from Fischer, Runkel, and Soller, all who have spoke with SurvivorNet in earlier interviews.

Be willing to learn. If one way doesn’t work, find a different way. If an obstacle lands in your way, build a path around it or over it. In Resilience, one of the athletes says, “You always have to be learning. Otherwise, life gets stagnant.” The more you learn, the more you grow and growth is a sign of resilience.
Spend time with people who inspire you. Our world is filled with people who overcome challenges, and their success can energize you to overcome your own. Think about famous people who hava faced adversity and did not give up Stephen King actually threw his manuscript, Carrie, in the trash because it had been rejected by publishers so many times. His wife encouraged him to keep sending it out, and he finally sold it in 1974 launching a massively successful career as a novelist. Take the time to read and learn about the lives of Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, Bethany Hamilton, Nelson Mandela, and others.
Allow yourself to grieve. Don’t push away or dismiss your frustration and sadness. Ben Fischer says that life can be filled with lots of crying, but “Those cries make us stronger.”
Be flexible. Abandon the idea that there is only one solution or that you must stick to your original plan. The best solution or plan is the one that eventually works. You may need to change your original plan as the circumstances change.
Lean in to your community. Your friends, colleagues, and family are invaluable, and when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed by a problem, their support can carry you. The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest study of human well-being. Many news outlets have covered its results, which show that maintaining strong, healthy relationships helped people live longer lives. Psychiatrist and author Dr. Samantha Boardman tells SurvivorNet that connecting with and contributing to the lives of other people are two of “the three wellsprings of vitality” (the third is feeling positively challenged).

Facing Cancer: How to Turn Stress into Strength

If you’ve been through a difficult health challenge or any type of adversity throughout your live, Dr. Boardman told SurvivorNet in an earlier interview that one way to get your mental health back in check after a diagnosis is to try to play up your strengths.

“I sometimes will ask patients, tell me about yourself when you were at your best,” she explained. “Using that story, trying to figure out what strengths come to mind. Is it patience? Is it appreciation of beauty? It is perseverance? [Then we can] use those strengths in constructive ways to navigate their cancer journey.”

Dr. Boardman says another way to approach harnessing the strength you already have is by tapping into your values. This could be family, close friendships, spirituality, or commitment to a healthy lifestyle.

Reminding yourself of what your values are and how you are living accordingly is another way to unleash that inner strength.

Lastly, patients shouldn’t underestimate the value of simply opening up, Dr. Boardman says. This could mean speaking to a close family member or friend, or it could mean seeking support in other ways by finding a therapist that meets your needs or looking into joining a support group.

Stay Positive, It Matters

Having negative feelings throughout a health struggle is to be expected, however, doctors will tell you that people who find a way to work through the emotions and stay positive tend to have better outcomes.