“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“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.”

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

“Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to be bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”

“You can’t just ask customer what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.”

Reinhard Kargl

Journalist and media professional currently based in Los Angeles, California. Focusing on science and technology.