Today, Apple and the rest of the world have lost a visionary and a genius, Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, iPod iTunes and more. In recent years he mixed huge business success with personal turmoil, including surviving a liver transplant in 2009, after battling pancreatic cancer in 2004. "There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented," Obama said.

 

"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."

 

Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and CEO who died today after a long battle with illness, said those words in 2005 after beating back an unusual form of pancreatic cancer. 

 

Among many inspiring statements he has made about his life's lessons, one stands out on the day of his death:

"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. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."