Favorite speeches

favorite speech I never heard:

"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." - Steve Jobs, (entire speech here)

favorite speech I did hear:

"As a young man, Abraham Lincoln went to war a captain and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success. He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the vice-presidency in 1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. At about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth."

I remember James Carville saying that at my undergrad. Now I haven't seen every Cicero, but that speech was the best one and most inspiring one I've heard. He chased those words with a personal anecdote, and was authentically moved to tears admitting that he tried, and tried, and tried, he was first in the army and was just a bumpkin in grad. school, but he never imagined he'd make it or make it that far. Yes he looks different, but those words are still moving and make me believe in what I'm doing

Links: Text Overview, Audio Excerpts

Favorite story from today: "Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff."