Steve Jobs Quotes
1705 quotes
Steve Jobs
Apple co-founder who revolutionized technology and design
1705 Quotes
In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment – however you define it – and love people, care about people, and help them as much as you can
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 44
Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. Where do we fit in this world?
— Think Different Campaign Launch, 1997
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
— 60 Minutes (2003)
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
— Apple Product Strategy Interview, 1998
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Rolling Stone interview, 1994)
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek (1998)
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back
— Playboy Interview, 1985
For me, it was never about money, but solving problems for the future and having a company I could be proud of
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 47
I actually think all of the stuff that I did prior to my 23rd birthday is more interesting than everything that followed
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
We’re just enthusiastic about what we do
— Triumph of the Nerds Interview, 1996
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Playboy Interview 1985
If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best
— Interview in Triumph of the Nerds
The disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And that if you just tell all these other people, 'Here's this great idea,' then, of course, they can go off and make it happen
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 28
I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was your age
— Stanford Technology Ventures Program, 2010
People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do
— Think Different Campaign, 1997
Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 39
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me
— The Wall Street Journal 1993
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Wired Interview, 1996
You know, everybody is always talking about the good old days. I want to create new good days
— Interview, Playboy Magazine, 1985
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
Great things in this world are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.
— Walter Isaacson Biography, Chapter: Teams and Collaboration
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— The Lost Interview (1995)
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far
— Wired Interview, 1996
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— During early Apple retreat, as recalled by Andy Hertzfeld in Revolution in the Valley
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds
— Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress (1990)
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS documentary)
You couldn’t write software for the original Mac unless you were insanely creative
— From the book 'Insanely Great' by Steven Levy
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it’s at least 50 to 1
— Interview, Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary)
My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I learned about minimalism from Zen Buddhism. The most precious things in life are not what you have, but what you leave behind when you go
— Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson biography, p. 37
When you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 33
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune, 1998
The Lisa people wanted to do something really great. And the Mac people wanted to do something insanely great
— Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, Chapter 13
We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we’re living in, these tools amplify a human ability
— Playboy Interview (February 1985)
We were the first people to take seriously the idea that the personal computer was for individuals with a vision, not just for corporations
— Playboy Interview, 1985
It's not a faith in technology. It's faith in people
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
Somebody once told me, 'Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.' What's the top line? It's things like, are we making great products? Are we providing great customer service?
— Fortune, 2008
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero
— Wired Magazine, 2004
My father was a machinist, and he taught me everything I know about building things. He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
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
— Stanford Commencement Address
I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed
— Playboy Magazine Interview, 1985
We are gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products
— Apple Special Event (return keynote), 1997
I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we’ve just taken it
— Apple IPO, 1980
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, and what that means is I don't mean that in a small way, I mean it in a big way – in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS documentary)
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
— Interview with Steve Jobs by Dilbert Creator Scott Adams, 1984
Computers are the most remarkable tools that we've ever come up with. They're like a bicycle for our minds
— Memory & Imagination, 1990 Smithsonian Interview
People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up
— Founders at Work (Jessica Livingston)
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way
— Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success (Ken Segall)
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs
Picasso had a saying: Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas
— Triumph of the Nerds (TV documentary)
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— iPhone Launch Keynote 2007
I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 8
You have to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Focus and simplicity... once you get there, you can move mountains
— BusinessWeek, May 1998
If you look at each of these new things, it takes a while for society to accept them
— Wired Interview, 1996
Every good product I’ve ever seen comes from someone scratching their own itch
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
Things get filtered away by your ego or your pride. You have to keep an open mind so that you keep learning
— The Lost Interview: Steve Jobs, 1995
The only thing that works is management by values. The values are: do the right thing, be honest, treat people with respect
— Wired Magazine Interview, February 1996
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
Creativity is just connecting things
— Wired Magazine, 1996
The journey is the reward.
— Apple Advertising Slogan (1980s); Jobs often echoed the sentiment
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek Interview (2001)
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
— Interview with BusinessWeek, May 1998
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve got to risk it too
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Interview with Inc. Magazine, 1985
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Interview, Wired magazine, February 1996
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible
— Fortune Interview (1982)
We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make 'me too' products
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, The Design chapter
My intuition about what’s important almost always guides me well
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Chapter 5
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do
— Apple Think Different Campaign, 1997
We're here to put a dent in the universe
— Wired Interview, 1996
The Macintosh is the most fun thing I’ve ever done
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Pixar is an amazing company because its people stand at the intersection of technology and the arts
— Time Magazine Interview, 2005
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. But that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that 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
— 1994 Interview with the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve Wozniak and me, and because we were young and had no money, every success was unlikely
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I want to make something beautiful, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly stuff. That’s my intent
— Playboy Interview (1985)
I was lucky—I found what I loved to do early in life
— Stanford Commencement Address
It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't
— 1997 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)
Once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that 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
— Santa Clara Valley Historical Association Interview, 1994
If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. If not, get the hell out of my way
— Return to Apple (1997) Internal Staff Meeting
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Wired Interview, 1996
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 27
My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I see myself as an artist, even though I paint on an entirely different canvas
— Playboy Interview, 1985
One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free, healthy press.
— Washington Post Interview, 1995
I was worth over a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek, October 29, 2001
You’ve got to put something back into the flow of history, and you’ve got to do it in your own lifetime
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
You know, we don't grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved. I mean, we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful, ecstatic, amazing thing that we get to learn from and use the tools that others have invented
— Playboy Interview (1985)
Great products really do make a difference in people’s lives
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Interview, 1994 Smithsonian Oral History
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works
— The New York Times Magazine, 2003
The only way to do great work is to love what you do
— Stanford Commencement 2005
I’m not dismissing the value of higher education; I’m simply saying it comes at the expense of experience
— Playboy Interview (1985)
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Time, April 2012 (interview excerpt)
In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment – however you define it – and love people, care about people, and help them as much as you can
— Playboy Interview 1985
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Wall Street Journal: Interview, 1993
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works
— Interview with The New York Times, 2003
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 1997
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right
— WWDC 1997
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay
— Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics... I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Walter Isaacson Biography, Chapter 5
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 1997
The Macintosh is the most fun thing I’ve ever done
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I was worth over a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
You don't get to do many things in your life, so every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Playboy Interview, 1985
My doctor told me this morning that I'm going to live until I'm at least 100, so this is just the start
— Macworld Boston Keynote, 1997
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
— Apple Keynote, 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen
If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I’m not interested in being right. I’m interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 22
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— WWDC 1997
Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way
— Interview with Daniel Morrow
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Interview with Fortune, 2000
I was worth over a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works
— Wired, February 1996
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
The journey is the reward
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing by Randall E. Stross
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 50 to 1
— Smithsonian Interview, 1995
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
Computers are like a bicycle for our minds
— Memory & Imagination (film), 1990
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— Triumph of the Nerds interview (1996)
Things get filtered away by your ego or your pride. You have to keep an open mind so that you keep learning
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 5
My best work yet might be next
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs Biography, Chapter 40
The way we're going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things, and starts to understand the kind of things they can aspire to and achieve
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do
— Wired, February 1996
I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, Chapter 5
If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You’ve got to find what you love
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts
— Stanford Commencement Address
Innovation comes from saying no to 1,000 things
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
You have to be willing to act. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them
— Wired Interview (1996)
You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting
— Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek, 1998
I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Playboy Interview (1985)
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
— 60 Minutes, 2003
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
Made with care, by people who care deeply. That’s been one of my mantras at Apple and Pixar
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs Biography, Chapter 35
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview, Smithsonian Oral History, 1995
Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future
— Macworld Expo, 1997
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products
— Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson (biography)
If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
You can't look at the competition and say you're going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you're going to do it differently
— Interview, The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, 1995
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were all in our early twenties. What did we have to lose?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have
— WWDC 1997
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
If you really look at the ones that ended up being successful in the eyes of society, often times it’s the ones who loved what they did, so they could persevere when it got really tough
— Founders at Work
Creativity is just connecting things
— Wired Magazine Interview (1996)
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch Keynote, 2011
We’re just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I think of Silicon Valley as a meritocracy of ideas, where the best ideas win
— Wired Interview, 1996
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— Apple Keynote, Macworld 2007
If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are
— Wired, February 1996
I learned about minimalism from Zen Buddhism. The most precious things in life are not what you have, but what you leave behind when you go
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Walter Isaacson
The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 32
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 50 to 1
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 50 to 1
— 1984 Macworld Keynote
There’s nothing that makes my day more than getting an e-mail from some person I’ve never met who says: ‘I bought an iPad, got a couple of your apps, and now I’m doing things I never dreamed of, and it’s helping me in my life in some way.’
— AllThingsD Conference (2010)
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution 1995
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement, 2005
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person
— Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress (1990 film)
You’ve got to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Wired, 1996
I want to make something beautiful, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly stuff. That’s my intent
— The Lost Interview (1995)
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been
— Macworld, January 2007
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I thought deeply about dropping out, and chose to trust that it would all work out okay
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
Our DNA is as a consumer company—for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about
— Wired Interview (1996)
I'm as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things
— WWDC 1997
We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— WWDC Q&A, 1997
People think your 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 hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them
— Wired interview, 1996
People don’t care about what you say, they care about what you build
— Wired Magazine Interview, 1996
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain
— Esquire Interview, 1986
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, p. 381
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with National Public Radio (1995)
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
The computer industry needs a leader, not a copier. Leaders stand out; they don’t just follow the crowd
— Interview, Playboy, 1985
I don’t mind being wrong, and I’ll admit I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing
— Playboy Interview (1985)
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs
Made with care, by people who care deeply. That’s been one of my mantras at Apple and Pixar
— Walt Mossberg/AllThingsD: D8 Conference, 2010
I was in the parking lot with Woz, and we were talking about how cool it would be if people could just call people directly, without having to call an operator
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
You can't win on innovation unless you have the right people on your team
— Interview, Wired Magazine, February 1996
You have to pick the right horses. The people I ended up working with, the reason they ended up being so good is because they loved what they did
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 9
We're here to put a dent in the universe
— Interview with Wired Magazine (1996)
This is what customers pay us for—to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers
— Fortune Magazine Interview, 2000
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Fortune Interview
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it’s a very noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us
— Apple 'Think Different' campaign internal meeting, 1997
It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't
— Apple Think Different Internal Meeting, 1997
I found myself spending a lot of time with people who were older than I was, because they were the only ones doing interesting things. I learned more from them than I did in school
— Playboy Interview, 1985
People judge you on your performance, so be a yardstick of quality
— Interview, Playboy Magazine, February 1985
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that 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
— 1994 Interview on PBS 'The Lost Interview'
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2003
I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I spent ten years working for, starting with me
— Excerpt from Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
We're cautious about who we involve in design. We try to invite people into design only if we feel that they have a way of seeing and thinking that works
— Wired Interview, February 1996
One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it, too—it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And that if you just tell all these other people, ‘Here’s this great idea,’ then, of course, they can go off and make it happen
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary)
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve Wozniak and me, and because we were young and had no money, every success was unlikely
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 5
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Interview with Paul Rand, 1993
You can’t look at the competition and say you’re going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you’re going to do it differently
— Fortune, 2000 Interview
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Interview, Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
My parents saved up all their money to send me to college, and almost all of it was spent on my tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out
— Stanford Commencement Address
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I’ve always found Buddhism—the Zen school in particular—to be a wonderful basis for a personal philosophy. Zen has influenced my life and my work fundamentally
— Time Magazine Interview, 1999
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You have to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far
— The Lost Interview (1995)
It's painful when you have to lay off people who you know aren't responsible for the downturn, but you do it because you have to take care of the whole company
— Wired Interview (1996)
People think your focus means saying yes to something, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully
— WWDC 1997
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles
— Wired, February 1996
Pixar is an amazing company because its people stand at the intersection of technology and the arts
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Wired Magazine, 1996)
It takes these very simple-minded instructions, 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number.' But it can do it, at a phenomenal rate, and it can remember things. So a computer's memory is probably about a million times as large as yours. But in other respects, it's the most dumb, simple, complete idiot that ever was
— 1990 Smithsonian Interview, on computers
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson biography)
I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
The only thing that works is management by values. The values are: do the right thing, be honest, treat people with respect
— Interview with Fortune, 2008
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics... I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Wired, 1996)
If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You’ve got to put something back into the flow of history, and you’ve got to do it in your own lifetime
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. If not, get the hell out of my way.
— Return to Apple, 1997 All-Hands Meeting
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek interview, May 1998
Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?
— Apple Off-site Retreat, 1983
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 39
We're fascinated by that, but Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world
— Playboy Interview, 1985
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Biography)
I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals
— Wired Interview, 1996
Most people think design is a veneer. It’s not just veneer. It’s the whole thing
— Wired Interview, 1996
I've always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that's what we tried to do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me
— The Wall Street Journal, 1993
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Return to Apple, Fortune (1997)
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.
— Fortune Magazine, 2000
You start to want to do something that's not just about making a buck. That's what happened to me
— Playboy Interview, 1985
It's not a faith in technology. It's faith in people
— WIRED interview, 1996
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
Real artists ship
— Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— The Lost Interview, 1995
You’ve got to put something back into the flow of history, and you’ve got to do it in your own lifetime
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it
— Wired Magazine, February 1996
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune Interview, 1998
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— WWDC 1997
I think being in love with something—your work, your message, your customers—is totally underrated
— Steve Jobs, Interview with Fortune (2000)
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
We’re here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise why even bother?
— Fortune, 2001
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about
— Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney, Chapter 6
The Macintosh was supposed to be the computer for the rest of us, but it ended up being the computer for the best of us
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don’t bring original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— The Lost Interview (1995)
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new
— Fortune Interview, 1998
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I get asked why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It’s because of what we stand for
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), 1997
People get confused that design is just what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works
— The New York Times Magazine, 2003
People think your focus means saying yes to something, but that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are
— Apple Developer Conference, 1997
You have to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things, enables you to invest in ideas that don't have a short-term payback
— Fortune, 2000
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing, Wired 1996
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I’m not interested in being right. I’m interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005 (Speech)
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Wired, 1996
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing by Randall Stross
It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions
— Interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, May 1998
Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 1997
To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it's a very noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us
— Think Different Campaign Internal Meeting, 1997
The journey is the reward
— Apple advertisement / Internal Apple motto, 1980s
Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse!”’
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson), Chapter 41
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
— 60 Minutes Interview, 2003
You know, we don't grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved. I mean, we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful, ecstatic, amazing thing that we get to learn from and use the tools that others have invented
— Interview with Steve Jobs by Robert Cringely, Triumph of the Nerds
You’ve got to put something back into the flow of history, and you’ve got to do it in your own lifetime
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Interview with Fortune Magazine (2008)
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— Stanford Commencement Address
We’re just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
My best work yet might be next
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Epilogue)
I’ve always found Buddhism—the Zen school in particular—to be a wonderful basis for a personal philosophy. Zen has influenced my life and my work fundamentally
— Walter Isaacson Biography - Early Life Section
To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it's a very noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us
— Think Different launch, 1997 internal meeting
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— CBS 60 Minutes
Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn
— Newsweek Interview, 1984
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with... but it's only a tool. In the end, it comes down to the people and how they use them
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC, 1997
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek, May 1998
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have
— Wired Interview, 1996
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
We're just enthusiastic about what we do
— Interview with BusinessWeek, 1994
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Chrisann Brennan in 1995 (Smithsonian Oral History)
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Apple 'Think Different' internal meeting (1997)
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Quoted by Andy Hertzfeld in Revolution in the Valley
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics… I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, The Intersection chapter
You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting
— Fortune Magazine Interview, 2000
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
— WWDC 1997
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— BusinessWeek, 2004 Interview
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
I’m always amazed by how much people fill their lives with stuff that isn’t really that important
— Wired Interview, 1996
For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through
— Smithsonian Interview 1995
We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products
— BusinessWeek interview, May 1998
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it too—it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And that if you just tell all these other people, ‘Here’s this great idea,’ then, of course, they can go off and make it happen
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
For me, it was never about money, but solving problems for the future and having a company I could be proud of
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
Somebody once told me, 'Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.' What's the top line? It's things like, are we making great products? Are we providing great customer service?
— All Things Digital Conference (D5), 2007
I’m not interested in legacy, I’m interested in getting things done
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing, Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
The journey is the reward
— Wired Magazine, February 1996
I want to see what people are like under pressure. When the fire’s hot, who comes through and who gives up?
— Insanely Great by Steven Levy
It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— Apple iPad 2 Launch (2011)
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter: The Entrepreneur
I get asked why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It’s because of what we stand for
— Fortune, 2008
People think design is this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what design is. Design is how it works
— The New York Times, 2003
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline
— Fortune, 2000 Interview
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune Interview, 1998
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Salon, 1995
I used to sleep on the floor in friends’ rooms, return Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Steve Jobs, 1995, Smithsonian Institution Oral History Project
You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Early Apple chapter
We are not going to be the first to this party, but we are going to be the best
— WWDC 1997
Things don't have to change the world to be important
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
When you’re young, you tend to believe that your life won’t change. It will. That’s life.
— Interview, Smithsonian Oral History, April 20, 1995
If you don't ask, the answer is always no
— Interview with the Silicon Valley Historical Association, 1994
It's the journey that matters, not the destination
— Wired Interview, February 1996
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— D: All Things Digital (D8) Conference, 2010
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Real artists ship
— Apple meeting, 1983
I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new
— Time Magazine Interview, 2003
You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new
— Inc. Magazine Interview, 1989
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— The Lost Interview, 1995
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 29
We’re just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview (1985)
We're just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Things don't have to change the world to be important
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero
— All Things Digital D8 Conference, 2010
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Wired, 1996
What made Silicon Valley great is that there’s always someone who’s more successful than you. You always reach
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 22
People think your focus means saying yes to something, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent
— AllThingsD Conference, 2010
The largest party in history is the party of mediocrity. Keep out of it.
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
We’re all going to die. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
The journey is the reward
— Steve Jobs: The Unauthorized Autobiography - Early Apple years
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 7
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Wired Interview, 1996
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future.
— Interview with Fortune (2000)
It's hard to tell with these things, because they don't have a black-and-white answer. There are probably ten to twenty times as many people in the world who have never made a movie as who have never used a computer
— Triumph of the Nerds (TV Documentary), 1996
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average.
— Walter Isaacson Biography, Chapter: Organization and Decision Making
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next
— NBC Nightly News Interview with Brian Williams, 2006
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Founders at Work
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Playboy Interview (1985)
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek, 2001
I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do
— The Lost Interview, 1995
Pixar is an amazing company because its people stand at the intersection of technology and the arts
— Pixar anniversary events and interviews
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 42
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve Wozniak and me, and because we were young and had no money, every success was unlikely
— Triumph of the Nerds (TV Documentary)
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been
— WWDC 1997 (quoting Wayne Gretzky)
For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune, 1998
What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them
— Rolling Stone Interview, June 1994
I’m always amazed by how much people fill their lives with stuff that isn’t really that important
— Wired Interview, February 1996
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I want Apple to stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both
— Apple Event, iPad 2 Launch, 2011
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with... but it's only a tool. In the end, it comes down to the people and how they use them
— Rolling Stone Interview, June 2013 (posthumous publication of 1994 interview)
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Wired, 1995 Interview
We're always at the intersection of art and technology
— Apple Event, March 2, 2011
I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made
— 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
You’ve got to put something back into the flow of history, and you’ve got to do it in your own lifetime
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics... I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson, Early Life
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— CNNMoney/Fortune Interview, 2003
I want to build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Intro to Macintosh Team, as quoted in Insanely Great by Steven Levy
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Lost Interview (1995)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Quoted in 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson
To me, it's always been about making great products. For me, it was never about money
— CNNMoney, 2008
The largest party in history is the party of mediocrity. Keep out of it.
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 30
You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
People don’t care about what you say, they care about what you build
— Profile in the Smithsonian Oral History Project, 1995
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions
— Wired Interview, February 1996
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Early Years
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it.
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 23
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Interview with Fortune, 2000
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
The only way to escape the trap of dogma is to follow your own heart and intuition
— Stanford Commencement Address
Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast
— Macworld 2008 Keynote
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve Wozniak and me, and because we were young and had no money, every success was unlikely
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The people at the top of Apple are just crazy about product. They want to make the best thing they possibly can
— Wired Interview, 1996
People judge you on your performance, so be a yardstick of quality
— Interview, Playboy Magazine 1985
If you’re working on something exciting, it will keep you motivated. People are motivated to do great things
— 1995 Interview with Daniel Morrow, Computerworld Smithsonian Oral History
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek interview, 2001
We're just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s come before and get to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview
We don’t do focus groups—that is the disease of building products for the average user and keeping you from discovering what you truly believe
— Wired Interview, February 1996
I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do
— Wired, Interview, 1996
Death is very likely the single best invention of life.
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building
— 1995 Computerworld Interview
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 23
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Early Apple team mantra, mid-1980s
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future
— Interview with Rolling Stone (1994)
The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve got to risk it too
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 30
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Biography)
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
I’m not interested in legacy. I’m interested in getting things done
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 41
I get rejected every day. I'm used to it. I don't really care
— Playboy Interview, 1985
People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up
— Founders at Work (Interview, 2007)
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles
— BusinessWeek Interview (2004)
Made with care, by people who care deeply. That’s been one of my mantras at Apple and Pixar
— Wired Interview, 1996
I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It's because of what we stand for
— Fortune Magazine Interview, 2008
Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Steve Jobs by Robert X. Cringely, 1995 (Triumph of the Nerds)
Marketing is about values. It's a complicated and noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us
— Apple 'Think Different' Internal Meeting, 1997
I think being in love with something — your work, your message, your customers — is totally underrated
— WWDC 1997
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
The journey is the reward
— Apple's Early Mottos
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson
It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Wired, 1996)
The largest party in history is the party of mediocrity. Keep out of it
— Interview with BusinessWeek (2004)
I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995 documentary
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple offsite retreat, 1983
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Fortune Interview, 2000
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Interview, Smithsonian Oral History (1995)
Our DNA is as a consumer company—for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about
— AllThingsD Interview, D5 Conference, 2007
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Fast Company, 1996 Interview
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 23
For me, it’s always been about the products. The products, not the profits
— Fortune Interview 2000
If you want it, you can fly, you just have to trust you a lot
— Interview with Steven Levy, 1983
Innovation comes from saying no to 1,000 things
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Playboy Interview 1985
The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay
— Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky, Chapter 2
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is—I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— PBS Documentary, Triumph of the Nerds, 1996
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old, and I want to say to you, don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Chapter 6
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
We want to bring a contribution to the world, and to help in some way
— Apple Marketing Meeting, 1997
People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up
— Founders at Work interview (2007)
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— Fortune, 2000
I want to make a ding in the universe
— Playboy Interview, 1985
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs (2010)
I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself
— Wired Magazine Interview, February 1996
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Playboy Interview, 1985
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Esquire Interview, 1986
It's hard to tell with these things, because they don't have a black-and-white answer
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
The hardest thing when you think about focusing, you think focusing is about saying yes. No. Focusing is about saying no
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it
— Apple's founding, 1976
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— 60 Minutes, CBS interview, 2003
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— Fortune, Interview, 2000
I used to sleep on the floor in friends’ rooms, return Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple
— Stanford Commencement Address
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 29
Being on the cover of Rolling Stone is neat, but the ultimate thing is not being on the cover of Rolling Stone, but doing something you feel really good about
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
I’m not interested in being right. I’m interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
One more thing…
— Multiple Apple Keynotes, notably Macworld 1999
If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best
— The Lost Interview (1995)
Because you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending
— Steve Jobs: His Own Words and Wisdom (book)
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think
— Interview on 'The Lost Interview' (1995)
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person
— Insanely Great by Steven Levy, Chapter 4
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— Introducing iPhone 4 and iCloud, WWDC 2010
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next
— Interview with NBC Nightly News (2006)
I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It's because of what we stand for
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Steve Wozniak and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new
— Inc. Magazine, 1989
I think the journey is the reward
— Interview, 1987
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics... I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Wired, 1996
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary (1996)
Remember, you’ve got to say no to a thousand things to make sure you don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice
— Stanford Commencement Address
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals
— Wired Interview, 1996
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Wired Interview, February 1996
It's painful when you have to lay off people who you know aren't responsible for the downturn, but you do it because you have to take care of the whole company
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it
— Remark at the unveiling of the original Macintosh, 1984
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing
— Rolling Stone interview, 1994
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works
— The New York Times Magazine, 2003
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
— Stanford Commencement Address
We don’t do focus groups—that is the disease of building products for the average user and keeping you from discovering what you truly believe
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Coaching Senior Apple Staff (various reports, c. 2000s)
I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don't know why. Because they're harder and more emotionally stressful. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you've completely failed
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 18
Great products really do make a difference in people’s lives
— Fortune Interview, 2000
I found myself spending a lot of time with people who were older than I was, because they were the only ones doing interesting things. I learned more from them than I did in school.
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, April 1995
The way we're going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things, and starts to understand the kind of things they can aspire to and achieve
— The Lost Interview
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
— WWDC 1997
I want to put a ding in the universe.
— Wired Interview, 1996
I remember many late nights at Apple, with my head resting on the keyboard, thinking if I just keep going, maybe this thing will turn into something incredible
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
One of my mantras—the focus is on the user and all else will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We are all going to die soon, and that’s the best motivation to live the way you want
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Chapter 40
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 13
I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 50
Innovation comes from saying no to 1,000 things
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
The journey is the reward
— 1984 Macintosh Team Retreat
What made Silicon Valley great is that there’s always someone who’s more successful than you. You always reach.
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
I’ve always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that’s what we tried to do
— Newsweek, 1984
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I thought deeply about dropping out, and chose to trust that it would all work out okay
— Stanford Commencement Address
Things in life happen for a reason
— Steve Jobs, Rolling Stone Interview (1994)
If you look really closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Wired Interview, 2003
I get asked why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It’s because of what we stand for
— WWDC 1997
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Playboy Interview (1985)
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— NeXT Video Presentation, 1992
I want to make a ding in the universe
— Playboy Magazine Interview, 1985
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way—I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (1996) TV Documentary
If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right
— Stanford Commencement Address
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
— Interview, Playboy Magazine, 1985
In business, if you do something great, most of your competitors will copy it. But if you do something truly innovative, it will last
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The Macintosh was the first computer designed from the start to be approachable by people who were not technical
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about
— Fortune Interview (2008)
Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes and ambitions
— Interview, Inc. Magazine 1989
You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
To me, marketing is about values
— Apple 'Think Different' Internal Meeting, 1997
In the first 30 years of your life you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I see myself as an artist, even though I paint on an entirely different canvas
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Vision chapter
To me, the most important thing is to create fantastic products, and you don’t get to do that by doing what everyone else is doing
— Interview with Inc. Magazine, 1981
Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— The Lost Interview, 1995
The Lisa people wanted to do something really great. And the Mac people wanted to do something insanely great
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Interview with Wired, 1995
If you don't love it, you're going to fail
— Interview with Silicon Valley Historical Association, 1994
My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
The journey is the reward
— Apple Early Days Motto, 1970s-80s
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old, and I want to say to you, don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something
— Press Conference after being forced out of Apple, 1985
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
— Stanford Commencement Address
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Steve Jobs, 1995 (Smithsonian Oral History)
The Macintosh was the first computer designed from the start to be approachable by people who were not technical
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old, and I want to say to you, don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something
— Apple Employee Meeting after being ousted (1985)
Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem
— Wired, February 1996
It takes these very simple-minded instructions, 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number.' But it can do it, at a phenomenal rate, and it can remember things. So a computer's memory is probably about a million times as large as yours. But in other respects, it's the most dumb, simple, complete idiot that ever was
— Triumph of the Nerds, 1996
When you're young, you look at television and think there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down... But the truth is, they're in the business of giving people what they want
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— D8 Conference (2010)
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about
— Interview with Fortune (2008)
To me, it’s always been about the products. The products, not the profits
— Wired Interview, February 1996
If you want it, you can fly, you just have to trust you a lot
— Interview with the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1995
The Macintosh was the first computer designed from the start to be approachable by people who were not technical
— Macworld Boston Keynote, 1997
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I’m not interested in legacy, I’m interested in getting things done
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, Chapter 49
Great artists ship.
— Apple offsite meeting, as quoted in 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works
— Wired Magazine, 1996
I want Apple to stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both
— Apple iPad 2 Keynote, 2011
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson (Biography), Chapter 2
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best
— Interview with TIME Magazine, 1999
The journey is the reward
— Mantra at Apple, 1980s
If you don’t love it, you’re going to give up
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too
— Interview with BusinessWeek, May 1998
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Biography)
Real artists ship
— Aphorism frequently used at Apple, quoted in Revolution in The Valley by Andy Hertzfeld
We wanted to build a computer for the rest of us. Everybody I talked to said, 'Well, this is not possible.' But we did it
— Playboy Interview, 1985
In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment – however you define it – and love people, care about people, and help them as much as you can
— Interview with Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, 1995
I’m not interested in legacy. I’m interested in getting things done
— Wired Interview, February 1996
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Interview with Steve Jobs, 1996, Triumph of the Nerds documentary
You’ve got to have a lot of passion for what you do or you’ll give up
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The greatest people are self-managing. They don’t need to be managed. Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity—not a threat
— Forbes Interview, 1997
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Interview with the Smithsonian Institution, 1995
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds
— Memory & Imagination Documentary, 1990
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Interview in Triumph of the Nerds
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Wired Magazine Interview
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— Stanford Commencement, 2005
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple off-site retreat, 1983
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Fortune Interview, 2000
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller
— Quoted in The New Yorker, 2011
Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.
— Innovators Dilemma Conference, 1997
You have to be willing to crash and burn
— Playboy Interview 1985
I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Chapter 2
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC Keynote (1997)
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 51
The journey is the reward
— Early Apple advertising, also cited in Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Inside Steve's Brain (Leander Kahney)
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 29
We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on
— Interview with Macworld, February 2004
Your karma just catches up with you. Every time you do something to somebody else, you've paid your dues whether you know it or not
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 41
I learned about minimalism from Zen Buddhism. The most precious things in life are not what you have, but what you leave behind when you go
— Smithsonian Magazine Interview, April 2012
The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive
— Interview with Wired, 1996
It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too
— Apple Special Event, 1997
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Speech (2005)
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— iPhone Launch Keynote, 2007
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Interview with Fortune, 2000
We are gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
You have baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting
— Inside Steve's Brain (Leander Kahney)
We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products.
— Fortune Interview, 2000
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller
— Apple Education Event, 1994
One more thing…
— Multiple Apple Keynotes
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
— Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress, 1990
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were all in our early twenties. What did we have to lose?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.
— Interview in the TV documentary Triumph of the Nerds, 1996
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (Documentary), 1996
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (1997)
One more thing…
— Apple Keynotes, various years
We’re gambling on our vision, and we’d rather do that than make ‘me-too’ products
— BusinessWeek, 1998
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
— Steve Jobs: His Own Words and Wisdom
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible
— Interview with the Wall Street Journal (1982)
You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— Simplicity: The Art of Complexity, BusinessWeek, 1998
You have to pick the right horses. The people I ended up working with, the reason they ended up being so good is because they loved what they did
— 1984 Macintosh Development Retrospective, Smithsonian Oral History
One more thing…
— Apple Keynotes
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— Interview, Apple Confidential 2.0
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Playboy Interview, 1985
To me, the most important thing is to create fantastic products, and you don’t get to do that by doing what everyone else is doing
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were all in our early twenties. What did we have to lose?
— The Lost Interview (1995)
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— Fortune, 2000
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away
— Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward (Book)
One more thing…
— Apple Keynotes
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, 1995
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Interview with Rolling Stone, 1994
The hardest thing when you think about focusing, you think focusing is about saying yes. No. Focusing is about saying no
— WWDC 1997
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way—I mean that in a big way
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary, 1996)
When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down... But the truth is, they’re in the business of giving people what they want
— Interview with Wired, 1996
Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Things don't have to change the world to be important
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 1997
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— 1997, Interview with Newsweek
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Vanity Fair Interview, 1997
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations
— Wired Interview, February 1996
My best work yet might be next
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
To me, it's always been about making great products. For me, it was never about money
— Walt Mossberg Interview, All Things Digital 2010
Creativity is just connecting things
— Wired, 1996 Interview
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next
— Playboy Interview, 1985
When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back
— Playboy Interview, 1985
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Walt Disney Feature Animation Keynote, 1985
Being the best is not about making the most money; it’s about making something you can be proud of
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
My heart is still beating
— WWDC 2010
I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Wired Interview, 1996
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller
— CNNMoney/Fortune Interview, 1994
I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success
— Wired interview, 1996
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Wired Interview, February 1996
I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 48
Somebody once told me, 'Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.' What's the top line? It's things like, are we making great products? Are we providing great customer service?
— BusinessWeek Interview, May 1998
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about.
— Fortune Interview (2008)
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Interview with Fortune magazine (2000)
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 50 to 1
— Interview, Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
The journey is the reward
— Interview with Wall Street Journal, 1993
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Wired Magazine, February 1996
We’re just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Smithsonian oral history interview, 1995
I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You never achieve what you want without taking a risk. Risk is the price of progress
— Time Magazine Interview, 1982
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— 1983 Apple Offsite Retreat
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use.
— Playboy Interview (1985)
The only thing that works is management by values. The values are: do the right thing, be honest, treat people with respect
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I remember many late nights at Apple, with my head resting on the keyboard, thinking if I just keep going, maybe this thing will turn into something incredible
— Walter Isaacson Biography, Chapter 6: Apple II
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek Interview, 2001
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary interview, 1996
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me
— Wall Street Journal Interview, 1993
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson), Chapter 34
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person
— Steve Jobs, Playboy Interview (1985)
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement, 2005
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek, 1998
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Steve Jobs (by Walter Isaacson)
I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world... Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it
— Santa Clara Valley Historical Association Interview, 1994
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (TV Interview, 1995)
The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old, and I want to say to you, don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005 (about being fired from Apple)
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve, a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing, Rolling Stone 1994
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— Wired Interview, 1996
I want to build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now
— Playboy Interview (1985)
Innovation is saying no to a thousand things
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
We’re at the right place at the right time, and we’re making the right product
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
I’m always amazed by how much people fill their lives with stuff that isn’t really that important
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, p. 550
I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Wired Interview, 1996
The only thing that works is management by values. The values are: do the right thing, be honest, treat people with respect
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2011)
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
The only way to do great work is to love what you do
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You get told that 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. But that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you
— Lost Interview (1995)
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive
— Wired, February 1996
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right
— Interview, Bloomberg, 2007
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Fortune Interview
You have to believe that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 9
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline
— Interview for Newsweek (1985)
There’s tremendous power in using the least amount of material to get the job done
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I see myself as an artist, even though I paint on an entirely different canvas
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself
— Wired Interview, 1996
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— Wired interview (1996)
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Walter Isaacson biography, Chapter 46
It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple Offsite Retreat 1983
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing
— Wired Interview 1996
It’s really hard to create products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
My best work yet might be next
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them
— WWDC 2003
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— Lost Interview
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero
— D: All Things Digital Conference (D5), 2007
Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem
— Wired Interview, 1996
For me, it was never about money. It was about building good products that I was proud of
— Playboy Interview 1985
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them
— Rolling Stone Interview 1994
Your karma just catches up with you. Every time you do something to somebody else, you've paid your dues whether you know it or not
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 7
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Wired, February 1996
You’ve got to find what you love.
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
The computer industry needs a leader, not a copier. Leaders stand out; they don’t just follow the crowd
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Fortune, 1996 Interview
Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes and ambitions
— WWDC 1997
You never achieve what you want without taking a risk. Risk is the price of progress
— Interview with Brent Schlender, Fortune (1996)
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC 1997
It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too
— Wired Interview, 1996
My model for business is The Beatles: they were four guys that kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts
— Interview, 60 Minutes, 2003
It's hard to tell with these things, because they don't have a black-and-white answer
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
The hardest thing when you think about focusing, you think focusing is about saying yes. No. Focusing is about saying no
— WWDC 1997
If you don't ask, the answer is always no
— Interview with the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1994
I’m not interested in legacy. I’m interested in getting things done
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is—I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary, 1996)
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Wired interview, 1996)
If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 1
If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. If not, get the hell out of my way.
— Apple Town Hall Meeting, 1997
I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
My heart is still beating
— Steve Jobs' resignation letter as Apple CEO, 2011
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch Event, 2011
If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail
— The Lost Interview (1995)
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
I get asked a lot why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It’s because of what we stand for
— Think Different Internal Meeting, 1997
You have to believe that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The system is that there is no system
— Fortune Interview, 2008
I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience
— Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson (Book, Chapter 5)
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple Offsite Retreat, 1983
The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay
— Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky, Chapter 4
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune Interview (1998)
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— Wired Magazine, 1996
You have to be willing to act. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
I’m not interested in being right. I’m interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Visionary: The Life of Steve Jobs by Andy Hertzfeld
What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
If you're gonna make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— Wired, February 1996
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline
— Macworld, 2008
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
— BusinessWeek, 2004
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Fortune Interview, 2000
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Interview with Danielle M. Smith, 1995
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Interview, Apple Town Hall Q&A (2007, iPhone launch)
I learned about minimalism from Zen Buddhism. The most precious things in life are not what you have, but what you leave behind when you go
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Chapter 22: 'Zen and Now'
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Wired, February 1996
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Interview, Wired Magazine, 1996
You have to believe that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve got to risk it too.
— Fortune Interview, 2000
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Recruitment Brochure 1980s
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— Wired magazine interview, February 1996
I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 44
Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could
— Interview with the Washington Post, 1993
I want Apple to stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both
— Apple iPad 2 Keynote (2011)
Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could
— Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson
Real artists ship
— Apple Internal Memo, 1983
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 hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997
I'm as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 1997
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been
— Macworld Conference, 2007
The system is that there is no system
— Fortune Interview, 2008
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— The Lost Interview (1995)
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
If you’re going to make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— Interview, Wired Magazine, 1996
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 36
I’m not out to be a movie star. I’m not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I’m just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast
— Interview with The Wall Street Journal, 1993
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Inside Steve’s Brain
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Playboy Interview, 1985
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
— Interview with 60 Minutes
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
To me, the most important thing is to create fantastic products, and you don’t get to do that by doing what everyone else is doing
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through
— Interview with Playboy Magazine, 1985
I’m not out to be a movie star. I’m not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I’m just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Interview, Playboy, 1985
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek 1998
We want to bring a contribution to the world, and to help in some way
— Rolling Stone interview, 1994
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— Apple Press Event, iPhone Launch 2007
If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve Wozniak and me, and because we were young and had no money, every success was unlikely
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
If you're not passionate about what you're doing, you'll give up
— Interview with Bill Moyers, 1996
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people
— Interview with 60 Minutes
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that have made people's lives a little bit better
— 60 Minutes Interview, 2003
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 35
In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment – however you define it – and love people, care about people, and help them as much as you can
— Interview, 'Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing,' Rolling Stone, 1994
I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success
— Steve Jobs, Triumph of the Nerds interview
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were all in our early twenties. What did we have to lose?
— Interview, Silicon Valley Historical Association 1994
Somebody once told me, 'Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.' What's the top line? It's things like, are we making great products? Are we providing great customer service?
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
You have to be willing to act. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Lost Interview, 1995
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs, Interview with Steve Jobs (1995, Smithsonian Oral History)
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Fortune Interview, 2000
What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them
— Rolling Stone, 1994
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek Interview, 2001
Somebody once told me, 'Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.' What's the top line? It's things like, are we making great products? Are we providing great customer service?
— Fortune Interview, 2000
I want Apple to stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts
— Apple iPad 2 Launch Event (2011)
I gave the keynote at Macworld, opened up the box, and there was no mouse. There were two people in the audience who knew there was supposed to be a mouse. That’s when I decided I could never let that happen again
— Interview, Smithsonian Oral History Project, 1995
You can’t mandate productivity; you must provide the tools to let people become their best
— Interview, Fortune Magazine, 1985
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement 2005
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 41
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
— 60 Minutes (2011)
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Interview with Vanity Fair
Our DNA is as a consumer company—for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about
— Bloomberg Businessweek interview (2004)
You can't win on innovation unless you have the right people on your team
— Fortune Interview, 2008
You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again
— Lost Interview, 1995
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Fortune Interview, 1999
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works
— The New York Times Magazine, 'The Guts of a New Machine' (2003)
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
It's hard to tell with these things, because they don't have a black-and-white answer
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
It’s hard to tell with these things, because they don’t have a black-and-white answer
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too
— Interview with BusinessWeek, 1998
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics… I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
It takes these very simple-minded instructions, 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number.' But it can do it, at a phenomenal rate, and it can remember things. So a computer's memory is probably about a million times as large as yours. But in other respects, it's the most dumb, simple, complete idiot that ever was
— Interview with Playboy Magazine, 1985
When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds (TV Documentary, 1996)
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been
— Time Interview, 2007
I get asked why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It’s because of what we stand for
— Interview, Fortune, 2008
I was worth over a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products
— Interview with Fortune, 2008
If you want to make good products, you have to find what you love
— Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers.
— Interview, 'Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress,' 1990
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Venture capital panel, 1997
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?
— Apple team motto, early years
The thing that I am most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that have made people's lives a little bit better
— AllThingsD Conference, 2010
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Playboy Interview, 1985
You know, everybody is always talking about the good old days. I want to create new good days
— Wired Interview, 1996
You’ve got to find what you love
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek Interview, 2001
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away
— Interview with Playboy Magazine, February 1985
It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
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 hundred other good ideas that there are
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Fortune Magazine Interview, 2008
We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I get rejected every day. I'm used to it. I don't really care
— Playboy Interview, 1985
There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple
— Macworld 2007 keynote
We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products
— 1998 Apple Town Hall Meeting
Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?
— Reported saying at Apple, early '80s
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Interview in 'Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview'
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple Retreat, 1983
We're just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— BusinessWeek Interview 1997
I learned about minimalism from Zen Buddhism. The most precious things in life are not what you have, but what you leave behind when you go
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, Chapter 8
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Interview with Bill Gates, All Things Digital D5, 2007
My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Playboy Interview, 1985
For me, it was never about money, but solving problems for the future and having a company I could be proud of
— Smithsonian Oral History, 1995
Marketing is about values. It's a complicated and noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us
— Think Different Campaign Internal Meeting, 1997
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero.
— All Things D Conference, 2010
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 14
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune, 1998 interview
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— PBS Documentary Triumph of the Nerds
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— Apple Town Hall Event, 2007
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Interview, Fortune Magazine, 2000
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Playboy Magazine Interview, 1985
The computer industry needs a leader, not a copier. Leaders stand out; they don’t just follow the crowd
— Newsweek Interview, 1985
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves
— Macworld, January 1984
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Interview, Playboy, 1985
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary)
If you’re going to make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995 Documentary)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— iPhone Keynote Launch, 2007
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world... Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it
— Santa Clara Valley Historical Association 'Secret of Life' Interview, 1994
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Return to Apple (1997), quoted in 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Interview in 'Founders at Work' by Jessica Livingston
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that have made people's lives a little bit better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 50
My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline
— Fortune Interview, 2000
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
— 60 Minutes Interview, 2003
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do
— Think Different Campaign, 1997
Pixar is an amazing company because its people stand at the intersection of technology and the arts
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up
— AllThingsD D5 Conference 2007
The journey is the reward
— Lisa Team Retreat, 1983
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs (Biography)
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next
— NBC Nightly News Interview, 2006
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them
— Wired, February 1996
One home run is much better than two doubles
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We didn't build the Mac for any other reason than we wanted one ourselves
— The Lost Interview with Robert Cringely, 1995
The journey is the reward
— 1983 Apple Keynote
If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You’ve got to find what you love
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
It wasn’t all that long ago that the world was powered by steam, gaslights, horses, and buggies. Things change. That’s the only thing you can count on
— Macworld 2000 Keynote
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— Apple keynote, Macworld 2007
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— Apple Special Event, October 2010
People judge you on your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality
— Interview with BusinessWeek 2004
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— Interview with Wired (1996)
I'm as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done
— WWDC 1997
We're going to be living with this thing for the next ten years, so let's make it an object we're proud of
— On the development of the first Apple Macintosh (Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs)
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Wired Interview, 1996
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building
— Apple Confidential 2.0
Creativity is just connecting things
— Wired, February 1996
You can’t win on innovation unless you have the right people on your team
— Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, by Steven Levy
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Triumph of the Nerds (TV Documentary)
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
Don't let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products
— Apple Special Event, 1997
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
To me, it's always been about making great products. For me, it was never about money
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The journey is the reward
— 1987 Apple Computer Annual Report
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 2
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
It's painful when you have to lay off people who you know aren't responsible for the downturn, but you do it because you have to take care of the whole company
— Playboy Interview (1985)
It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch 2011
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about
— Fortune Interview, 2008
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek Interview (2001)
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Rolling Stone, 1996)
Being the best is not about making the most money; it’s about making something you can be proud of
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail
— D: All Things Digital Conference, 2007
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— Santa Clara Valley Historical Association Interview, 1994
I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be at the intersection of biology and technology
— Wired Interview, 2002
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 43
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Playboy Interview, 1985
There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple
— Time Magazine 2007
In the annals of innovation, there is the intersection of technology and the arts, and that’s where Apple stands
— Apple Special Event, Town Hall, 2010
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Walter Isaacson
My doctor told me this morning that I'm going to live until I'm at least 100, so this is just the start
— Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do
— Apple’s Think Different campaign, 1997
If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
— Stanford Commencement Address
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
I think being in love with something—your work, your message, your customers—is totally underrated
— Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson
The journey is the reward
— Inscribed at Apple's first headquarters; also quoted in Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The system is that there is no system
— Esquire, 1986 Interview
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Wired, February 1996
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— The Lost Interview
My father, who was a machinist, taught me to finish even the back of the cabinets, even though the back faces the wall. You’ll know it’s there, so you make it beautiful
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Chapter 1
We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products
— Macworld Conference & Expo, 1997
I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Interview, Wired Magazine (1996)
We didn't build Mac for any other reason than we wanted one ourselves
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We're just enthusiastic about what we do.
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 47
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste
— Triumph of the Nerds, 1996
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The journey is the reward
— Apple’s early company motto, referenced in Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— Wired, February 1996
Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us
— Think Different Launch, 1997
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
I want Apple to stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts
— iPad 2 Launch Keynote, 2011
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Interview with Paul Rand, 1993
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple Offsite Retreat, 1983
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford University Commencement Address, 2005
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with... but it's only a tool. In the end, it comes down to the people and how they use them
— Interview with Rolling Stone, 1994
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works
— The New York Times, 2003
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I want to make a ding in the universe
— Playboy Interview 1985
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Computer Brochure, 1988
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Wired Interview, 1996
I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 19
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best
— iPod launch event, 2001
When you're young, you look at television and think there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down... But the truth is, they're in the business of giving people what they want
— 1996 Wired Interview
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Interview in Playboy, 1985
People think your focus means saying yes to something, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If you want it, you can fly, you just have to trust you a lot
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
Good artists copy, great artists steal
— 1988 Tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, as recounted by Andy Hertzfeld and others
Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem
— Wired Interview, 1996
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Wired, 1996 Interview
The way we're going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things, and starts to understand the kind of things they can aspire to and achieve
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Wired interview, 1996)
The hardest thing when you think about focusing, you think focusing is about saying yes. No. Focusing is about saying no
— WWDC 1997 Keynote Q&A
I want to make something beautiful, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly stuff. That’s my intent
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— Apple Developer Conference 1997
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero.
— Fortune Interview, 2008
Being 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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Being 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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do
— Fortune Interview, 2000
The system is that there is no system
— Fortune Interview, 2008
Every good product I’ve ever seen comes from someone scratching their own itch
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person
— Apple Confidential Interview (circa 1980s)
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.
— Interview, Apple Think Different Campaign, 1997
Most of all, people want to know that you care. People don’t care about what you say, they care about what you build
— Interview, All About Steve – Fortune Magazine, 2000
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Recruiting Brochure, 1986
I used to sleep on the floor in friends’ rooms, return Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
The journey is the reward
— Apple corporate motto, early years
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Interview, Rolling Stone (1994)
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— iPhone Launch Keynote, 2007
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
Great artists ship
— Macintosh Development Team lore, 1980s
We don’t do focus groups—that is the disease of building products for the average user and keeping you from discovering what you truly believe
— Wired Interview, 1996
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 1
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it’s at least 50 to 1
— Interview, 1995 (Lost Interview)
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
The real artists ship
— Apple Retreat, 1983 (as recounted by Andy Hertzfeld, Folklore.org)
My model for business is The Beatles: they were four guys that kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts
— 60 Minutes Interview, 2003
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best.
— Apple iPod keynote, 2001
The Macintosh was supposed to be the computer for the rest of us, but it ended up being the computer for the best of us
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
I've always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that's what we tried to do
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
— Interview with Wired, 1996
I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be at the intersection of biology and technology
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity
— Wired Interview, February 1996
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek (2001) interview
The largest party in history is the party of mediocrity. Keep out of it
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best
— D: All Things Digital Conference, 2003
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them
— Interview with Rolling Stone, June 1994
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Apple Town Hall Meeting, 1997
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do
— Wired Magazine Interview, February 1996
It's painful when you have to lay off people who you know aren't responsible for the downturn, but you do it because you have to take care of the whole company
— Playboy Interview, 1985
You've got to find what you love
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
The journey is the reward
— Apple advertising slogan, internal Apple lore
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 50 to 1
— Interview, Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 41
You couldn't write software for the original Mac unless you were insanely creative
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
Focus is about saying no
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Era / NeXT Brochure, 1980s
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Team Whiteboard, 1980s
It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions
— New Yorker Profile, 2000
In business, if you do something great, most of your competitors will copy it. But if you do something truly innovative, it will last
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— WWDC 1997
The computer industry needs a leader, not a copier. Leaders stand out; they don’t just follow the crowd.
— Apple 1984 Macintosh Promotional Materials
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is—they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds interview
I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 5
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac. It's because of what we stand for
— Fortune Interview 2008
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 20
We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— Fortune Interview, Jan. 24, 2000
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing by Randall E. Stross
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about
— Fortune Interview, 2008
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— iTunes Music Store Launch, 2003
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with... but it’s only a tool. In the end, it comes down to the people and how they use them
— Interview, Rolling Stone, 1994
I remember many late nights at Apple, with my head resting on the keyboard, thinking if I just keep going, maybe this thing will turn into something incredible
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 15
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Wired, February 1996
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is—I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS documentary, 1996)
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I want to build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
You have to be willing to act. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Interview with the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1994
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s come before and get to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me
— Wired Interview 1996
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution (1995)
My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption
— Stanford Commencement Address
We didn’t build Mac for any other reason than we wanted one ourselves
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I've always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that's what we tried to do
— Rolling Stone Interview 1994
I used to sleep on the floor in friends’ rooms, return Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible
— Walt Disney quoted by Jobs; cited in various presentations and interviews
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best
— Apple Town Hall, iPhone Announcement 2007
I'm as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— The Lost Interview (Robert X. Cringely Interview, 1995)
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— iPhone Launch Keynote, 2007
When you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down... But the truth is, they're in the business of giving people what they want
— Interview with Wired, February 1996
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch Event, 2011
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics... I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, Chapter 40
One of my mantras—the focus is on the user and all else will follow
— Interview with Fortune, 2008
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Playboy Interview, 1985
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
— Founders at Work Interview
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch Keynote, 2011
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Steve Jobs at Smithsonian Institution, 1995 Oral History Interview
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it
— Apple I Investor Presentation, 1977
I don't really care about being right, I just care about success
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think
— Interview, Rolling Stone, 1995
I'm not interested in legacy; I'm interested in getting things done
— Walter Isaacson’s 'Steve Jobs' Biography
We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
If you want to make good products, you have to find what you love
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 7
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
It's better to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple offsite retreat, 1983
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 11
Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes and ambitions
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations
— Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward, page 290
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 26
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Interview, 'Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview' (1995)
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works
— Wired Magazine Interview (1996)
Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.
— Interview with Memory & Imagination (documentary), 1990
Being 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
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about
— Fortune Interview, 2008
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Fresh Dialogues 1995
The journey is the reward
— Fortune Interview, 2000
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement, 2005
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
The only thing that works is management by values. The values are: do the right thing, be honest, treat people with respect
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about
— Wired Magazine Interview (1996)
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 hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997
We're just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney, Chapter 2
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Wired, February 1996
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Insanely Great by Steven Levy (recounting early Macintosh days)
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem
— PBS 'Triumph of the Nerds' documentary, 1996
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
I want to make a ding in the universe
— Playboy Interview, 1985
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about
— Fortune Magazine Interview (2000)
Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— The Lost Interview, 1995
We didn't build Mac for any other reason than we wanted one ourselves
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter: CEO, 2009
My model for business is The Beatles: they were four guys that kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts
— 60 Minutes, 2003
You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new
— Harvard Business Review, 1994
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
My best work yet might be next
— Wired Interview, 1996
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
We’re at the right place at the right time, and we’re making the right product
— Macintosh Introduction event, 1984
Somebody once told me, 'Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.' What's the top line? It's things like, are we making great products? Are we providing great customer service?
— Fortune interview, 2009
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. If not, get the hell out of my way
— Return to Apple, 1997
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 37
If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2011)
We’re just people, we’re just doing our best, and sometimes we make mistakes
— Rolling Stone Interview (1994)
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds (Documentary, 1996)
In the first 30 years of your life you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you
— Steve Jobs Biography (by Walter Isaacson), Chapter 38
There’s tremendous power in using the least amount of material to get the job done
— Fortune Interview, 2008
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing
— Interview with Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Oral History, 1995
One more thing…
— Apple Keynotes, various (notable from Macworld Expo, 1999 onward)
Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem
— Wired interview, 1996
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
This is what customers pay us for—to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers
— Wired, 1996
My doctor told me this morning that I'm going to live until I'm at least 100, so this is just the start
— Apple Press Conference, 1997
We're just enthusiastic about what we do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future
— The Lost Interview, 1995
I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It’s very character-building
— Apple Confidential, 2.0
There is an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we have always tried to do that at Apple
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
Things in life happen for a reason
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— Wired, February 1996
You have to be willing to act. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Interview, 'The Lost Interview' documentary
The Lisa people wanted to do something really great. And the Mac people wanted to do something insanely great
— Insanely Great by Steven Levy
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— All Things Digital Conference D5, 2007
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
— Interview with Guy Kawasaki, 2004
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Fortune Magazine, 2000
In business, if you do something great, most of your competitors will copy it. But if you do something truly innovative, it will last
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn
— Newsweek Interview, 1985
You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
— Interview with Santa Clara Valley Historical Association
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves.
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old, and I want to say to you, don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something
— Stanford University Q&A, 1985
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— Macworld Keynote, 2007
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple
— Apple Special Event, 2007
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 26
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
I’ve always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that’s what we tried to do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were all in our early twenties. What did we have to lose?
— 1984 Apple Macintosh Launch, 'Triumph of the Nerds' Documentary
To me, the thing that matters most is making something wonderful that you can stand back and be proud of
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2012)
If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Founders at Work (Jessica Livingston, interview)
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail
— Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days (Book)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 31
In business, if you do something great, most of your competitors will copy it. But if you do something truly innovative, it will last
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in success and doing the right thing
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
You start to want to do something that’s not just about making a buck. That’s what happened to me
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
I’ve always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that’s what we tried to do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The Macintosh was the first computer designed from the start to be approachable by people who were not technical
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I want to make a ding in the universe
— Wired Interview, February 1996
One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 1997
Remember, innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
— Steve Jobs: The Unauthorized Autobiography (Walter Isaacson, Ch. 25)
It’s the intersection of technology and the humanities that makes our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch Event, 2011
The greatest people are self-managing. They don’t need to be managed. Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it
— Lost Interview, 1995
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 1
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune Interview, 1998
The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1997
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do
— WWDC 1997
Focus and simplicity... once you get there, you can move mountains
— Interview, BusinessWeek, 1998
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Wired Magazine Interview, 1996
The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the Web
— Interview for PBS 'Triumph of the Nerds', 1996
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek Interview, May 1998
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Wall Street Journal, 1984
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works
— The New York Times, 2003
Innovation comes from saying no to 1,000 things
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
We're at the right place at the right time, and we're making the right product
— Macworld, 1984
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have
— Wired Interview, February 1996
For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 24
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
Some people say, 'Give the customers what they want.' But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.
— BusinessWeek Interview (1998)
I’m not interested in legacy, I’m interested in getting things done
— Biography by Walter Isaacson, 2011
The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have
— Wired, February 1996
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
I want to build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The journey is the reward
— Apple's early company motto, 1980s
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Interview with Fast Company, 1997
I think every good product I’ve ever seen comes from someone scratching their own itch
— Founders at Work
People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do
— Apple 'Think Different' Ad Campaign (1997)
If you want it, you can fly, you just have to trust you a lot
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 7
We’re just enthusiastic about what we do
— Interview, Rolling Stone 1994
You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Recruitment Brochure
I think being in love with something—your work, your message, your customers—is totally underrated
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with Triumph of the Nerds
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with the Smithsonian Institution, 1995
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Playboy Interview (1985)
Things in life happen for a reason
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary)
For me, it’s always been about the products. The products, not the profits
— Apple Confidential 2.0 (book), Chapter: Leaving Apple Again
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away
— Interview with Playboy, February 1985
We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— BusinessWeek Interview, 2000
We are not going to be the first to this party, but we are going to be the best
— Time Magazine Interview, 2007
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson
We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make 'me too' products
— BusinessWeek, May 1998
I thought deeply about dropping out, and chose to trust that it would all work out okay
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
It takes these very simple-minded instructions, 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number.' But it can do it, at a phenomenal rate, and it can remember things. So a computer's memory is probably about a million times as large as yours. But in other respects, it's the most dumb, simple, complete idiot that ever was
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek, 2001
You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting
— 1983 Apple Lisa team meeting (quoted in Andy Hertzfeld's Revolution in the Valley)
Things don't have to change the world to be important
— Interview in Wired, February 1996
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Return to Apple, addressing staff in 1997
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you’re going to make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— The Steve Jobs Collection, Smithsonian oral history interview, 1995
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 6
Being 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
— Stanford Commencement Address
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them.
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple
— Macworld San Francisco 2007 Keynote
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
I’m not interested in legacy. I’m interested in getting things done
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 51
To me, the most important thing is to create fantastic products, and you don’t get to do that by doing what everyone else is doing
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
The journey is the reward
— NeXT Recruitment Brochure, 1980s
There’s only one way to do great work: love what you do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The people at the top of Apple are just crazy about product. They want to make the best thing they possibly can
— Wired Interview, February 1996
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Apple Internal Meeting, 1983
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Playboy Interview (1985)
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person.
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Computers are like a bicycle for our minds
— Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress (1990)
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. If you go to New York and see the best lawyer or the best doctor, they'll be two times better than the average. But in software, and it used to be the case in hardware, it's at least 50 to 1
— Founders at Work (Jessica Livingston, interview)
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently—they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things
— Think Different Ad Campaign
Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes and ambitions
— Fortune Magazine Interview, 2000
We're fascinated by that, but Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world
— Macworld Boston 1997 Keynote
I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Fortune Interview (1985)
People judge you on your performance, so focus on the outcome
— Interview, Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
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 hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Return to Apple, 1997 (from the book Insanely Great by Steven Levy)
We don't have the chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good, because at least some decisions are being made
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
The journey is the reward
— Quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple by John Sculley
Real artists ship
— Macintosh development team, mid-1980s
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Wired Magazine Interview, 1996
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. If you go to New York and see the best lawyer or the best doctor, they'll be two times better than the average. But in software, and it used to be the case in hardware, it's at least 50 to 1
— Interview with Playboy Magazine, 1985
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right
— Interview with Businessweek, May 1997
If you don't ask, the answer is always no
— The Lost Interview, 1995
You start to want to do something that’s not just about making a buck. That’s what happened to me
— Wired Interview 1996
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service
— Fortune Interview, 2000
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Fortune interview, 2008
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— D: All Things Digital Conference, 2010
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— CNBC Interview, 1997
The system is that there is no system
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 34
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— iPhone Launch Keynote, 2007
Things get filtered away by your ego or your pride. You have to keep an open mind so that you keep learning
— Wired Magazine, 1996
It's painful when you have to lay off people who you know aren't responsible for the downturn, but you do it because you have to take care of the whole company
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
You start to want to do something that’s not just about making a buck. That’s what happened to me
— Playboy Interview 1985
Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do
— BusinessWeek Interview (1998)
The hardest thing when you think about focusing, you think focusing is about saying yes. No. Focusing is about saying no
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek interview, 1998
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— WWDC 1997
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Apple Internal Meeting
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline
— Fortune magazine interview, 2008
I was lucky—I found what I loved to do early in life
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were all in our early twenties. What did we have to lose?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
The journey is the reward
— 1987 Computerworld Smithsonian Interview
If you want it, you can fly, you just have to trust you a lot
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You get told that 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. But that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you
— Santa Clara Valley Historical Association Interview
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Fortune Interview, 2000
The people at the top of Apple are just crazy about product. They want to make the best thing they possibly can
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be at the intersection of biology and technology
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing by Randall Stross, Chapter 18
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best
— Apple Town Hall Meeting, 2007
I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.
— Interview, Wired magazine, February 1996
You’ve got to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Wired magazine interview (1996)
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
I learned the importance of paying attention to the tiniest details with the Apple II, and that obsession has driven everything I've done since
— Smithsonian Interview, 1995
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent because this is our life
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
I’m not out to be a movie star. I’m not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I’m just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Wired Magazine, February 1996
One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
You’ve got to find what you love
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
To me, marketing is about values
— Think Different Campaign Launch 1997
One home run is much better than two doubles
— Wired Interview 1996
The largest party in history is the party of mediocrity. Keep out of it
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (Wired, 1996)
People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up
— 2007 D5 All Things Digital Conference
Focus is about saying no
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— The New York Times, 2006 (Interview)
For me, it was never about money, but solving problems for the future and having a company I could be proud of
— Wired Interview, 1996
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what sometimes separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going
— Wired Interview, February 1996
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Playboy Interview, 1985
What we're doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Quoted in 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson, early Apple days, p. 86
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Playboy Interview, 1985
If you’re working on something exciting, it will keep you motivated. People are motivated to do great things
— Interview, People Magazine, 2005
I’m always amazed by how much people fill their lives with stuff that isn’t really that important
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
Your karma just catches up with you. Every time you do something to somebody else, you've paid your dues whether you know it or not
— The Lost Interview, 1995
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 25
There’s nothing that makes my day more than getting an e-mail from some person I’ve never met who says: ‘I bought an iPad, got a couple of your apps, and now I’m doing things I never dreamed of, and it’s helping me in my life in some way.’
— Wired Interview, February 1996
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think
— Interview on National Public Radio (1995)
The journey is the reward
— 1987 Apple video
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero.
— Fortune Interview, 2008
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Interview with The Wall Street Journal, 1984
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Daniel Morrow for the Smithsonian Institution (1995)
I want to make a ding in the universe
— Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward
The journey is the reward
— Fortune magazine, 2000
I used to sleep on the floor in friends’ rooms, return Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Don't let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done
— WWDC Keynote, 1997
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. But that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it
— Interview, 'The Lost Interview' (1995)
We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
— Interview, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I’ve always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that’s what we tried to do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— The Lost Interview, 1995
I'm a tool builder. That's how I think of myself
— Wired Interview, February 1996
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life
— Stanford Commencement Address
I'm convinced that people can do great things, even with small teams, if they're really focused and passionate
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 22
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions
— Wired, February 1996
One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it, too—it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary)
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
Made with care, by people who care deeply. That’s been one of my mantras at Apple and Pixar
— Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we’re living in, these tools amplify a human ability
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
We want to bring a contribution to the world, and to help in some way
— The Lost Interview (PBS Documentary)
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
For me, it’s always been about the products. The products, not the profits
— Apple Special Event, 2010
It's kind of fun to do the impossible
— Interview with Newsweek, 1982
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me
— Wall Street Journal Interview, 1993
The most precious resource we all have is time
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing, Wired, November 1994
You have to be light on your feet, be innovative, and be ready to focus on the next thing
— The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman
We're fascinated by that, but Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world
— Interview, Macworld 1996
It’s the intersection of technology and the humanities that makes our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Event, March 2011
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.
— Interview with Michael Moritz, 1982
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter: The Launch
I'm a tool builder. That's how I think of myself
— Interview, Smithsonian Institution Oral History, 1995
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— The New York Times, 'The Guts of a New Machine' (2003)
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing, Second Coming at Apple, 1997
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything
— Macworld 2007 Keynote
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Interview with Steve Jobs by Robert Cringely, Triumph of the Nerds, 1996
Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come
— Interview with Wired Magazine, February 1996
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
I’m always amazed by how much people fill their lives with stuff that isn’t really that important
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail
— D: All Things Digital Conference (D5), 2007
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things
— WWDC 1997
I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It’s very character-building
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
You’ve got to have a lot of passion for what you do or you’ll give up
— 2007 D5 Conference interview
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 29
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple offsite retreat, 1983
Beneath all the bravado, I'm just a child who loved electronics and gadgetry and wanted to keep making neat things
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 1
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
— From a 1984 speech at the International Design Conference in Aspen
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent because this is our life
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
In the first 30 years of your life you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D
— Fortune, 1998
I want to make something beautiful, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly stuff. That’s my intent
— Interview with Playboy, 1985
I want to make something beautiful, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly stuff. That’s my intent
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 14
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 6
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with... but it's only a tool. In the end, it comes down to the people and how they use them
— Triumph of the Nerds (Documentary Interview)
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary, 1996
If you act like you can do something, then it will work
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 26
My model for business is The Beatles: they were four guys that kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts
— 60 Minutes Interview, 2003
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans—if they worked hard with other creative, smart people—could solve most of humankind’s problems
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
— Interview with Alan Kay, 1982 (often attributed to Kay, but also quoted by Jobs)
Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse!”’
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
Being the best is not about making the most money; it’s about making something you can be proud of
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I would rather gamble on our vision than make 'me too' products
— Interview, BusinessWeek, May 1998
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero
— Apple Keynote, 2010
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is... Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it
— Santa Clara Valley Historical Association Interview, 1994
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time
— Playboy Interview, 1985
It’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— WWDC 1997
When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make 'me too' products
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Made with care, by people who care deeply. That’s been one of my mantras at Apple and Pixar
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves
— Macworld Interview, 1984
I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics... I always thought that somehow they belonged together
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
I'm very lucky, because the only thing that ever really interested me was the intersection of computers and creativity.
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview (1995)
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The only thing that works is management by values. The values are: do the right thing, be honest, treat people with respect
— Interview with Fortune, 2000
I get rejected every day. I'm used to it. I don't really care
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do
— Walter Isaacson Biography, Chapter 26
I want to put a ding in the universe
— Fortune Magazine, 1981
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Launch Event 2011
The computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with... but it's only a tool. In the end, it comes down to the people and how they use them
— Rolling Stone 1994 Interview
Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do
— BusinessWeek, May 1998
If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Interview, Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1994
You get told that 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. But that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you
— Life in the Valley, Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1994
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about
— Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 36
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— D: All Things Digital Conference, 2010
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement Address
We're here to talk about computers, not religion. But I think that the Macintosh is the most wonderful tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds
— Memory & Imagination Documentary, 1990
I’m not interested in legacy, I’m interested in getting things done
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement, 2005
The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay
— Inside Apple
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
People think your focus means saying yes to something, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
I’ve always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that’s what we tried to do
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life
— Apple Town Hall Meeting, 1997
If you are working on something exciting, it will keep you motivated. People are motivated to do great things
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 6
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Wired Interview, 1996
I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
I'm not interested in legacy; I'm interested in getting things done
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs
Because you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending
— Steve Jobs: A Biography (Walter Isaacson, Chapter 50)
You can’t win on innovation unless you have the right people on your team
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 35
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is... Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it
— 1994 Interview by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been
— Macworld Conference & Expo, January 2007
Great products really do make a difference in people’s lives
— Interview, The Guardian, 2000
People judge you on your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
My doctor told me this morning that I'm going to live until I'm at least 100, so this is just the start
— Playboy Interview 1985
The only way I know how to drive is full throttle
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997
Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday
— D8 Conference, 2010
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 20
One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free, healthy press
— All Things D Conference, 2010
I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience
— Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— Wired Interview, February 1996
If you want to make Apple great again, let's get going. If not, get the hell out of my way
— Return to Apple Team Meeting, 1997
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
— Stanford Commencement 2005
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it’s at least 50 to 1
— Interview, Triumph of the Nerds documentary
If you don’t love it, you’re going to give up
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup, then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline
— Playboy Interview, 1985
It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.
— The New Yorker Profile (2007)
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— NeXT World Expo Keynote, 1991
Innovation comes from saying 'no' to 1,000 things
— WWDC, 1997
Things don’t have to change the world to be important
— Wired Magazine, February 1996
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about
— Wired, February 1996
We’re all going to die. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
For me, it’s always been about the products. The products, not the profits
— Walt Mossberg All Things Digital Interview 2010
For most things in life, the range between best and average is 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 50 to 1
— Triumph of the Nerds (Documentary), 1996
We should all do something that, in the end, gives us satisfaction
— Playboy Interview 1985
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Wired Interview, February 1996
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
— Stanford Commencement Address (2005)
Made with care, by people who care deeply. That’s been one of my mantras at Apple and Pixar
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 35
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— Apple Special Event 2011
You always want to be on the side of the explorers, because the explorers are the ones that create the future
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary
My doctor told me this morning that I'm going to live until I'm at least 100, so this is just the start
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward by Jeffrey S. Young
You’ve got to put something back into the flow of history, and you’ve got to do it in your own lifetime
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s come before and get to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 1997
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview 1995
The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers
— 1982 Academy of Achievement interview
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Walt Mossberg All Things D Interview, 2010
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Wired interview, February 1996
It takes these very simple-minded instructions, 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number.' But it can do it, at a phenomenal rate, and it can remember things. So a computer's memory is probably about a million times as large as yours. But in other respects, it's the most dumb, simple, complete idiot that ever was
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It’s very character-building
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Interview with Fortune, 1995
I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It’s very character-building
— Fortune Interview, 2000
My heart is still beating
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use.
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
We're surrounded by people who spend their lives doing things they don't want to do — in order to go on living, that is, to keep purchasing things they don't need
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— iPod launch press event 2001
The Lisa people wanted to do something really great. And the Mac people wanted to do something insanely great
— Triumph of the Nerds
To me, the most important thing is to create fantastic products, and you don’t get to do that by doing what everyone else is doing
— Wired, 1996 Interview
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 44
You get told that 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. But that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you
— The Lost Interview, 1995 (Triumph of the Nerds Documentary)
Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them
— BusinessWeek Interview (1998)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
I was lucky—I found what I loved to do early in life
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it
— The Steve Jobs Way
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much
— Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Chapter 19
To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something
— Fortune, 2000 Interview
We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we’re living in, these tools amplify a human ability
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
I'm as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done
— WWDC Keynote 1997
The journey is the reward
— Inscription in early Apple offices / Jobs’ motto
It takes these very simple-minded instructions, 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number.' But it can do it, at a phenomenal rate, and it can remember things. So a computer's memory is probably about a million times as large as yours. But in other respects, it's the most dumb, simple, complete idiot that ever was
— Playboy Interview, 1985
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old, and I want to say to you, don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
It's the journey that matters, not the destination
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Epilogue
If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about
— Fortune, 2008
I’ve always wished that there was a computer that was as easy to use as a toaster. With the Mac, that’s what we tried to do
— Wired, February 1996
We're here to put a dent in the universe
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Fortune Interview (2000)
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do
— Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 1997
The journey is the reward
— Apple Corporate Motto (early Apple, 1980s)
You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right. If not, you’ll just be working on random stuff
— Wired Interview, 1996
I’m not out to be a movie star. I’m not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I’m just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use.
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
If you want to make Apple great again, let's get going. If not, get the hell out of my way.
— Return to Apple, 1997 Company Meeting
The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore
— Return to Apple, Interview with Time Magazine, 1997
You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— Wired Interview, 1996
I'm not out to be a movie star. I'm not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I'm just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Rolling Stone Interview (1994)
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Interview, Inc. Magazine (1983)
The Lisa people wanted to do something really great. And the Mac people wanted to do something insanely great
— Insanely Great by Steven Levy, Chapter 8
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Wired, February 1996
The journey is the reward
— Interview, The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, 1995
I’m not out to be a movie star. I’m not out to be a rock star. I just want to do what I do. I’m just a tool builder. I want to make something useful, something people will use
— Playboy Interview, 1985
We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products
— Time Magazine Interview, 1984
We don’t have the chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent
— WWDC 1997
It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple Retreat, 1983
I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero
— AllThingsD D8 Conference, 2010
You have to believe that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players
— Steve Jobs, Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Wired magazine interview, 1996
To me, it's always been about making great products. For me, it was never about money.
— Interview with Steve Jobs, Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
If you don’t fail sometimes, you’re not being innovative enough
— Fortune Interview, 2007
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates
— Newsweek Interview, 2001
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done
— WWDC 1997
It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions
— WWDC 1997
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better.
— Rolling Stone Interview, 1994
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint
— Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— BusinessWeek Interview, 1998
The journey is the reward
— Inscribed at Pixar headquarters; Jobs repeated in interviews
When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions
— Apple Design Team Interview, 1998
What we’re doing here will send a giant ripple through the universe
— Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
The journey is the reward
— Early Apple motto; referenced in multiple interviews
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with Smithsonian Institution, 1995
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right
— Apple Design Team Meetings (as recalled by Jony Ive in various interviews)
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 41
We’re at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, and at that intersection is where you get things that are magical
— iPad 2 Keynote (2011)
My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I see myself as an artist, even though I paint on an entirely different canvas
— The New York Times Magazine, 1997
It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing
— iPad 2 Event, 2011
I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I spent ten years working for, starting with me
— Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Documentary, 1996)
I'm not interested in legacy; I'm interested in getting things done
— Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, Chapter 41
We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best
— iPod Launch Event (2001)
I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous
— Wired Magazine Interview, 1996
It's better to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Apple Offsite Retreat, 1983
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 16
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't bring original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary (1996)
We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important
— WWDC Q&A, 1997
You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— American Academy of Achievement Interview, 1995
Real artists ship
— Apple Town Hall keynote, 1983
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 40
The hardest things in life are the things that make you grow the most
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (1995)
The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that we've managed to create some new things that didn't exist before and that made people's lives a little bit better
— Interview with Rolling Stone, 1994
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
— Macintosh Team Retreat (1983)
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance
— Interview with Inc. Magazine, 1989
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building
— 1997 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
The journey is the reward
— Apple Macintosh Introduction Event 1984
Our DNA is as a consumer company—for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about
— BusinessWeek Interview, 2004
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 16
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
We don’t do focus groups—that is the disease of building products for the average user and keeping you from discovering what you truly believe
— Triumph of the Nerds Documentary, 1996
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice
— Stanford Commencement Address 2005
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
— Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, 1995
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
— 60 Minutes interview, 2003
We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products
— Macworld Boston Keynote, 1997
What I’m best at doing is finding a group of really talented people and making things with them
— Playboy Interview, 1985
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it, that's maybe the most important thing
— The Lost Interview (1995)
One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything
— Interview with Wired Magazine, 1996
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration
— Interview, Playboy 1985
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is—I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way—in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
To me, it’s always been about the products. The products, not the profits
— Playboy Interview, 1985
Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
You have to be willing to act. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Founders at Work, Interview with Jessica Livingston
You get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going.
— Interview with Daniel Morrow, 1995 Smithsonian Oral History
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, the profits will follow
— Success magazine, 1987
The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about
— Fortune Interview, 2008
Every good product I’ve ever seen comes from someone scratching their own itch
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview (1995)
To me, Apple existed to provide a platform of innovation to creative people everywhere
— Interview with BBC, 2000
The larger the group, the harder it is to stick to one plan. You get to consensus, which is the process of everyone putting in their ideas and a lot of them being average
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 8
To me, it's always been about making great products. For me, it was never about money
— Playboy Interview, February 1985
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles
— Conversation with BusinessWeek, 2004
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life
— Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 1995
My heart is still beating
— WWDC 2011 Keynote (Steve Jobs' last public appearance)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions
— Guy Kawasaki Interview, 2004
The Macintosh was the first computer designed from the start to be approachable by people who were not technical
— Smithsonian Oral History Interview, April 20, 1995
The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 21
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 hundred other good ideas that there are
— WWDC 1997 Q&A
If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. If not, get the hell out of my way
— Return to Apple in 1997, internal meeting
Most people never ask, and that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them
— Triumph of the Nerds documentary
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
— WWDC 1997 Keynote
My best work yet might be next
— Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson