Jobs, Steve (Steve Jobs)

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.
-- Steve Jobs

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 feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.
-- Steve Jobs

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
-- Steve Jobs

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
-- Steve Jobs

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation...This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions...Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
-- Steve Jobs

Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
-- Steve Jobs

When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it's really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's sort of the middle, and that's where most people stop... But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem - and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.

-- Steve Jobs

We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make "me too" products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it's always the next dream.
-- Steve Jobs

It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.
-- Steve Jobs

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.
-- Steve Jobs

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.
-- Steve Jobs

Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.
-- Steve Jobs

When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
-- Steve Jobs

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.
-- Steve Jobs

I was worth about 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.
-- Steve Jobs

I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.
-- Steve Jobs

I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.
-- Steve Jobs

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.
-- Steve Jobs

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. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
-- Steve Jobs

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
-- Steve Jobs

We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content ... What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet — and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock — open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it — puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.
-- Steve Jobs

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. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there.
-- Steve Jobs

I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products.
-- Steve Jobs

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, 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?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
-- Steve Jobs

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. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
-- Steve Jobs

Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.
-- Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
-- Steve Jobs

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

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
-- Steve Jobs

I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to [learn calligraphy]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.
-- Steve Jobs

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma,whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
-- Steve Jobs

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. 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.
-- Steve Jobs

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
-- Steve Jobs

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
-- Steve Jobs

Innovation is the distinction between a leader and a follower.
-- Steve Jobs

Real artists ship.
-- Steve Jobs

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
-- Steve Jobs

We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?
-- Steve Jobs

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.
-- Steve Jobs

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 feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.
-- Steve Jobs

You think it's a conspiracy by the networks to put bad shows on TV. But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought.
-- Steve Jobs