If Macintosh hadn't been successful, then I should have just thrown in the towel, because my vision of the whole industry would have been totally wrong.
STEVE JOBS, Playboy, Feb. 1985
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, Commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005
We think that computers are the most remarkable tools that humankind has ever come up with, and we think that people are basically tool users. So if we can just get lots of computers to lots of people, it will make some qualitative difference to the world.
STEVE JOBS, Playboy, Feb. 1985
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
STEVE JOBS, Commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
STEVE JOBS, attributed, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple: A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future
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, Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.
STEVE JOBS, attributed, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple: A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future
Companies, as they grow to become multi-billion-dollar entities, somehow lose their vision. They insert lots of layers of middle management between the people running the company and the people doing the work. They no longer have an inherent feel or a passion about the products. The creative people, who are the ones who care passionately, have to persuade five layers of management to do what they know is the right thing to do.
STEVE JOBS, Playboy, Feb. 1985
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
STEVE JOBS, Commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005
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.
STEVE JOBS, MSNBC, May 25, 2006
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, interview, Jan. 24, 1984
A computer is the most incredible tool we've ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communications center, a supercalculator, a planner, a filer and an artistic instrument all in one, just by being given new instructions, or software, to work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility of a computer. We have no idea how far it's going to go. Right now, computers make our lives easier. They do work for us in fractions of a second that would take us hours. They increase the quality of life, some of that by simply automating drudgery and some of that by broadening our possibilities. As things progress, they'll be doing more and more for us.
STEVE JOBS, Playboy, Feb. 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.
STEVE JOBS, Business Week, May 25, 1998
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.
STEVE JOBS, Commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005
If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years.
STEVE JOBS, attributed, Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward
People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
STEVE JOBS, Playboy, Feb. 1985
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