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Most People Never Pick Up The Phone And Call. Most People Never Ask, And That’s What Separates The People Who Do Things From The People Who Just Dream About Them.

-Steve Jobs

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Most People Never Pick

Steve Jobs

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Most People Never Pick Up The Phone And Call. Most People Never Ask, And That’s What Separates The People Who Do Things From The People Who Just Dream About Them.

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I Met Woz When I Was 13, At A Friend's Garage. He Was About 18. He Was, Like, The First Person I Met Who Knew More Electronics Than I Did At That Point. We Became Good Friends, Because We Shared An Interest In Computer And We Had A Sense Of Humor. We Pulled All Kinds Of Pranks Together.

The Difference Between The Best Worker On Computer Hardware And The Average May Be 2 To 1, If You're Lucky. With Automobiles, Maybe 2 To 1. But In Software, It's At Least 25 To 1. The Difference Between The Average Programmer And A Great One Is At Least That. The Secret Of My Success Is That We Have Gone To Exceptional Lengths To Hire The Best People In The World. And When You're In A Field Where The Dynamic Range Is 25 To 1, Boy, Does It Pay Off.

We Had The Hardware Expertise, The Industrial Design Expertise And The Software Expertise, Including Itunes. One Of The Biggest Insights We Have Was That We Decided Not To Try To Manage Your Music Library On The Ipod, But To Manage It In Itunes. Other Companies Tried To Do Everything On The Device Itself And Made It So Complicated That It Was Useless.

I Know That Living With Me Was Not A Bowl Of Cherries.

If You Ask Who Are The Customers Of Education, The Customers Of Education Are The Society At Large, The Employers Who Hire People, Things Like That. But Ultimately I Think The Customers Are The Parents. Not Even The Students But The Parents. The Problem That We Have In This Country Is That The Customers Went Away. The Customers Stopped Paying Attention To Their Schools, For The Most Part.

Coming Back To America Was, For Me, Much More Of A Culture Shock Than Going To India. The People In The Indian Countryside Don't Use Their Intellect Like We Do, They Use Their Intuition Instead, And Their Intuition Is Far More Developed Than In The Rest Of The World. Intuition Is A Very Powerful Thing, More Powerful Than Intellect In My Opinion. That's Had A Big Impact On My Work.

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.

You Know, You Keep On Innovating, You Keep On Making Better Stuff. And If You Always Want The Latest And Greatest, Then You Have To Buy A New Ipod At Least Once A Year.

In Most Cases, Strengths And Weaknesses Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin. A Strength In One Situation Is A Weakness In Another, Yet Often The Person Can't Switch Gears. It's A Very Subtle Thing To Talk About Strengths And Weaknesses Because Almost Always They're The Same Thing.

Many Companies Forget What It Means To Make Great Products. After Initial Success, Sales And Marketing People Take Over And The Product People Eventually Make Their Way Out.

Focus And Simplicity...once You Get There, You Can Move Mountains.

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.

I Think Pcs Are Going To Be Like Trucks. Less People Will Need Them. And This Is Going To Make Some People Uneasy.

Listen To Me. We're Here To Make A Dent In The Universe. Otherwise Why Even Be Here?

Lsd...reinforc Ed My Sense Of What Was Important-creat Ing Great Things Instead Of Making Money, Putting Things Back Into The Stream Of History And Of Human Consciousness As Much As I Could.

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.

If You Define The Problem Correctly, You Almost Have The Solution.

People Don't Know What They Want Until You Show It To Them. That's Why I Never Rely On Marketing Research. Our Task Is To Read Things That Are Not Yet On The Page.

Each Dream You Leave Behind Is A Part Of Your Future That Will No Longer Exist.

The Over-all Point Is That New Technology Will Not Necessarily Replace Old Technology, But It Will Date It. By Definition. Eventually, It Will Replace It. But It's Like People Who Had Black-and-white Tvs When Color Came Out. They Eventually Decided Whether Or Not The New Technology Was Worth The Investment.

Black And White

I Hate The Way People Use Powerpoints Instead Of Thinking

The Greatest Artists Like Dylan, Picasso And Newton Risked Failure. And If We Want To Be Great, We've Got To Risk It, Too.

Unfortunately, People Are Not Rebelling Against Microsoft. They Don't Know Any Better.

Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition.

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Imac Is Next Year's Computer For $1,299, Not Last Year's Computer For $999.

The World Doesn't Need Another Dell Or Compaq.

Without Passion, Any Rational Person Would Give Up!

It's Not About Money. It's About The People You Have, How You're Led, And How Much You Get It.

So [polaroid's Dr. Edwin] Land, At 75, Went Off To Spend The Remainder Of His Life Doing Pure Science, Trying To Crack The Code Of Color Vision. The Man Is A National Treasure. I Don't Understand Why People Like That Can't Be Held Up As Models: This Is The Most Incredible Thing To Be - Not An Astronaut, Not A Football Player - But This.

Companies Must Have A Noble Cause, And It's The Leaders Job To Transform That Noble Cause Into Such An Inspiring Vision, That It Will Attract The Most Talented People In The World To Want To Join It.

Apple Is The Only Company In The World That Has All Of That Under One Roof. We Can Invent A Complete A Solution That Works - And Take Responsibility For It.

Sometimes Life's Going To Hit You In The Head With A Brick. Don't Lose Faith. I'm Convinced That The Only Thing That Kept Me Going Was That I Loved What I Did.

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The Problem With The Internet Startup Craze Isn't That Too Many People Are Starting Companies; It's That Too Many People Aren't Sticking With It. That's Somewhat Understandable, Because There Are Many Moments That Are Filled With Despair And Agony, When You Have To Fire People And Cancel Things And Deal With Very Difficult Situations. That's When You Find Out Who You Are And What Your Values Are.

Difficult Situations

Sometimes When You Innovate, You Make Mistakes. It Is Best To Admit Them Quickly, And Get On With Improving Your Other Innovations.

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.

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.

I'm The Only Person I Know That's Lost A Quarter Of A Billion Dollars In One Year. It's Very Character-building.

There's No Other Company That Could Make A Macbook Air And The Reason Is That Not Only Do We Control The Hardware, But We Control The Operating System. And It Is The Intimate Interaction Between The Operating System And The Hardware That Allows Us To Do That. There Is No Intimate Interaction Between Windows And A Dell Notebook.

Innovation Is The Ability To See Change As An Opportunity - Not A Threat

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.

When We Hire Someone, Even If They Are Going To Be In Marketing, I Will Have Them Talk To The Design Folks And The Engineers.

Creativity Is Just Connecting Things. When You Ask Creative People How They Did Something, They Feel A Little Guilty Because They Didn't Really Do It, They Just Saw Something. It Seemed Obvious To Them After A While. That's Because They Were Able To Connect Experiences They've Had And Synthesize New Things.

Let Them Know Precisely What You Are Going To Do With Their Data

If Today Were My Last Day, Would I Do What I'm Doing?...if The Answer Was 'no' Too Many Days In A Row, I'd Make A Change.

It Wasn't That Microsoft Was So Brilliant Or Clever In Copying The Mac, It's That The Mac Was A Sitting Duck For 10 Years. That's Apple's Problem: Their Differentiation Evaporated.

I Just Had A Romance That I Really Care About, A Lot-i Mean, A Lot-go Up In Smoke. Because Of The Stress, And The Sort Of Other Woman That Macintosh Is.

When I Went To School, It Was Right After The '60s And Before This General Wave Of Practical Purposefulness Had Set In.... The Idealistic Wind Of The '60s Was Still At Our Backs, Though, And Most Of The People I Know Who Are My Age Have That Engrained In Them Forever.

Recruiting Is Hard. It's Just Finding The Needles In The Haystack. You Can't Know Enough In A One-hour Interview. So, In The End, It's Ultimately Based On Your Gut. How Do I Feel About This Person? What Are They Like When They're Challenged? I Ask Everybody That: 'why Are You Here?' The Answers Themselves Are Not What You're Looking For. It's The Meta-data.

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 Have A Chance To Continue Creating Things. I Know I've Got At Least One More Great Computer In Me. And Apple Is Not Going To Give Me A Chance To Do That.

Creating Things

My Job Is To Not Be Easy On People. My Job Is To Make Them Better. My Job Is To Pull Things Together From Different Parts Of The Company And Clear The Ways And Get The Resources For The Key Projects. And To Take These Great People We Have And To Push Them And Make Them Even Better, Coming Up With More Aggressive Visions Of How It Could Be.

We Try To Use The Talents We Do Have To Express Our Deep Feelings, To Show Our Appreciation Of All The Contributions That Came Before Us, And To Add Something To That Flow. That's What's Driven Me.

Bottom Line Is, I Didn't Return To Apple To Make A Fortune. I've Been Very Lucky In My Life And Already Have One. When I Was 25, My Net Worth Was $100 Million Or So. I Decided Then That I Wasn't Going To Let It Ruin My Life. There's No Way You Could Ever Spend It All, And I Don't View Wealth As Something That Validates My Intelligence.

Customers Always Want Something New

Somebody Once Told Me, ‘manage The Top Line, And The Bottom Line Will Follow.’ What's The Top Line? It's Things Like, Why Are We Doing This In The First Place? What's Our Strategy? What Are Customers Saying? How Responsive Are We? Do We Have The Best Products And The Best People? Those Are The Kind Of Questions You Have To Focus On.

Pixar Is Seen By A Lot Of Folks As An Overnight Success, But If You Really Look Closely, Most Overnight Successes Took A Long Time.

The Best Innovation Is Sometimes The Company, The Way You Organize The Company

Apple's Goal Isn't To Make Money. Our Goal Is To Design And Develop And Bring To Market Good Products... We Trust As A Consequence Of That, People Will Like Them, And As Another Consequence, We'll Make Some Money. But We're Really Clear About What Our Goals Are.

No One Wants To Die. Even People Who Want To Go To Heaven Don't Want To Die To Get There.

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Every Once In A While A Revolutionary Product Comes Along That Changes Everything. It's Very Fortunate If You Can Work On Just One Of These In Your Career. ... Apple's Been Very Fortunate In That It's Introduced A Few Of These.

Most People Make The Mistake Of Thinking Design Is What It Looks Like. People Think It's This Veneer - That The Designers Are Handed This Box And Told, 'make It Look Good!' That's Not What We Think Design Is. It's Not Just What It Looks Like And Feels Like. Design Is How It Works.

I'm Sorry, It's True. Having Children Really Changes Your View On These Things. We're Born, We Live For A Brief Instant, And We Die. It's Been Happening For A Long Time. Technology Is Not Changing It Much - If At All.

The Design Of The Mac Wasn't What It Looked Like, Although That Was Part Of It. Primarily, It Was How It Worked. 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 Really Thoroughly Understand Something, Chew It Up, Not Just Quickly Swallow It.

Recruiting Is Hard. It's Just Finding The Needles In The Haystack. You Can't Know Enough In A One-hour Interview.

The Most Important Decisions You Make Are Not The Things You Do, But The Things You Decide Not To Do.

Decisions You Make

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.

The Problem Is I'm Older Now, I'm 40 Years Old, And This Stuff Doesn't Change The World. It Really Doesn't.

The Manual For Wordstar, The Most Popular Word-processing Program, Is 400 Pages Thick. To Write A Novel, You Have To Read A Novel - One That Reads Like A Mystery To Most People. They're Not Going To Learn Slash Q-z Any More Than They're Going To Learn Morse Code. That Is What Macintosh Is All About.

If I Were Running Apple, I Would Milk The Macintosh For All It's Worth - And Get Busy On The Next Great Thing. The Pc Wars Are Over. Done. Microsoft Won A Long Time Ago.

Things Don't Have To Change The World To Be Important.

What This Means Is That People Are Seeing A Stable Business, Which Is Good, And A Business That Is In Control, Which Is Also Good.

Bill Gates'd Be A Broader Guy If He Had Dropped Acid Once Or Gone Off To An Ashram When He Was Younger.

There Are Sneakers That Cost More Than An Ipod.

You Know, I've Got A Plan That Could Rescue Apple. I Can't Say Any More Than That It's The Perfect Product And The Perfect Strategy For Apple. But Nobody There Will Listen To Me.

We Make Tools For People. Tools To Create, Tools To Communicate. The Age We're Living In, These Tools Surprise You. ... That's Why I Love What We Do. Because We Make These Tools, And We're Constantly Surprised With What People Do With Them.

I Can Help The Next Generation Remember The Lineage Of Great Companies Here And How To Continue The Tradition. The Valley Has Been Very Supportive Of Me. I Should Do My Best To Repay.

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.

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.

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.

That's Why I Think Death Is The Most Wonderful Invention Of Life. It Purges The System Of These Old Models That Are Obsolete. I Think That's One Of Apple's Challenges, Really. When Two Young People Walk In With The Next Thing, Are We Going To Embrace It And Say This Is Fantastic? Are You Going To Be Willing To Drop Our Models, Or Are We Going To Explain It Away? I Think We'll Do Better, Because We're Completely Aware Of It And We Make It A Priority.

I Think The Artistry Is In Having An Insight Into What One Sees Around Them. Generally Putting Things Together In A Way No One Else Has Before And Finding A Way To Express That To Other People Who Don't Have That Insight.

Manage The Top Line: Your Strategy, Your People, And Your Products, And The Bottom Line Will Follow.

Your Work Is Going To Fill A Large Part Of Your Life... So Love What You Do. Your Time Is Limited. Don't Waste It.

Microsoft Has Had Two Goals In The Last 10 Years. One Was To Copy The Mac, And The Other Was To Copy Lotus' Success In The Spreadsheet - Basically, The Applications Business. And Over The Course Of The Last 10 Years, Microsoft Accomplished Both Of Those Goals. And Now They Are Completely Lost.

That's What Makes Great Products. It's Not Process-it's Content.

It's Technology Married With Liberal Arts, Married With The Humanities, That Yields Us The Results That Make Our Heart Sing.

I Would Rather Gamble On Our Vision Than Make A 'me, Too' Product.

To Do Anything Of Magnitude Takes At Least Five Years, More Likely Seven Or Eight. Rightfully Or Wrongfully, That's How I Think.

Creativity Is Just Connecting Things.

Apple Stores Are Intended Not Just To Move Boxes, But To Enrich Lives.

We Live In An Information Economy. The Problem Is That Information's Usually Impossible To Get, At Least In The Right Place, At The Right Time.

Be Honest With Yourself And With People Always Do Everything On Time. Never Give Up, Go To Your Goals, Even If All The Bad. In This Life, All Really, You Only Need To Do. The More I Talk To People, The More I Am Convinced That In General They Have One Goal - To Become The Richest Dead In The Cemetery.

So When A Good Idea Comes, You Know, Part Of My Job Is To Move It Around, Just See What Different People Think, Get People Talking About It, Argue With People About It, Get Ideas Moving Among That Group Of 100 People, Get Different People Together To Explore Different Aspects Of It Quietly, And, You Know – Just Explore Things.

Woz 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 4,000 Employees.

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. You Have To Pick Carefully. I'm Actually As Proud Of The Things We Haven't Done As The Things I Have Done. Innovation Is Saying No To 1,000 Things.

I Have A Great Respect For Incremental Improvement, And I've Done That Sort Of Thing In My Life, But 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.

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.

Of Course It Was Impossible To Connect The Dots Looking Forward When I Was In College. But It Was Very, Very Clear Looking Backwards 10 Years Later.

Don’t Let The Noise Of Others’ Opinions Drown Out Your Own Inner Voice.

Strategy Is Figuring Out What Not To Do.

It's Rare That You See An Artist In His 30s Or 40s Able To Really Contribute Something Amazing. Of Course, There Are Some People Who Are Innately Curious, Forever Little Kids In Their Awe Of Life, But They're Rare.

I Wish Developing Great Products Was As Easy As Writing A Check. If That Was The Case, Microsoft Would Have Great Products.

I'm As Proud Of What We Don't Do As I Am Of What We Do.

What Had Been The Focus Of My Entire Adult Life Was Gone, And It Was Devastating. I Didn't Really Know What To Do For A Few Months. I Felt That I Had Let The Previous Generation Of Entrepreneurs Down. I Was A Very Public Failure.

Details Matter, It's Worth Waiting To Get It Right.

Being The Richest Man In The Cemetery Doesn't Matter To Me.

People Equated Burning Cds With Theft. That's Not What Burning Cds Is. Theft Is About Acquiring The Music From The Internet.

I Sat In A Garage And Invented The Future.

Taking Lsd Was A Profound Experience, One Of The Most Important Things In My Life. Lsd Shows You That There’s Another Side To The Coin, And You Can’t Remember It When It Wears Off, But You Know It. It Reinforced My Sense Of What Was Important—creating Great Things Instead Of Making Money, Putting Things Back Into The Stream Of History And Of Human Consciousness As Much As I Could.

A Small Team Of A+ Players Can Run Circles Around A Giant Team Of B And C Players.

Design Is Not Just What It Looks Like And Feels Like. Design Is How It Works.

Design Is The Fundamental Soul Of A Man-made Creation That Ends Up Expressing Itself In Successive Outer Layers Of The Product Or Service. The Imac Is Not Just The Color Or Translucence Or The Shape Of The Shell. The Essence Of The Imac Is To Be The Finest Possible Consumer Computer In Which Each Element Plays Together.

Let's Make A Dent In The Universe

I Was Lucky - I Found What I Love To Do Early In Life.

The Reason We Wouldn't Make A Seven-inch Tablet Isn't Because We Don't Want To Hit A Price Point, It's Because We Don't Think You Can Make A Great Tablet With A Seven-inch Screen.

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.

Team, It Turned Out That Michael Dell Wasn't Perfect At Predicting The Future. Based On Today's Stock Market Close, Apple Is Worth More Than Dell. Stocks Go Up And Down And Things May Be Different Tomorrow But I Thought It Was Worth A Moment Of Reflection Today.

Do You Want To Sell Sugar Water All Your Life, Or Do You Want To Come With Me And Change The World?

I Don't Think Of My Life As A Career. I Do Stuff. I Respond To Stuff. That's Not A Career - It's A Life!

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. Try Not To Bash Into The Walls Too Much. Try To Have A Nice Family Life. Have Fun, Save A Little Money. That's A Very Limited Life. Life Can Be Much Broader, Once You Discover One Simple Fact, And That Is Everything Around That You Call Life Was Made Up By People Who 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. Once You Learn That, You'll Never Be The Same Again.

The Technology Companies Don't Understand Creative Things At All. Silicon Valley's View Of The Creative Process In Hollywood Is A Bunch Of Guys In Their Young Thirties Sitting On A Couch, Drinking Beer, And Thinking Up Jokes.

The Japanese Have Hit The Shores Like Dead Fish. They're Just Like Dead Fish Washing Up On The Shores.

How Can You Get Fired From The Company You Started?

Pursue Your Dreams And See The Opportunities In Life's Setbacks.

I Don't Mind If People Don't Like Me. Well, I Might A Little ... But I Really Mind It When Somebody Uses Their Position At Time Magazine To Tell 10 Million People They Don't Like Me. I Know What It's Like To Have Your Private Life Painted In The Worst Possible Light In Front Of A Lot Of People.

It Is Piracy, Not Overt Online Music Stores, Which Is Our Main Competitor.

Focus Does Not Mean Saying Yes, It Means Saying No.

I Think It's Brought The World A Lot Closer Together, And Will Continue To Do That. There Are Downsides To Everything; There Are Unintended Consequences To Everything. The Most Corrosive Piece Of Technology That I've Ever Seen Is Called Television - But Then, Again, Television, At Its Best, Is Magnificent.

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.

Creativity Comes From Spontaneous Meetings, From Random Discussions.

We're Just Enthusiastic About What We Do.

It's Hard To Tell With These Internet Startups If They're Really Interested In Building Companies Or If They're Just Interested In The Money. I Can Tell You, Though: If They Don't Really Want To Build A Company, They Won't Luck Into It. That's Because It's So Hard That If You Don't Have A Passion, You'll Give Up.

The Most Powerful Person In The World Is The Story Teller. The Storyteller Sets The Vision, Values And Agenda Of An Entire Generation That Is To Come.

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.

I Make 50 Cents For Showing Up... And The Other 50 Cents Is Based On My Performance.

There's A Lot Of Symbolism To Your Return. Is That Going To Be Enough To Reinvigorate The Company With A Sense Of Magic?

That's What Walt Disney Did, And Hewlett And Packard, And The People Who Built Intel. They Created A Company To Last, Not Just To Make Money. That's What I Want Apple To Be.

Be A Yardstick Of Quality. Some People Aren't Used To An Environment Where Excellence Is Expected.

Taking Lsd Was A Profound Experience, One Of The Most Important Things In My Life.

Every Good Product I've Ever Seen Is Because A Group Of People Cared Deeply About Making Something Wonderful That They And Their Friends Wanted. They Wanted To Use It Themselves.

First Was The Mouse. The Second Was The Click Wheel. And Now, We're Going To Bring Multi-touch To The Market. And Each Of These Revolutionary Interfaces Has Made Possible A Revolutionary Product - The Mac, The Ipod And Now The Iphone.

It Gave A Tremendous Level Of Self-confidence, That Through Exploration And Learning One Could Understand Seemingly Very Complex Things In One's Environment.

Self Confidence

We Don't Get A Chance To Do That Many Things, And Every One Should Be Really Excellent. Because This Is Our Life. Life Is Brief, And Then You Die, You Know? So This Is What We've Chosen To Do With Our Life.

The Juice Goes Out Of Christianity When It Becomes Too Based On Faith Rather Than On Living Like Jesus Or Seeing The World As Jesus Saw It.

It Places Value On Experience Versus Intellectual Understanding. I Saw A Lot Of People Contemplating Things But It Didn't Seem To Lead To Too Many Places. I Got Very Interested In People Who Had Discovered Something More Significant Than An Intellectual, Abstract Understanding.

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. I Believe That Very Much.

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... They Push The Human Race Forward, And While Some May See Them As The Crazy Ones, We See Genius, Because The Ones Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World, Are The Ones Who Do.

You're Already Naked. There Is No Reason Not To Follow Your Heart.

When You're In A Start-up, The First Ten People Will Determine Whether The Company Succeeds Or Not. Each Is 10 Percent Of The Company. So Why Wouldn't You Take As Much Time As Necessary To Find All The A Players? If Three Were Not So Great, Why Would You Want A Company Where 30 Percent Of Your People Are Not So Great? A Small Company Depends On Great People Much More Than A Big Company Does.

Kick-start Your Brain. New Ideas Come From Watching Something, Talking To People, Experimenting, Asking Questions And Getting Out Of The Office!

Asking Questions

Let's Go Invent Tomorrow...

I Was At Reed [college] For Only A Few Months. My Parents Intended For Me To Stay There For All Four Years But I Decided That College Wasn't Right For Me. I Had No Idea What I Wanted To Do I Didn't See How College Was Going To Help Me.

If I Had Never Dropped In On That Single Course In College, The Mac Would Have Never Had Multiple Typefaces Or Proportionally Spaced Fonts. And Since Windows Just Copied The Mac, It's Likely That No Personal Computer Would Have Them.

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These Technologies Can Make Life Easier, Can Let Us Touch People We Might Not Otherwise. You May Have A Child With A Birth Defect And Be Able To Get In Touch With Other Parents And Support Groups, Get Medical Information, The Latest Experimental Drugs. These Things Can Profoundly Influence Life. I'm Not Downplaying That.

We Don't Get A Chance To Do That Many Things, And Every One Should Be Really Excellent. Because This Is Our Life. Life Is Brief, And Then You Die, You Know? So This Is What We've Chosen To Do With Our Life. We Could Be Sitting In A Monastery Somewhere In Japan. We Could Be Out Sailing. Some Of The Team Could Be Playing Golf. They Could Be Running Other Companies. And We've All Chosen To Do This With Our Lives. So It Better Be Damn Good. It Better Be Worth It. And We Think It Is.

The People Who Are Doing The Work Are The Moving Force Behind The Macintosh. My Job Is To Create A Space For Them, To Clear Out The Rest Of The Organization And Keep It At Bay.

I've Read Something That Bill Gates Said About Six Months Ago. He Said, ‘i Worked Really, Really Hard In My 20s.’ And I Know What He Means, Because I Worked Really, Really Hard In My 20s Too. Literally, You Know, 7 Days A Week, A Lot Of Hours Every Day. And It Actually Is A Wonderful Thing To Do, Because You Can Get A Lot Done. But You Can't Do It Forever, And You Don't Want To Do It Forever, And You Have To Come Up With Ways Of Figuring Out What The Most Important Things Are And Working With Other People Even More.

Guess Who Surprised Themselves And Changed Their Minds.

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. Since The Very, Very Beginning. And We Always Will.

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.

I Was Actually A Fruitarian At That Point In Time. I Ate Only Fruit. Now I'm A Garbage Can Like Everyone Else. And We Were About Three Months Late In Filing A Fictitious Business Name So I Threatened To Call The Company Apple Computer Unless Someone Suggested A More Interesting Name By Five O'clock That Day. Hoping To Stimulate Creativity. And It Stuck. And That's Why We're Called Apple.

I Mean, Some People Say, 'oh, God, If [jobs] Got Run Over By A Bus, Apple Would Be In Trouble.' And, You Know, I Think It Wouldn't Be A Party, But There Are Really Capable People At Apple. My Job Is To Make The Whole Executive Team Good Enough To Be Successors, So That's What I Try To Do.

Mac Os X Tiger Will Come Out Long Before Longhorn.

Your Customers Don't Care About You. They Don't Care About Your Product Or Service. They Care About Themselves, Their Dreams, Their Goals. Now, They Will Care Much More If You Help Them Reach Their Goals, And To Do That, You Must Understand Their Goals, As Well As Their Needs And Deepest Desires.

Older People Sit Down And Ask, 'what Is It?' But The Boy Asks, 'what Can I Do With It?'.

We Do Not Say Anything About Future Products. We Work On Them In Secret, Then We Announce Them.

You've Got To Find What You Love.

Stanford University

Stealing Things Is Everybody's Problem. We [apple Inc.] Own A Lot Of Intellectual Property, And We Don't Like When People Steal It. So People Are Stealing Stuff And We're Optimists. We Believe That 80 Percent Of The People Stealing Stuff Don't Want To Be; There's Just No Legal Alternative.

Stealing Things

As Regis Mckenna Once Said, The Best Marketing Is Education

Don't Be Evil Is A Load Of Crap.

As Individuals, People Are Inherently Good. I Have A Somewhat More Pessimistic View Of People In Groups. And I Remain Extremely Concerned When I See What's Happening In Our Country, Which Is In Many Ways The Luckiest Place In The World. We Don't Seem To Be Excited About Making Our Country A Better Place For Our Kids.

It's Not The Consumers' Job To Figure Out What They Want

My Kids Accuse Me And My Wife Of Being Fascists And Overly Concerned About Tech, And They Say That None Of Their Friends Have The Same Rules... That's Because We Have Seen The Dangers Of Technology Firsthand. I've Seen It In Myself, I Don't Want To See That Happen To My Kids.

I'll Always Stay Connected With Apple. I Hope That Throughout My Life I'll Sort Of Have The Thread Of My Life And The Thread Of Apple Weave In And Out Of Each Other, Like A Tapestry. There May Be A Few Years When I'm Not There, But I'll Always Come Back.

The Creative Industries Tend To Dismiss Technology As Just Something To Buy And Not Understand How Hard It Is And How Creative It Can Be As Well.

People Say Sometimes, "you Work In The Fastest-moving Industry In The World." I Don't Feel That Way. I Think I Work In One Of The Slowest. It Seems To Take Forever To Get Anything Done.

Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication. It Takes A Lot Of Hard Work To Make Something Simple, To Truly Understand The Underlying Challenges And Come Up With Elegant Solutions. [...] It's Not Just Minimalism Or The Absence Of Clutter. It Involves Digging Through The Depth Of Complexity. To Be Truly Simple, You Have To Go Really Deep. [...] You Have To Deeply Understand The Essence Of A Product In Order To Be Able To Get Rid Of The Parts That Are Not Essential.

Each Year Has Been So Robust With Problems And Successes And Learning Experiences And Human Experienes That A Year Is A Lifetime At Apple. So This Has Been Ten Lifetimes.

Believe Things Will Work Out. How Was I Ever To Know That The Girl Who Broke My Heart In University Would Lead To My Soulmate? How Was I To Know That The ‘dream Job’ I Was Rejected From Out Of College Would Lead Me To A Year Of Entrepreneurship And Adventure In Spain? How Was I To Know That Taking A Miserable Job Back In The States Would Be Just The Push I Needed To Vow To Never Do Something I Wasn’t Passionate About Again? Everything Works Out. I Mean Everything. As Long As You Believe It Will. When You Do, You Will Find The Silver Lining. That Will Take You To The Next Level.

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. That's What We Get Paid To Do.

For Most Of My Life, I’ve Felt That There Must Be More To Our Existence Than Meets The Eye. This Is Who I Am, And You Can’t Expect Me To Be Someone I’m Not.

Who Wants A Stylus. You Have To Get Em And Put Em Away, And You Lose Em. Yuck. Nobody Wants A Stylus.

Pixar Is The Most Technically Advanced Creative Company; Apple Is The Most Creatively Advanced Technical Company.

Some Mistakes Will Be Made Along The Way. That's Good. Because Some Decisions Are Being Made Along The Way. We'll Find The Mistakes. We'll Fix Them.

Innovation Distinguishes A Leader From A Follower.

Some People Can Do One Thing Magnificently, Like Michelangelo, And Others Make Things Like Semiconductors Or Build 747 Airplanes -- That Type Of Work Requires Legions Of People. In Order To Do Things Well, That Can't Be Done By One Person, You Must Find Extraordinary People.

Follow Your Heart, But Check It With Your Head.

Follow Your Heart

I Don't View Wealth As Something That Validates My Intelligence.

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.

Stanford University

You Have To Trust In Something--your Gut, Destiny, Life, Karma, Whatever.

I Think The Macintosh Was Created By A Group Of People Who Felt That Ah There Wasn't A Strict Vision Between Sort Of Science And Art.

If You Don't Have A Passion, You'll Give Up.

And No, We Don't Know Where It Will Lead. We Just Know There's Something Much Bigger Than Any Of Us Here.

The Customer Is The Final Inspector.

Service Culture

You Can't Win On Innovation Unless You Have A Way To Communicate It To Customers.

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.

The Broader One's Understanding Of The Human Experience, The Better Design We Will Have.

If You View Computer Designers As Artists, They're Really Into More Of An Art Form That Can Be Mass-produced, Like Records, Or Like Prints, Than They Are Into Fine Arts. They Want Something Where They Can Express Themselves To A Large Number Of People Through Their Medium, And Their Medium Is Technology And Manufacturing.

Somewhere Between The Janitor And The Ceo, Reasons Stop Mattering.

Innovation Is Usually The Result Of Connections Of Past Experiences. But If You Have The Same Experiences As Everyone Else, You Are Unlikely To Look In A Different Direction.

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.

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