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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.

-Steve Jobs

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Team, It Turned Out

Steve Jobs

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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.

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Never Settle For Average.

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We Had Nothing To Lose And Everything To Gain.

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To Me, Ideas Are Worth Nothing Unless Executed. They Are Just A Multiplier. Execution Is Worth Millions.

You Can Tell A Lot About A Person By Who His Or Her Heroes Are.

Forget Everything

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

And We've All Chosen To Do This With Our Lives. So It Better Be Damn Good. It Better Be Worth It.

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.

Great Engineers Are A Huge Multiplier.

Quality Is More Important Than Quantity. One Home Run Is Much Better Than Two Doubles.

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.

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.

I'd Like The People Teaching My Kids To Be Good Enough That They Could Get A Job At The Company I Work For, Making A Hundred Thousand Dollars A Year. Why Should They Work At A School For Thirty-five To Forty Thousand Dollars If They Could Get A Job Here At A Hundred Thousand Dollars A Year?

Japan's Very Interesting. Some People Think It Copies Things. I Don't Think That Anymore. I Think What They Do Is Reinvent Things. They Will Get Something That's Already Been Invented And Study It Until They Thoroughly Understand It. In Some Cases, They Understand It Better Than The Original Inventor.

This Is A Very Noisy World, So We Have To Be Very Clear What We Want Them To Know About Us

Make It Like A Sunflower.

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.

We Believe People With Passion Can Change The World For The Better. That's What We Believe. And We Believe That Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think They Can Change The World Are The Ones That Actually Do.

Do Your Best At Every Job. Don't Sleep! Success Generates More Success So Be Hungry For It. Hire Good People With A Passion For Excellence.

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

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.

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

Asking Questions

I'm One Of The Few People Who Understands How Producing Technology Requires Intuition And Creativity, And How Producing Something Artistic Takes Real Discipline.

We're Here To Make A Dent In The Universe. Otherwise, Why Even Be Here? We're Creating A Completely New Consciousness, Like An Artist Or A Poet. That’s How You Have To Think Of This. We're Rewriting The History Of Human Thought With What We're Doing.

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.

My Job Is To Make The Whole Executive Team Good Enough To Be Successors, So That's What I Try To Do.

Customers Don't Measure You On How Hard You Tried, They Measure You On What You Deliver.

If You Haven't Found It Yet, Keep Looking.

Inspirational Life

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. And We Think That Our Job Is To Take Responsibility For The Complete User Experience. And If It's Not Up To Par, It's Our Fault, Plain And Simply.

So We Went To Atari And Said, 'hey, We've Got This Amazing Thing, Even Built With Some Of Your Parts, And What Do You Think About Funding Us? Or We'll Give It To You. We Just Want To Do It. Pay Our Salary, We'll Come Work For You.' And They Said, 'no.' So Then We Went To Hewlett-packard, And They Said, 'hey, We Don't Need You. You Haven't Got Through College Yet.'

We're Not Going To Be The First To This Party, But We're Going To Be The Best.

The Ipod Is Not A New Category. Music Is Not New. It's Not A Speculative Market. It's A Very, Very Large Market. It's Been Around For Thousands Of Years And Will Be Around As Long As Humans Exist.

Unless You've A Lot Of Passion About This, You're Not Gonna Survive. You're Gonna Give It Up. So You've Got To Have An Idea Or A Wrong That You Want To Right That You're Passionate About, Otherwise You're Not Gonna Have The Perseverance To Stick It Through. I Think It's Half The Battle Right There.

How Can You Get Fired From The Company You Started?

Find People Who Are Competent And Really Bright, But More Importantly, People Who Care Exactly About The Same Things You Care About.

You've Heard Of Plug-and-play. This Is Plug, Unplug And Play. It's So Simple To Use, It's Unbelievable.

We Wanted To More Richly Experience Why We Were Alive, Not Just Make A Better Life, And So People Went In Search Of Things. The Great Thing That Came From Those That Time Was To Realize That There Was Definitely More To Life Than The Materialism Of The Late Sixties And Early Sixties. We Were Going In Search Of Something Deeper.

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.

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

Why Join The Navy If You Can Be A Pirate?

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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.

It's More Fun To Be A Pirate Than To Join The Navy.

My Favorite Things In Life Don't Cost Any Money. It's Really Clear That The Most Precious Resource We All Have Is Time.

What A Computer Is To Me Is It's The Most Remarkable Tool That We Have Ever Come Up With. It's The Equivalent Of A Bicycle For Our Minds.

To Follow The Path That Others Have Laid Before You Is A Reasonable Course Of Action; Therefore All Progress Is Made By Unreasonable Men.

That's Been One Of My Mantras - Focus And Simplicity. Simple Can Be Harder Than Complex.

Design Isn't Just How It Looks. It's How It Works.

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.

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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.

What's New Is This Amazingly Efficient Distribution System For Stolen Property Called The Internet - And No One's Gonna Shut Down The Internet.

Our Job Is To Read Things That Are Not Yet On The Page.

Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition.

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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.

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.

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

We've Had One Of These Before, When The Dot-com Bubble Burst. What I Told Our Company Was That We Were Just Going To Invest Our Way Through The Downturn, That We Weren't Going To Lay Off People, That We'd Taken A Tremendous Amount Of Effort To Get Them Into Apple In The First Place; The Last Thing We Were Going To Do Is Lay Them Off.

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.

But Apple Really Beats To A Different Drummer. I Used To Say That Apple Should Be The Sony Of This Business, But In Reality, I Think Apple Should Be The Apple Of This Business.

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.

I'm Going To Destroy Android, Because It's A Stolen Product. I'm Willing To Go Thermonuclear War On This.

It [what You Choose To Do] Has Got To Be Something That You're Passionate About Because Otherwise You Won't Have The Perseverance To See It Through.

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.

My Opinion Is That The Only Two Computer Companies That Are Software-driven Are Apple And Next, And I Wonder About Apple.

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

Get Closer Than Ever To Your Customers. So Close That You Tell Them What They Need Well Before They Realize It Themselves

Loyal Customers

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.

Life Is About Creating And Living Experiences That Are Worth Sharing.

I Want To Make A Dent In The Universe.

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.

This Revolution, The Information Revolution, Is A Revolution Of Free Energy As Well, But Of Another Kind: Free Intellectual Energy.

Making An Enduring Company Was Both Harder And More Important Than Making A Great Product.

There Are Downsides To Everything; There Are Unintended Consequences To Everything.

Unintended Consequences

We're Just Enthusiastic About What We Do.

Ask For Feedback From People With Diverse Backgrounds. Each One Will Tell You One Useful Thing. If You're At The Top Of The Chain, Sometimes People Won't Give You Honest Feedback Because They're Afraid. In This Case, Disguise Yourself, Or Get Feedback From Other Sources.

Honest Feedback

Don't Be Afraid, You Can Do It.

Great Art Stretches The Taste, It Doesn't Follow Tastes.

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

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.

Focus Is About Saying, No. And The Result Of That Focus Is Going To Be Some Really Great Products Where The Total Is Much Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts.

What Is Apple, After All? Apple Is About People Who Think 'outside The Box,' People Who Want To Use Computers To Help Them Change The World, To Help Them Create Things That Make A Difference, And Not Just To Get A Job Done.

We've Got To Make The Small Things Unforgettable.

Without Passion, Any Rational Person Would Give Up!

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.

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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.

And It Comes From Saying No To 1,000 Things To Make Sure We Don't Get On The Wrong Track Or Try To Do Too Much. 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.

You Know, My Main Reaction To This Money Thing Is That It's Humorous, All The Attention To It, Because It's Hardly The Most Insightful Or Valuable Thing That's Happened To Me.

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.

You've Probably Had Somebody Punch You In The Stomach And It Knocks The Wind Of You And You Can't Breathe. That's How I Felt.

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

The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum And We Can Do Anything We Want.

I Want To Put A Ding In The Universe.

When You’re In A Startup, The First Ten People Will Determine Whether The Company Succeeds Or Not.

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

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.

If It Could Save A Person's Life, Could You Find A Way To Save Ten Seconds Off The Boot Time? If There Were Five Million People Using The Mac, And It Took Ten Seconds Extra To Turn It On Every Day, That Added Up To Three Hundred Million Or So Hours Per Year People Would Save, Which Was The Equivalent Of At Least One Hundred Lifetimes Saved Per Year.

I Sat In A Garage And Invented The Future.

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.

A Lot Of People In Our Industry Haven't Had Very Diverse Experiences. So They Don't Have Enough Dots To Connect, And They End Up With Very Linear Solutions Without A Broad Perspective On The Problem. The Broader One's Understanding Of The Human Experience, The Better Design We Will Have.

It Isn't The Consumers' Job To Know What They Want.

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.

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.

Do You Create Anything, Or Just Criticize Others Work And Belittle Their Motivations?

You've Got To Find What You Love.

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It Took Us Three Years To Build The Next Computer. If We'd Given Customers What They Said They Wanted, We'd Have Built A Computer They'd Have Been Happy With A Year After We Spoke To Them - Not Something They'd Want Now.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Know You Have 1000 Great Ideas For Things That Itunes Could Do. And We Have 1000 More. But Innovation Is Not About Saying "yes" To Everything. It's About Saying "no" To All But The Most Crucial Features.

I Think Death Is The Most Wonderful Invention Of Life. It Purges The System Of These Old Models That Are Obsolete.

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

There Are Sneakers That Cost More Than An Ipod.

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.

The Most Precious Resource We Have Is Time.

I Don't Really Care About Being Right, I Just Care About Success.

The Seven-inch Tablets Are Tweeners: Too Big To Compete With A Smartphone, And Too Small To Compete With An Ipad.

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 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.

Customers Always Want Something New

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.

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.

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.

I Know From My Own Education That If I Hadn't Encountered Two Or Three Individuals That Spent Extra Time With Me, I'm Sure I Would Have Been In Jail.

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.

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

I Got Very Interested In People Who Had Discovered Something More Significant Than ... Intellectual, Abstract Understanding.

I Think The Biggest Innovations Of The 21st Century Will Be At The Intersection Of Biology And Technology. A New Era Is Beginning.

Let's Go Invent Tomorrow Instead Of Worrying About What Happened Yesterday.

I'm Convinced That About Half Of What Separates The Successful Entrepreneurs From The Non-successful Ones Is Pure Perseverance... Unless You Have A Lot Of Passion About This, You're Not Going To Survive. You're Going To Give It Up. So You've Got To Have An Idea, Or A Problem Or A Wrong That You Want To Right That You're Passionate About Otherwise You're Not Going To Have The Perseverance To Stick It Through.

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.

You Have To Have A Lot Of Passion For What You Do... Because If You Don't, Any Rational Person Would Give Up.

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

I Was Lucky To Get Into Computers When It Was A Very Young And Idealistic Industry. There Weren't Many Degrees Offered In Computer Science, So People In Computers Were Brilliant People From Mathematics, Physics, Music, Zoology, Whatever. They Loved It, And No One Was Really In It For The Money.

I Don't Need A Hard Disk In My Computer If I Can Get To The Server Faster... Carrying Around These Non-connected Computers Is Byzantine By Comparison.

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

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.

This Revolution, The Information Revoultion, Is A Revolution Of Free Energy As Well, But Of Another Kind: Free Intellectual Energy. It's Very Crude Today, Yet Our Macintosh Computer Takes Less Power Than A 100-watt Bulb To Run It And It Can Save You Hours A Day. What Will It Be Able To Do Ten Or 20 Years From Now, Or 50 Years From Now?

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.

But 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.

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

Don't Just Live A Life; Build One.

The Things I've Done In My Life Have Required A Lot Of Years Of Work Before They Took Off.

There’s A Temptation In Our Networked Age To Think That Ideas Can Be Developed By Email And Ichat. That’s Crazy. Creativity Comes From Spontaneous Meetings, From Random Discussions. You Run Into Someone, You Ask What They’re Doing, You Say ‘wow,’ And Soon You’re Cooking Up All Sorts Of Ideas.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

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, Then The Profits Will Follow.

Woz Is Living His Own Life Now. He Hasn't Been Around Apple For About Five Years. But What He Did Will Go Down In History.

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

A-plus Players Like To Work Together And They Don't Like It If You Tolerate B Work.

Working Together

Most People Do Not Ever Pick Up The Phone. They Never Ask, And That Is What Separates The People That Do Things From The People That Just Dream About Them. You Have To Act, And You Have To Be Willing To Fail. You Have To Be Willing To Crash And Burn, Because If You Are Afraid Of Failing, You Will Not Get Very Far.

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.

Do You Want To Spend The Rest Of Your Life Selling Sugared Water Or Do You Want A Chance To Change The World?

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.

Pointing Is A Metaphor We All Know. We've Done A Lot Of Studies And Tests On That, And It's Much Faster To Do All Kinds Of Functions, Such As Cutting And Pasting, With A Mouse, So It's Not Only Easier To Use But More Efficient.

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.

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

It Doesn’t Make Sense To Hire Smart People And Tell Them What To Do; We Hire Smart People So They Can Tell Us What To Do.

We Have Never Worried About Numbers. In The Marketplace, Apple Is Trying To Focus The Spotlight On Products, Because Products Really Make A Difference. You Can't Con People In This Business. The Products Speak For Themselves.

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.

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.

Great Things In Business Are Never Done By One Person, They're Done By A Team Of People.

My Mother Taught Me To Read Before I Went To School, So I Was Pretty Bored In School, And I Turned Into A Little Terror. You Should Have Seen Us In Third Grade. We Basically Destroyed Our Teacher. We Would Let Snakes Loose In The Classroom And Explode Bombs.

Do Not Try To Do Everything. Do One Thing Well.

When I Hire Somebody Really Senior, Competence Is The Ante. They Have To Be Really Smart. But The Real Issue For Me Is, Are They Going To Fall In Love With Apple? Because If They Fall In Love With Apple, Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself. They'll Want To Do What's Best For Apple, Not What's Best For Them, What's Best For Steve, Or Anybody Else.

Falling In Love

It Comes From Saying No To 1,000 Things To Make Sure We Don't Get On The Wrong Track Or Try To Do Too Much.

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.

You'll See More And More Perfection Of That - Computer As Servant. But The Next Thing Is Going To Be Computer As A Guide Or Agent.

Click. Boom. Amazing!

You Need To Have A Collaborative Hiring Process.

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

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.

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

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.

Remembering That I’ll Be Dead Soon Is The Most Important Tool I’ve Ever Encountered To Help Make The Big Choices In Life. 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 University

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

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

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.

I Don't Think I've Ever Worked So Hard On Something, But Working On Macintosh Was The Neatest Experience Of My Life. Almost Everyone Who Worked On It Will Say That. None Of Us Wanted To Release It At The End. It Was As Though We Knew That Once It Was Out Of Our Hands, It Wouldn't Be Ours Anymore.

I Had Been Rejected, But I Was Still In Love.

Without Death There Would Be Very Little Progress.

Design Is The Fundamental Soul Of A Man-made Creation

A Brand Is Simply Trust.

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

School Was Pretty Hard For Me At The Beginning.

Pretty Much, Apple And Dell Are The Only Ones In This Industry Making Money. They Make It By Being Wal-mart. We Make It By Innovation.

Death Is Very Likely The Single Best Invention Of Life.

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

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

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

Stanford University

One Of My Beliefs Very Strongly Is That Any Democracy Depends On A Free, Healthy Press.

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.

We're Not A Media Company. We Don't Own Media. We Don't Own Music. We Don't Own Films Or Television. We're Not A Media Company. We're Just Apple.

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.

Ultimately, It Comes Down To Taste. 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're Doing. Picasso Had A Saying: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. And We Have Always Been Shameless About Stealing Great Ideas, And I Think Part Of What Made The Macintosh Great Was That The People Working On It Were Musicians And Poets And Artists And Zoologists And Historians Who Also Happened To Be The Best Computer Scientists In The World.

Our Goal Is To Make The Best Devices In The World, Not To Be The Biggest.

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James L. Brooks

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