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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.

-Steve Jobs

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The Technology Companies Don't

Steve Jobs

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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.

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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.

Everyone Here Has The Sense That Right Now Is One Of Those Moments When We Are Influencing The Future.

I Try To Get People To See What I Have. . . . When You Run A Computer Company, You Have To Get People To Buy Into Your Dreams.

I Hate The Way People Use Powerpoints Instead Of Thinking

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

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 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.

Start Small, Think Big. Don’t Worry About Too Many Things At Once. Take A Handful Of Simple Things To Begin With, And Then Progress To More Complex Ones. Think About Not Just Tomorrow, But The Future. Put A Ding In The Universe.

Electronics Was Something I Could Always Fall Back On When I Needed Food On The Table.

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.

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.

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.

The Axis Today Is Not Liberal And Conservative, The Axis Is Constructive-destructive.

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

When We Started Off We Didn't Know How To Spell Software.

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

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.

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.

I Don't Want To Fail, Of Course. But Even Though I Didn't Know How Bad Things Really Were, I Still Had A Lot To Think About Before I Said Yes. I Had To Consider The Implications For Pixar, For My Family, For My Reputation. I Decided That I Didn't Really Care, Because This Is What I Want To Do. If I Try My Best And Fail, Well, I've Tried My Best.

It's Understandable That The Music Companies That Are Comprised Of People That Are Successful By Making Good Creative Decisions - They Have To Decide Which Out Of Fifty Artists Is The Next Hot One, With No Data To Go From. It's An Intuitive Process, And That's What They Do Well When They're Successful. They Don't Understand Technology.

In The First 30 Years Of Your Life, You Make Your Habits. For The Last 30 Years Of Your Life, Your Habits Make You.

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.

When You Have Feelings Like Sadness Or Anger About Your Cancer Or Your Plight, To Mask Them Is To Lead An Artificial Life.

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

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.

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.

Your Time On This Earth Is Limited, Don’t Live Someone Else's Life, Live By Your Vision.

I'd Say We [apple Inc.] Are The Most Creative Of The Technology Companies And Definitely The Most Artist-friendly. Almost Everyone In The Music Business Uses A Mac And Everyone Has An Ipod.

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

Everybody In This Country Should Learn How To Program A Computer, Because It Teaches You How To Think.

The Most Precious Resource We Have Is Time.

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

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

Innovation Is Saying 'no' To 1,000 Things.

There's Nothing That Makes My Day More Than Getting An E-mail From Some Random Person In The Universe Who Just Bought An Ipad Over In The Uk And Tells Me The Story About How It's The Coolest Product They've Ever Brought Home In Their Lives. That's What Keeps Me Going.

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.

The Customer Is The Final Inspector.

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A Brand Is Simply Trust.

You've Got To Find What You Love.

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Why Join The Navy If You Can Be A Pirate?

I Think The World's A Better Place Because Bill Realized That His Goal Isn't To Be The Richest Guy In The Cemetery, Right?

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.

You Are All Over The Map, Figure Out The Top 5 Things You Want To Focus On And Get Rid Of The Rest.

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I'm Not Worried About The Country's Long-term Future. This Country Is Insanely Great. What I'm Worried About Is That We Don't Talk Enough About Solutions.

We Hire People Who Want To Make The Best Things In The World.

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

Whatever You Do, You Must Never Let The Voice In Your Head Control The Brain In Your Heart.

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.

The Hd Revolution Is Over, It Happened. Hd Won. Everybody Wants Hd.

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

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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. It's To Shake Off This Erroneous Notion That Life Is There And You're Just Gonna Live In It, Versus Embrace It, Change It, Improve It, Make Your Mark Upon It. I Think That's Very Important And However You Learn That, Once You Learn It, You'll Want To Change Life And Make It Better, Cause It's Kind Of Messed Up, In A Lot Of Ways. Once You Learn That, You'll Never Be The Same Again.

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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.

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Focusing Is All About Saying No

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The People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think They Can Change The World Are The Ones Who Do.

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.

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.

We Don't Have A Good Language To Talk About This Kind Of Thing. In Most People's Vocabularies, Design Means Veneer... But To Me, Nothing Could Be Further From The Meaning Of Design. Design Is The Fundamental Soul Of A Man-made Creation.

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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.

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.

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

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You Cannot Mandate Productivity, You Must Provide The Tools To Let People Become Their Best.

You‘ve Got To Start With The Customer Experience And Work Back Toward The Technology - Not The Other Way Around.

Everything Is Based On A Simple Rule: Quality Is The Best Business Plan, Period.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. Process Makes You More Efficient ... 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. It's Ad Hoc Meetings Of Six People Called By Someone Who Thinks He Has Figured Out The Coolest New Thing Ever And Who Wants To Know What Other People Think Of His Idea.

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

Every Once In A While, A Revolutionary Product Comes Along That Changes Everything.

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.

We Have Always Been Shameless About Stealing Great Ideas.

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

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.

The World Doesn't Need Another Dell Or Compaq.

It's Not A Faith In Technology. It's Faith In People.

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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.

We Had Nothing To Lose And Everything To Gain.

Nothing To Lose

Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow.

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.

Deciding What Not To Do Is As Important As Deciding What To Do.

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

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.

If You Live Each Day As It Was Your Last, Someday You'll Most Certainly Be Right

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Our Approach Is To Think Of Companies Not As Businesses But As Collections Of People. We [apple]want To Qualitatively Change The Way People Work. We Don't Just Want To Help Them Do Word Processing Faster Or Add Numbers Faster. We Want To Change The Way They Can Communicate With One Another. We're Seeing Less Paper Flying Around And More Quality Of Communication.

People Need To Have The Incentive That If They Invest And Succeed, They Can Make A Fair Profit. Otherwise They'll Stop Investing.

Because 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.

You Have To Trust That The Dots Will Somehow Connect In Your Future... 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... Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition. They Somehow Already Know What You Truly Want To Become. Everything Else Is Secondary.

It Takes A Lot Of Hard Work To Make Something Simple.

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.

I Began To Realize That An Intuitive Understanding And Consciousness Was More Significant Than Abstract Thinking And Intellectual Logical Analysis. Intuition Is A Very Powerful Thing, More Powerful Than Intellect, In My Opinion. That's Had A Big Impact On My Work.

Without Death There Would Be Very Little Progress.

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.

Apple's Market Share Is Bigger Than Bmw's Or Mercedes's Or Porsche's In The Automotive Market. What's Wrong With Being Bmw Or Mercedes?

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.

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.

Don't Just Live A Life; Build One.

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.

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. If I Had Never Dropped Out, I Would Have Never Dropped In On This Calligraphy Class, And Personal Computers Might Not Have The Wonderful Typography That They Do. Of Course It Was Impossible To Connect The Dots Looking Forward When I Was In College. But It Was Very, Very Clear Looking Backward 10 Years Later.

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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.

By Honoring The Lives Of Those We Admire, We Make Our Own Values Known.

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

I Was In The Parking Lot, With The Key In The Car, And I Thought To Myself: If This Is My Last Night On Earth, Would I Rather Spend It At A Business Meeting Or With This Woman? I Ran Across The Parking Lot, Asked Her If She'd Have Dinner With Me. She Said Yes, We Walked Into Town, And We've Been Together Ever Since.

Be Ready To Catch The Ball When It Is Thrown By Life.

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.

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.

The Hardest Thing When You Think About Focusing. You Think Focusing Is About Saying "yes." No. Focusing Is About Saying "no." And When You Say "no," You Piss Off People.

Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition. They Somehow Already Know What You Truly Want To Become. Everything Else Is Secondary.

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.

That's My Job - To Make Sure Everything Is Great.

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.

If A User Is Having A Problem, It's Our Problem.

Entrepreneurship

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.

There’s A Phrase In Buddhism, ‘beginner’s Mind.’ It’s Wonderful To Have A Beginner’s Mind.

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

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.

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.

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.

Computers Themselves, And Software Yet To Be Developed, Will Revolutionize The Way We Learn.

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.

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

I Think Right Now It's A Battle For The Mindshare Of Developers And For The Mindshare Of Customers, And Right Now Iphone And Android Are Winning That Battle.

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.

Shake Off This Erroneous Notion That Life Is There And You're Just Gonna Live In It, Versus Embrace It, Change It, Improve It, Make Your Mark Upon It.

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

The Roots Of Apple Were To Build Computers For People, Not For Corporations. The World Doesn't Need Another Dell Or Compaq.

We Think Android Is Very, Very Fragmented, And Becoming More Fragmented By The Day. And As You Know, Apple Strives For The Integrated Model So That The User Isn't Forced To Be The Systems Integrator.

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

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.

Don't Settle, As With All Matters Of The Heart You'll Know When You Find It

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.

I Used To Sleep On The Floor In Friends' Rooms, Returning Coke Bottles For Food, Money, And Getting Weekly Free Meals At A Local Temple

We're Going To Be Able To Ask Our Computers To Monitor Things For Us, And When Certain Conditions Happen, Are Triggered, The Computers Will Take Certain Actions And Inform Us After The Fact.

Let's Make A Dent In The Universe

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

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.

Stanford University

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.

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

I Dropped Out Of Reed College [portland, Oregon] After The First Six Months, But Then Stayed Around As A Drop-in For Another 18 Months Or So Before I Really Quit. So Why Did I Drop Out?

Portland Oregon

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

If I Knew In 1986 How Much It Was Going To Cost To Keep Pixar Going, I Doubt If I Would Have Bought The Company.

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.

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

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 Executes Them At A Rate Of, Let's Say, 1,000,000 Per Second. At 1,000,000 Per Second, The Results Appear To Be Magic.

The Good Music Companies Do An Amazing Thing. They Have People Who Can Pick The Person That's Gonna Be Successful Out Of 5,000 Candidates. And There's Not Enough Information To Do That - It's An Intuitive Process.

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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There Are Sneakers That Cost More Than An Ipod.

I’d Like To Create An Integrated Television Set That Is Completely Easy To Use. It Would Be Seamlessly Synced With All Of Your Devices And With Icloud. It Will Have The Simplest User Interface You Could Imagine. I Finally Cracked It.

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

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

Unintended Consequences

I'm One Of Those People That Think Thomas Edison And The Light Bulb Changed The World More Than Karl Marx Ever Did.

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

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.

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.

A Lot Of Companies Have Chosen To Downsize, And Maybe That Was The Right Thing For Them. We Chose A Different Path. Our Belief Was That If We Kept Putting Great Products In Front Of Customers, They Would Continue To Open Their Wallets.

So Let's Not Use A Stylus. We're Going To Use The Best Pointing Device In The World. We're Going To Use A Pointing Device That We're All Born With - Born With Ten Of Them. We're Going To Use Our Fingers. We're Going To Touch This With Our Fingers. And We Have Invented A New Technology Called Multi-touch, Which Is Phenomenal. It Works Like Magic.

Don't Be Evil Is A Load Of Crap.

I Always Thought Of Myself As A Humanities Person As A Kid, But I Liked Electronics. Then I Read Something That One Of My Heroes, Edwin Land Of Polaroid, Said About The Importance Of People Who Could Stand At The Intersection Of Humanities And Sciences, And I Decided That's What I Wanted To Do.

To Turn Really Interesting Ideas And Fledgling Technologies Into A Company That Can Continue To Innovate For Years, It Requires A Lot Of Disciplines.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

I Think Pixar Has The Opportunity To Be The Next Disney - Not Replace Disney - But Be The Next Disney.

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

I Thought Deeply About This. I Ended Up Concluding That The Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen As We Get Big And As We Get A Little More Influence In The World Is If We Change Our Core Values And Start Letting It Slide, I Can't Do That. I'd Rather Quit.

When The Sales Guys Run The Company, The Product Guys Do Not Matter So Much, And A Lot Of Them Just Turn Off.

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

The Most Important Thing Is A Person. A Person Who Incites Your Curiosity And Feeds Your Curiosity; And Machines Cannot Do That In The Same Way That People Can.

It's Not The Tools That You Have Faith In - Tools Are Just Tools. They Work, Or They Don't Work. It's People You Have Faith In Or Not. Yeah, Sure, I'm Still Optimistic I Mean, I Get Pessimistic Sometimes But Not For Long.

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.

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

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.

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.

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