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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.

-Steve Jobs

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Steve Jobs

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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.

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The Journey Is The Reward

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.

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 Macintosh Was Supposed To Be The Computer For People That Just Wanted To Use A Computer Without Having To Learn How To Use One.

Make It Like A Sunflower.

I Buy Everything From Costco. It's Great; They've Got Everything I Need.

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

One Way To Drive Fear Out Of A Relationship Is To Realize That Your Partner's Values Are The Same As Yours, That What You Care About Is Exactly What They Care About. In My Opinion, That Drives Fear Out And Makes For A Great Partnership, Whether It's A Corporate Partnership Or A Marriage.

The Only Way To Be Truly Satisfied Is To Do What You Believe Is Great Work

Loving What You Do

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

John Sculley Ruined Apple And He Ruined It By Bringing A Set Of Values To The Top Of Apple Which Were Corrupt And Corrupted Some Of The Top People Who Were There, Drove Out Some Of The Ones Who Were Not Corruptible, And Brought In More Corrupt Ones And Paid Themselves Collectively Tens Of Millions Of Dollars And Cared More About Their Own Glory And Wealth Than They Did About What Built Apple In The First Place Which Was Making Great Computers For People To Use.

I'm Sure A Lot Of You Had This Experience When You're Changing. You're Growing As A Person And People Tend To Treat You Like You Were 18 Months Ago, And It's Really Frustrating Sometimes When You're Growing Up And You're More Capable. It's The Same Thing With A Company And The Press. The Press Is Going To Have A Lag Time. The Best Thing We Can Do About The Press Is Embrace Them And Do The Best Thing We Can To Educate Them About Our Strategy. But To Keep Our Eye On The Prize, That Is Turning Out Some Great Products. The Press And The Stock Prize Will Take Care Of Themselves.

It Is Hard To Think That A $2 Billion Company With 4,300-plus People Couldn't Compete With Six People In Blue Jeans.

Why Would I Ever Want To Run Disney? Wouldn't It Make More Sense Just To Sell Them Pixar And Retire?

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

Decisions You Make

If You Want To Hire Great People And Have Them Stay, You Have To Be Run By Ideas, Not Hierarchy. The Best Ideas Have To Win.

The Reason That Apple Is Able To Create Products Like Ipad Is Because We Always Try To Be At The Intersection Of Technology And Liberal Arts, To Be Able To Get The Best Of Both.

Most People Have No Concept Of How An Automatic Transmission Works, Yet They Know How To Drive A Car. You Don't Have To Study Physics To Understand The Laws Of Motion To Drive A Car. You Don't Have To Understand Any Of This Stuff To Use Macintosh.

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

Love What You Do...don't Settle

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.

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

If You Are Working On Something Exciting That You Really Care About, You Don't Have To Be Pushed. The Vision Pulls You.

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

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.

The Web Is Not Going To Change The World, Certainly Not In The Next 10 Years. It's Going To Augment The World. And Once You're In This Web-augmented Space, You're Going To See That Democratization Takes Place.

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

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

I Told [bill Gates] I Believed Every Word Of What I Said But That I Should Never Have Said It In Public. I Wish Him The Best, I Really Do. I Just Think He And Microsoft Are A Bit Narrow. He'd Be A Broader Guy If He Had Dropped Acid Once Or Gone Off To An Ashram When He Was Younger.

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

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

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

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.

I Don't Really Care About Being Right, I Just Care About Success. I Don't Mind Being Wrong, And I'll Admit That I'm Wrong A Lot. It Doesn't Really Matter To Me Too Much. What Matters To Me Is That We Do The Right Thing.

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

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

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

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

How Can You Get Fired From The Company You Started?

You've Got To Start With The Customer Experience And Work Backwards To The Technology. You Can't Start With The Technology And Try To Figure Out Where You're Going To Sell It.

The Desktop Metaphor Was Invented Because One, You Were A Stand-alone Device, And Two, You Had To Manage Your Own Storage. That's A Very Big Thing In A Desktop World. And That May Go Away. You May Not Have To Manage Your Own Storage. You May Not Store Much Before Too Long.

We Don't Settle For Anything Less Than Excellence.

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.

I Am Saddened, Not By Microsoft's Success — I Have No Problem With Their Success. They've Earned Their Success, For The Most Part. I Have A Problem With The Fact That They Just Make Really Third-rate Products.

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

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.

A Lot Of People Think Big Business In America Is A Bad Thing. I Think It's A Really Good Thing. Most People In Business Are Ethical, Hard-working, Good People. And It's A Meritocracy.

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

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.

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

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

You've Got To Find What You Love.

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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.

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

Innovation Is The Only Way To Win.

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.

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

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.

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.

One Of The Failures Of Technology Companies Is That They Build Technologies Thinking Everything Else Will Work Out.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Hate The Way People Use Powerpoints Instead Of Thinking

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

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.

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

Breakthrough Is How To Distinguish A Leader And Who Followed

The Web Is Just Going To Be One More Of Those Major Change Factors That Businesses Face Every Decade.

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

When Companies Get Bigger They Try To Replicate Their Success. But They Assume Their Magic Came From Process. They Try To Use Processes To Substitute Content.

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

You Know, Dr. Edwin Land Was A Troublemaker. He Dropped Out Of Harvard And Founded Polaroid. Not Only Was He One Of The Great Inventors Of Our Time But, More Important, He Saw The Intersection Of Art And Science And Business And Built An Organization To Reflect That. Polaroid Did That For Some Years, But Eventually Dr. Land, One Of Those Brilliant Troublemakers, Was Asked To Leave His Own Company - Which Is One Of The Dumbest Things I've Ever Heard Of.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

My Passion Has Been To Build An Enduring Company Where People Were Motivated To Make Great Products. Everything Else Was Secondary. Sure, It Was Great To Make A Profit, Because That Was What Allowed You To Make Great Products. But The Products, Not The Profits Were The Motivation.

It's Not About Charisma And Personality, It's About Results And Products And Those Very Bedrock Things That Are Why People At Apple And Outside Of Apple Are Getting More Excited About The Company And What Apple Stands For And What Its Potential Is To Contribute To The Industry.

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.

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

Stealing Music Is Not Right, And I Can Understand People Being Very Upset About Their Intellectual Property Being Stolen.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Think We Need Editorial Oversight Now More Than Ever. Anything We Can Do To Help Newspapers Find New Ways Of Expression That Will Help Them Get Paid, I Am All For.

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.

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.

The World Doesn't Need Another Dell Or Compaq.

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

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?

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

The Unions Are The Worst Thing That Ever Happened To Education Because It's Not A Meritocracy. It Turns Into A Bureaucracy, Which Is Exactly What Has Happened. The Teachers Can't Teach And Administrators Run The Place And Nobody Can Be Fired. It's Terrible.

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.

I'm Convinced That About Half Of What Separates Successful Entrepreneurs From The Non-successful Ones Is Pure Perseverance.

I've Always Wanted To Own And Control The Primary Technology In Everything We Do.

I Found That There Were These Incredibly Great People At Doing Certain Things, And You Couldn't Replace One Of These People With Fifty Average People.

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.

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

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 Would Trade All Of My Technology For An Afternoon With Socrates.

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.

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.

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

A Computer Is The Most Incredible Tool We've Ever Seen. It Can Be A Writing Tool, A Communications Center, A Supercalculator, A Planner, A Filer And An Artistic Instrument All In One, Just By Being Given New Instructions, Or Software, To Work From. There Are No Other Tools That Have The Power And Versatility Of A Computer.

It Was One Of Those Sort Of Apocalyptic Moments. I Remember Within Ten Minutes Of Seeing The Graphical User Interface Stuff, Just Knowing That Every Computer Would Work This Way Someday. It Was So Obvious Once You Saw It. It Didn't Require Tremendous Intellect. It Was So Clear.

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.

Music Companies Are Not Technology Companies Any More Than Technology Companies Are Music Companies. They're Really Different From Each Other.

You're Missing It. This Is Not A One-man Show. What's Reinvigorating This Company Is Two Things: One, There's A Lot Of Really Talented People In This Company Who Listened To The World Tell Them They Were Losers For A Couple Of Years, And Some Of Them Were On The Verge Of Starting To Believe It Themselves. But They're Not Losers. What They Didn't Have Was A Good Set Of Coaches, A Good Plan. A Good Senior Management Team. But They Have That Now.

Intuition Is A Very Powerful Thing, More Powerful Than Intellect.

Abstract Thinking

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

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.

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

The Real Art Is Knowing What To Leave Out, Not What To Put In.

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.

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.

Overnight Success Stories Take A Long 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.

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

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.

Your Time Is Limited, So Don't Waste It Living Someone Else's Life.

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.

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.

The Thing That Drives Me And My Colleagues At Both Apple And Pixar Is That You See Something Very Compelling To You, And You Don't Quite Know How To Get To It, But You Know, Sometimes Intuitively, It's Within Your Grasp. And It's Worth Putting In Years Of Your Life To Make It Come Into Existence.

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.

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 Has Some Tremendous Assets, But I Believe Without Some Attention, The Company Could, Could, Could - I'm Searching For The Right Word - Could, Could Die.

It's Like When Ibm Drove A Lot Of Innovation Out Of The Computer Industry Before The Microprocessor Came Along. Eventually, Microsoft Will Crumble Because Of Complacency, And Maybe Some New Things Will Grow. But Until That Happens, Until There's Some Fundamental Technology Shift, It's Just Over.

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.

Innovation Distinguishes A Leader From A Follower.

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

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.

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

Stanford University

This Is What Customers Pay Us For - To Sweat All These Details So It's Easy And Pleasant For Them To Use Our Computers. We're Supposed To Be Really Good At This. That Doesn't Mean We Don't Listen To Customers, But It's Hard For Them To Tell You What They Want When They've Never Seen Anything Remotely Like It.

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.

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

Forget Everything

I Have Always Said If There Ever Came A Day When I Could No Longer Meet My Duties And Expectations As Apple's Ceo, I Would Be The First To Let You Know. Unfortunately, That Day Has Come.

Focusing Is About Saying No.

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

Stanford University

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

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.

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

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

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.

No One Wants To Die. Even People Who Want To Go To Heaven Don't Want To Die To Get There. And Yet Death Is The Destination We All Share. No One Has Ever Escaped It. And That Is As It Should Be, Because Death Is Very Likely The Single Best Invention Of Life. It Is Life's Change Agent. It Clears Out The Old To Make Way For The New.

Stanford University

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

It's Rare That You See An Artist In His 30s Or 40s Able To Really Contribute Something Amazing.

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.

I Want To Make A Dent In The Universe.

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 Only Way To Do Great Work Is To Love What You Do. If You Haven't Found It Yet, Keep Looking. Don't Settle.

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

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

No One Is Going To Buy A Big Phone.

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

The Day I Was Born Songs Were On Records, Phones Were Tied Down, Computers Needed Rooms And The Web Was Fiction. Change The World. You Can.

Your Thoughts Construct Patterns Like Scaffolding In Your Mind. You Are Really Etching Chemical Patterns. In Most Cases, People Get Stuck In Those Patterns, Just Like Grooves In A Record, And They Never Get Out Of Them.

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.

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.

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

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

Sometimes Life Hits You In The Head With A Brick. Don't Lose Faith.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Remembering That I'll Be Dead Soon Is The Most Important Tool I've Ever Encountered To Help Me Make The Big Choices In Life. Because Almost Everything - All External Expectations, All Pride, All Fear Of Embarrassment Or Failure - These Things Just Fall Away In The Face Of Death, Leaving Only What Is Truly Important.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Order To Learn How To Do Something Well, You Have To Fail Sometimes. In Order To Fail, There Has To Be A Measurement System. And That's The Problem With Most Philanthropy - There's No Measurement System. You Give Somebody Some Money To Do Something And Most Of The Time You Can Really Never Measure Whether You Failed Or Succeeded In Your Judgment Of That Person Or His Ideas Or Their Implementation.

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.

All The Work I've Done In My Life Will Be Obsolete By The Time I'm Fifty.

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.

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.

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

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.

Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication-- Steve Jobs Turned This Into The Slogan Behind An Early Mac Advertising Campaign. Which Doesn't Make It Less True.

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

Once Ibm Gains Control Of A Market Sector, They Almost Always Stop Innovation. They Prevent Innovation From Happening.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

If You Tell People They Can't Burn Cds Of Their Music, As Almost Every Current Legal Music Service Has Done, Or They Can Only Burn One Cd With A Track Or Pay Per Track Per Burn Extra, Nobody Is Going To Go For It.

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