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We Think That Computers Are The Most Remarkable Tools That Humankind Has Ever Come Up With, And We Think That People Are Basically Tool Users. So If We Can Just Get Lots Of Computers To Lots Of People, It Will Make Some Qualitative Difference To The World.

-Steve Jobs

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We Think That Computers

Steve Jobs

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We Think That Computers Are The Most Remarkable Tools That Humankind Has Ever Come Up With, And We Think That People Are Basically Tool Users. So If We Can Just Get Lots Of Computers To Lots Of People, It Will Make Some Qualitative Difference To The World.

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

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

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.

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

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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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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.

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

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The Problem With The Internet Startup Craze Isn’t That Too Many People Are Starting Companies; It’s That Too Many People Aren’t Sticking With It.

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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.

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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.

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We're Just Enthusiastic About What We Do.

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

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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.

You've Got To Find What You Love. And That Is As True For Your Work As It Is For Your Lovers.

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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.

I Think We're Having Fun. I Think Our Customers Really Like Our Products. And We're Always Trying To Do Better.

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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?

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I'd Rather Be A Pirate Than Join The Navy

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

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.

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

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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.

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

Technology Is Nothing. What's Important Is That You Have A Faith In People, That They're Basically Good And Smart, And If You Give Them Tools, They'll Do Wonderful Things With Them.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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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.

Management Is About Persuading People To Do Things They Do Not Want To Do, While Leadership Is About Inspiring People To Do Things They Never Thought They Could.

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

To Go Forward You Have To Leave Something Behind

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition.

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

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

The Were Good Times, There Were Hard Times, But There Were Never Bad Times

Ad Campaigns Are Necessary For Competition. But Good Pr Educates People; That's All It Is.

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

Black And White

I 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.

Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow.

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

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

Why Join The Navy If You Can Be A Pirate?

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

One: Demonstrations Always Crash. And Two: The Probability Of Them Crashing Goes Up Exponentially With The Number Of People Watching.

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.

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

Breakthrough Is How To Distinguish A Leader And Who Followed

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

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.

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.

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.

I Think This Is The Start Of Something Really Big. Sometimes That First Step Is The Hardest One, And We've Just Taken It.

You Can't Just Ask Customers What They Want And Then Try To Give That To Them. By The Time You Get It Built, They'll Want Something New.

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.

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.

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

The Minute I Dropped Out I Could Stop Taking The Required Classes That Didn't Interest Me, And Begin Dropping In On The Ones That Looked Interesting.

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.

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.

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.

All We Are Is Our Ideas, Or People. That's What Keeps Us Going To Work In The Morning, To Hang Around These Great Bright People. I've Always Thought That Recruiting Is The Heart And Soul Of What We Do.

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

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.

‎experts Are Clueless.

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

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

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

Abstract Thinking

Customers Always Want Something New

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I Want To Put A Ding In The Universe.

You've Got To Find What You Love.

Stanford University

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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George Jean Nathan

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