Steve Jobs' Quotes Collection (109 in 1)
1.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
2.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
3.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
4.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
5.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
6.
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people
aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
-
Steve
Jobs
7.
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. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as
the years roll on.
-
Steve
Jobs
8.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
9.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
10. That's
been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than
complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move
mountains.
-
Steve
Jobs
11.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
12. Your
work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly
satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
13. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
14. My
favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most
precious resource we all have is time.
-
Steve
Jobs
15.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
16. Sometimes
when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get
on with improving your other innovations.
-
Steve
Jobs
17.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader
and a follower.
-
Steve
Jobs
18. Remembering
that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking
you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to
follow your heart.
-
Steve
Jobs
19. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
20. Design
is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
-
Steve
Jobs
21. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
22. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
23. Stay
hungry, stay foolish.
-
Steve
Jobs
24. Older
people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the boy asks, 'What can I do with
it?'.
-
Steve
Jobs
25. Things
don't have to change the world to be important.
-
Steve
Jobs
26. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
27. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
28. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
29. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
30. I
think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And
we're always trying to do better.
-
Steve
Jobs
31. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
32. 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?
-
Steve
Jobs
33. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
34. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
35. And
no, we don't know where it will lead. We just know there's something much
bigger than any of us here.
-
Steve
Jobs
36. We've
demonstrated a strong track record of being very disciplined with the use of
our cash. We don't let it burn a hole in our pocket, we don't allow it to
motivate us to do stupid acquisitions. And so I think that we'd like to
continue to keep our powder dry, because we do feel that there are one or more
strategic opportunities in the future.
-
Steve
Jobs
37. I
think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do
that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to
everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is
called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.
-
Steve
Jobs
38. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
39. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
40. Everyone
here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are
influencing the future.
-
Steve
Jobs
41. Sometimes
life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
-
Steve
Jobs
42. 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?
-
Steve
Jobs
43. An
iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are NOT three separate
devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the
phone. And here it is.
-
Steve
Jobs
44. When
you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The
networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you
realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly
what they want.
-
Steve
Jobs
45. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
46. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
47. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
48. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
49. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
50. I
want to put a ding in the universe.
-
Steve
Jobs
51.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
52. I'm
sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things.
We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a
long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all.
-
Steve
Jobs
53. To
turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that
can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.
-
Steve
Jobs
54. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
55. Microsoft
has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other
was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications
business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both
of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
-
Steve
Jobs
56. We
want to reinvent the phone. What's the killer app? The killer app is making
calls! It's amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones. We want to let
you use contacts like never before - sync your iPhone with your PC or mac.
-
Steve
Jobs
57. Computers
themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we
learn.
-
Steve
Jobs
58. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
59. For
you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all
the way through.
-
Steve
Jobs
60. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
61. And
one more thing.
-
Steve
Jobs
62. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
63. Our
goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.
-
Steve
Jobs
64. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
65. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
66. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
67. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
68. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
69. I
get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they
belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.
-
Steve
Jobs
70. It
is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
-
Steve
Jobs
71.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
72. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
73. The
seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too
small to compete with an iPad.
-
Steve
Jobs
74. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
75. Who
wants a stylus. You have to get em and put em away, and you lose em. Yuck.
Nobody wants a stylus.
-
Steve
Jobs
76. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
77. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
78. I've
always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.
-
Steve
Jobs
79. It's
not a faith in technology. It's faith in people.
-
Steve
Jobs
80.So when these people
sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out
of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives.
Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound
wealth in perspective.
-
Steve
Jobs
81. The
desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft
dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop
market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the
next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.
-
Steve
Jobs
82. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
83. We're
just enthusiastic about what we do.
-
Steve
Jobs
84. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
85. In
most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's
the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further
from the meaning of design.
-
Steve
Jobs
86. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
87. The
engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics
companies, they don't understand the software parts of it. And so you really
can't make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now.
Apple's the only company that has everything under one roof.
-
Steve
Jobs
88.The most compelling
reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a
nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what
will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people - as remarkable as the
telephone.
-
Steve
Jobs
89. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
90. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
91. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
92. We
hire people who want to make the best things in the world.
-
Steve
Jobs
93. We
made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.
-
Steve
Jobs
94. We
think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else.
We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge
whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research.
We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.
-
Steve
Jobs
95. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
96. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
97. I'm
very excited about having the Internet in my den.
-
Steve
Jobs
98. Now,
we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn't that unbelievable? That's
58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
-
Steve
Jobs
99. 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.
-
Steve
Jobs
100.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
101.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
102.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
103.
The manual for WordStar, the most popular
word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read
a novel - one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to
learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what
Macintosh is all about.
-
Steve
Jobs
104.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
105.
Well, Apple invented the PC as we know
it, and then it invented the graphical user interface as we know it eight years
later (with the introduction of the Mac). But then, the company had a decade in
which it took a nap.
-
Steve
Jobs
106.
What we want to do is make a leapfrog
product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been, and
super-easy to use. This is what iPhone is. OK? So, we're going to reinvent the
phone.
-
Steve
Jobs
107.
With our technology, with objects,
literally three people in a garage can blow away what 200 people at Microsoft
can do. Literally can blow it away. Corporate America has a need that is so
huge and can save them so much money, or make them so much money, or cost them
so much money if they miss it, that they are going to fuel the object
revolution.
-
Steve
Jobs
108.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
109.
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.
-
Steve
Jobs
