Steve Jobs Quotes

We did not enter the search business. [Google] entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them.

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.

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

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.

Don't just follow your passion but something larger than yourself.

Life can be much broader. You can embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

Do you want to sell sugar water all your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?

It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do.

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.

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 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.

If you live each day as it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right

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.

A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.

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.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

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.

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 can help the next generation remember the lineage of great companies here and how to continue the tradition. The Valley has been very supportive of me. I should do my best to repay.

We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we're living in, these tools surprise you ... That's why I love what we do. Because we make these tools, and we're constantly surprised with what people do with them.

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.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

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 ... 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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

Be ready to catch the ball when it is thrown by life.

I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and ... it wasn't that important - because I never did it for the money.

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.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. 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 4000 employees.

Follow your heart, but check it with your head.

If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls 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.

Let's go invent tomorrow!

I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren't many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money.

I 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.

It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment.

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.

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.

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.

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime.

Don't let the voice of other people's opinion drown your inner voice.

If Macintosh hadn't been successful, then I should have just thrown in the towel, because my vision of the whole industry would have been totally wrong.

[My teacher] basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such a respect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn.

It's not the consumers' job to figure out what they want

We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best.

Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.
[Stanford University commencement speech, 2005]

We're just enthusiastic about what we do.

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.

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.

Breakthrough is how to distinguish a leader and who followed

It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want.

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.

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.

Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow tastes.

All the work I've done in my life will be obsolete by the time I'm fifty.

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.

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.

When you're in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not.

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.

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.

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.

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

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.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Without death there would be very little progress.

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.

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.

[In school] I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.

The were good times, there were hard times, but there were never bad times

If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll be right.

The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That's my job - to make sure everything is great.

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?

When we started off we didn't know how to spell software.

A brand is simply trust.

Innovation means saying 'no' to a thousand things.

It [what you choose to do] has got to be something that you're passionate about because otherwise you won't have the perseverance to see it through.

Innovation is the only way to win.

Focusing is about saying No.

Great engineers are a huge multiplier.

Fear of failure falls away in the face of death.

Computers are like a bicycle for the mind.

I'd been rejected, but I was still in love, so I decided to start over.

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.

Customers don't measure you on how hard you tried, they measure you on what you deliver.

I would rather gamble on our vision than make a 'me, too' product.

If you want it, you can fly, you just have to trust you a lot.

And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

You know, I've got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can't say any more than that it's the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.

We all have a short period of time on this earth-We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we're going to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I've got to accomplish a lot of these things while I'm young.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

I hate the way people use PowerPoints instead of thinking

A-plus players like to work together and they don't like it if you tolerate B work

I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience.

Details matter, it's worth waiting to get it right.