Steve Jobs Quotes

Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.

Walter Isaacson

Unfortunately his Zen training never quite produced in him a Zen-like calm or inner serenity, and that too is part of his legacy. He was often tightly coiled and impatient, traits he made no effort to hide. Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs. He made a point of being brutally honest. "My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugar coat it," he said. This made him charismatic and inspiring, yet also, to use the technical term, an asshole at times.

Walter Isaacson

I'd been very influenced by what I'd seen in Japan. Part of what I greatly admired there - and part of what we were lacking in our factory - was as sense of teamwork and discipline. If we didn't have the discipline to keep that place spotless, then we weren't going to have the discipline to keep all those machines running.

Walter Isaacson

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

Ever since Apple's first brochure proclaimed "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," Jobs had aimed for the simplicity that comes from conquering complexities, not ignoring them. "It takes a lot of hard word," he said, "to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.

Walter Isaacson

Early on, Mike Markkula had taught Jobs to "impute" - to understand that people do judge a book by its cover - and therefore to make sure all the trappings and packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside. Whether it's an iPod Mini, or a MacBook Pro, Apple customers know the feeling of opening up the well-crafted box and finding the product nestled in an inviting fashion. "Steve and I spend a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. "I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.

Walter Isaacson

One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.” (p.98)

Under Steve Jobs, there's zero tolerance for not performing," its CEO said. At another point, when VLSI Technology was having trouble delivering enough chips on time, Jobs stormed into a meeting and started shouting that they were "fucking dickless assholes." The company ended up getting the chips to Apple on time, and its executives made jackets that boasted on the back, "Team FDA.

Walter Isaacson

Jobs obsessed over every aspect of the new building, from the overall concept to the tiniest detail regarding materials and construction. "Steve had this firm belief that the right kind of building can do great things for a culture," said Pixar's president Ed Catmull. Jobs controlled the creation of the building as if he were a director sweating each scene of a film. "The PIxar building was Steve's own movie," Lasseter said.

Walter Isaacson

Customers don't know what they want until we've shown them.

Walter Isaacson

Unlike other product developers, Jobs did not believe the customer was always right; if they wanted to resist using a mouse, they were wrong.

Walter Isaacson

Jobs had always been an extremely opinionated eater, with a tendency to instantly judge any food as either fantastic or terrible. He could taste two avocados that most mortals would find indistinguishable, and declare that one was the best avocado ever grown and the other inedible.

Walter Isaacson

Years later, on a Steve Jobs discussion board on the website Gawker, the following tale appeared from someone who had worked at the Whole Foods store in Palo Alto a few blocks from Jobs' home: 'I was shagging carts one afternoon when I saw this silver Mercedes parked in a handicapped spot. Steve Jobs was inside screaming at his car phone. This was right before the first iMac was unveiled and I'm pretty sure I could make out, 'Not. Fucking. Blue. Enough!!!

Walter Isaacson

Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.

It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industry-wide shift toward more "product thinking" in leadership--leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed.Products must appeal to human beings, and a rigorously cultivated humanistic sensibility is a valued asset for this challenge. That is perhaps why a technology leader of the highest status--Steve Jobs--recently credited an appreciation for the liberal arts as key to his company's tremendous success with their various i-gadgets.

So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. [Steve] Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” (Nytimes article, Sept. 10, 2014)

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people, and you can change it.

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. [BusinessWeek, May 25 1998]

Focus is saying no to 1,000 good ideas.

Healthy curiosity is a great key in innovation.

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Entrepreneur, take a bite out of Apple's innovation so in turn you can bear fruits of creativity.

Think different does not mean to think out of the box. It means to question what the significance of a box is?

priyavrat gupta

Nevertheless, by dint of his personality and controlling instincts, Jobs was soon playing a stronger role. He spewed out a stream of ideas - some reasonable, others wacky - about what Pixar's hardware and software could become. And on his occasional visits to the PIxar offices, he was an inspiring presence. "I grew up a Southern Baptist, and we had revival meetings with mesmerizing but corrupt preachers," recounted Alvy Ray Smith. "Steve's got it: the power of the tongue and the web of words that catches people up. We were aware of this when we had board meetings, so we developed signals - nose scratching or ear tugs - for when someone had been caught up in Steve's distortion field and he needed to be tugged back to reality.

Walter Isaacson

If you can't connect the Dots, Find the right dots first.

Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great," he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the whole field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Bach coming through the wheat.

Walter Isaacson

Follow your heart, Ithilnin," Albirich repeated. "Time is precious. Don't waste it living someone else's life.

Walter Issacson biographer of Steve Jobs:I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.”Then he paused for a second and said, “Yea, but sometimes, I think it’s just like an On-Off switch. Click. And you’re gone.” And then he paused again and said, “ And that’s why I don’t like putting On-Off switches on Apple devices.”Joy to the WORLD! There IS an after-life!

Walter Isaacson

By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it.

If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.

Walter Isaacson

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.", 2005]