Steve Jobs Quotes & Sayings

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

Let's make a dent in the universe — Steve Jobs

We've got to make the small things unforgettable. — Steve Jobs

To do anything of magnitude takes at least five years, more likely seven or eight. Rightfully or wrongfully, that's how I think. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

One of the failures of technology companies is that they build technologies thinking everything else will work out. — Steve Jobs

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

Expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing. — Steve Jobs

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

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. — Steve Jobs

Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening. — Steve Jobs

Kick-start your brain. New ideas come from watching something, talking to people, experimenting, asking questions and getting out of the office! — Steve Jobs

[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. — Steve Jobs

I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don't have a short-term payback. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

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

The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. — Steve Jobs

Learn more and Know more. — Steve Jobs

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

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

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. — Steve Jobs

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

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

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

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

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. — Steve Jobs

We do not say anything about future products. We work on them in secret, then we announce them. — Steve Jobs

Ad campaigns are necessary for competition. But good PR educates people; that's all it is. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad. — Steve Jobs

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things. — Steve Jobs

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. — Steve Jobs

It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought — Steve Jobs

The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we've got to risk it too. — Steve Jobs

Who wants a stylus. You have to get em and put em away, and you lose em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

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

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. — Steve Jobs

God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone's heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth. — Steve Jobs

Focusing is about saying No. — Steve Jobs

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.
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. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
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 how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. — Steve Jobs

Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

And I sort of look at us as two of the luckiest guys [Bill Gates the other] on the planet because we found what we loved to do and we were at the right place at the right time and we've gotten to go to work every day with super bright people for 30 years and do what we love doing. — Steve Jobs

You've heard of plug-and-play. This is plug, unplug and play. It's so simple to use, it's unbelievable. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

Sometimes life hits with a brick in the head, don't lose hope.
-Steve Jobs. — Steve Jobs

None of us are as creative as all of us. — Steve Jobs

I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it. — Steve Jobs

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

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

I want to make a dent in the universe — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

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

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. — Steve Jobs

I'm not worried about the country's long-term future. This country is insanely great. What I'm worried about is that we don't talk enough about solutions. — Steve Jobs

If you view computer designers as artists, they're really into more of an art form that can be mass-produced, like records, or like prints, than they are into fine arts. They want something where they can express themselves to a large number of people through their medium, and their medium is technology and manufacturing. — Steve Jobs

I don't really care about being right, I just care about success. — Steve Jobs

I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy. — Steve Jobs

I want to put a ding in the universe. — Steve Jobs

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

Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the boy asks, 'What can I do with it?'. — Steve Jobs

The iPod is not a new category. Music is not new. It's not a speculative market. It's a very, very large market. It's been around for thousands of years and will be around as long as humans exist. — Steve Jobs

I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do. — Steve Jobs

Things don't have to change the world to be important. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

Not only was [Edwin Land] 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. — Steve Jobs

Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data — Steve Jobs

I'm one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did. — Steve Jobs

You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best. — Steve Jobs

I make 50 cents for showing up ... and the other 50 cents is based on my performance. — Steve Jobs

Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time you have to give up other lives you could be living. You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished. Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person. — Steve Jobs

Let's go invent tomorrow! — Steve Jobs

You've got to find what you love. — Steve Jobs

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

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. — Steve Jobs

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor. — Steve Jobs

If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will. — Steve Jobs

If it could save a person's life, could you find a way to save ten seconds off the boot time? If there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year. — Steve Jobs

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

The things I've done in my life have required a lot of years
of work before they took off. — Steve Jobs

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. — Steve Jobs

There's a lot of symbolism to your return. Is that going to be enough to reinvigorate the company with a sense of magic? — Steve Jobs

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

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

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. — Steve Jobs

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be. — Steve Jobs

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

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. — Steve Jobs

No one is going to buy a big phone. — Steve Jobs

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

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

If you keep your eye on the profit, you're going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow. — Steve Jobs

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

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] — Steve Jobs