“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
“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.”
“We’ve gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time.”
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”
“The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They’re just like dead fish washing up on the shores.”
“Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.”
“Bill Gates‘d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”
“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”
“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”
“Click. Boom. Amazing!”
“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.”
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”
“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.”
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
“Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.
So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
We just want to make great products. (I think he means “insanely great products!“)”
“So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.”
“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.
They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. (this actually reiterates my oft-repeated mantra of “ubiquitous evangelism” in companies)”
“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.”
“Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that inpidual 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.”
“That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder.
I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.”
“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?
And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”
“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.”
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”
“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.”
“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 other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”
“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”
“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”
“I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”
“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.”
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
“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.”
“Insanely Great!”
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
“It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
“The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”
“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
and some more here --------->
- Was George Orwell right about 1984?
- Keynote address at Apple's annual sales conference first introducing the Macintosh "1984" commercial, which ends with the announcer saying "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." (October 1983) - (online video)
- We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make "me too" products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it's always the next dream.
- Interview about the release of the Macintosh (24 January 1984) - (online video)
- It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.
- At age 29, as quoted in Playboy (February 1985)
- The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They're just like dead fish washing up on the shores.
- As quoted in Playboy (February 1985)
- It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans.
- They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen.
- On Pixar co-founders Alvy Ray Smith and Edwin Catmull, as quoted in TIME magazine (1986-09-01)
- 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.
- On the early rivalry between Macintosh and "IBM-compatible" computers based on Microsoft's DOS, as quoted in Steve Jobs : The Journey is the Reward (1987) by Jeffrey S. Young, p. 235
- 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.
- On his expulsion from any position of authority at Apple, after having invited John Sculley to become CEO, as quoted in Playboy (September 1987)
- Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
- A comment he made in persuading John Sculley to become Apple's CEO, as quoted in Odyssey : Pepsi to Apple : A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987) by John Sculley and John A. Byrne
- It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.
- At a retreat in September 1982, as quoted in John Sculley and John A. Byrne, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple – A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987), p. 157
- Variant: Why join the Navy . . . if you can be a pirate?
- As quoted or paraaphrased in Young Guns : The Fearless Entrepreneur's Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own (2009) by Robert Tuchman, p. 18
- What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
- Memory and Imagination : New Pathways to the Library of Congress (1991); this has sometimes been paraphrased "Computers are like a bicycle for our minds."
- My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple.
- 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.
- On the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Summer 1993)
- Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.
- 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.
- We believe it's the biggest advance in animation since Walt Disney started it all with the release of Snow White 50 years ago.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
- Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996)
- [Miele] really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.
- On design excellence, in WIRED magazine (February 1996)
- 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.
- I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.
- Interview in the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996)
- The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.
- Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
- 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.
- Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
- We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
- Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
- 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.
- On Bill Gates as quoted in "Creating Jobs" in The New York Times (12 January 1997)
- The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!
- On products at Apple, just before his return to it BusinessWeek (July 1997)
- 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.
- Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.
- iMac is next year's computer for $1,299, not last year's computer for $999.
- It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
- 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.
- As quoted in Fortune (1998-11-09); also quoted in "TIME digital 50" in TIME digital archive (1999)
- I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney — not replace Disney — but be the next Disney.
- We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.
- You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.
- Steve Jobs commenting on a NeXT programmer's work, as quoted in The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (2000) by Alan Deutschman
- The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever. An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we're thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers.
- I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
- As quoted in Newsweek (29 October 2001)
- It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!
- There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod.
- We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content ... What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet — and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock — open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it — puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.
- The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.
- As quoted in "Steve Jobs : The Rolling Stone Interview" in Rolling Stone (3 December 2003)]
- We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It's pretty great.
- Keynote address at the w:Worldwide Developers Conference (June 2004)
- We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
- Interview in Macworld magazine (February 2004)
- Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?
- The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.
- As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0 : The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
- 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.
- As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0 : The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
- I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building.
- As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0 : The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
- 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.
- I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.
- As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation"in Business Week (12 October 2004)
- 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.
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. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.
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.- As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation"in Business Week (12 October 2004)
- Mac OS X Tiger will come out long before Longhorn.
- Comparing the progress of Mac OS X and what would eventually become known as Microsoft's Vista, at the MacWorld San Francisco keynote address (January 2005)
- Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.
- They are shamelessly copying us.
- About Microsoft and the operating system which would be released as Vista, as quoted in "Apple's Jobs swipes at Longhorn" om cNet News (21 April 2005)
- Because I'm the CEO, and I think it can be done.
- Click. Boom. Amazing!
- MacWorld "Intel Inside" keynote address (January 2006)
- Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin'.
- Statement at the Apple Annual Shareholder Meeting (April 2006)
- And one more thing...
- A phrase he has famously used in making announcements of products towards the end of many of his presentations, as quoted in "How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs" in BusinessWeek magazine (6 April 2006)
- I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.
- Our friends up north spend over five billion dollars on research and development and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple.
- On Microsoft, at the Worldwide Developer's Conference (August 2006)
- Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.
- We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.
- I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.
- Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple's been very fortunate in that it's introduced a few of these.
- Announcing the introduction of the iPhone, as quoted in Apple unveils cell phone, Apple TV (9 January 2007)
- You had me at scrolling.
- On the features of the iPhone at its introduction at Macworld '07
- I make 50 cents for showing up ... and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.
- On his famous $1 annual salary, at the annual Apple shareholder meeting in 2007, as quoted in "Jobs: 'I make fifty cents just for showing up'" in AppleInsider (10 May 2007)
- I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products.
- On why he delayed the Leopard OS in favor of developing the iPhone rather than hiring more developers, at the annual Apple stockholder's meeting (10 May 2007) as quoted in "Apple's Jobs brushes aside backdating concerns" at c|net News (10 May 2007)
- Variant: I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check ... if so, then Microsoft would have great products.
- As quoted in "Apple iPhone : more secrets revealed" (11 May 2007)
- It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!
- On how Apple is the largest developer for Microsoft Windows due to the popularity of its iTunes software, at the All Things Digital Conference 5 (30 May 2007), on stage with Bill Gates, Kara Swisher and Walter Mossberg.
- The art of those commercials is not to be mean, but it is actually for the guys to like each other.
- On the "P.C. and Mac" commercials, at the All Things Digital Conference 5 (30 May 2007)
- Gil was a nice guy but he had a saying, "Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."
- On taking over Apple from Gil Amelio, at the D5 Conference (30 May 2007).
- People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
- As quoted in The Guts of a New Machine (30 November 2003)
- Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal. (2 November 2009)
- The flippant reply to the iPodRip developers regarding a request by Apple to change their name.
- We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash.
- As he has written in his "Thoughts on Flash" open letter (04/2010).
[edit] WWDC 2005
- Keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, where Jobs announced plans for Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard", and a switch from IBM PowerPC to Intel processors. (2005-06-06)
- Yes, it's true.
- On the plans for Apple Computer, Inc. to begin using Intel processors in its Macintosh computers during 2006 and 2007. About twenty two minutes into his address. Rumors of such plans had existed for years, but had been growing more credible and prolific for about a week before his announcement.
- Now, I have something to tell you today. Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life — for the past five years. There have been rumors to this effect... but this is Apple's campus in Cupertino — let's zoom in on it — in that building right there... we've had teams doing the "just-in-case" scenario; and our rules have been that our designs for OS X must be processor independent, and that every project must be built for both the Power PC and Intel processors. And so today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of OS X has been compiled for both Power PC and Intel — this has been going on for the last five years. Just in case.
- So Mac OS X is cross-platform by design, right from the very beginning. So Mac OS X is singing on Intel processors, and I'd just like to show you right now. As a matter of fact... this system I've been using here... Let go have a look... [reveals that the system he had been using for the presentation was running Mac OS X 10.4.1 on a machine using a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor] So.. we've been running on an Intel machine all morning.
- We intend to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007, right around the time when Microsoft is expected to release Longhorn.
[edit] Address at Stanford University (2005)
- When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
- 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. 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 wanna go to heaven don't wanna die to get there.
- When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
- I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to [learn calligraphy]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.
- Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
- 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.
Do you know more quotes? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
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