Steve Jobs: Memorable quotes
Today is the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs' death. Look back at some of the Apple innovator's more memorable quotes.
When innovative Apple founder Steve Jobs spoke, the world listened. Here are some of his more memorable quotes.
When innovative Apple founder Steve Jobs spoke, the world listened. Here are some of his more memorable quotes.
''It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.'' Steve Jobs 1982,
From the 1987 book "Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple"
''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."
- Playboy Magazine, February 1985
Kimberly White/Reuters
''The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t. 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.
... But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.''
- Wired Magazine, February 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, The New York Times, January 1997
''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 1998
''The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.''
- Apple Confidential: The Real Story Of Apple Computer, Inc., May 1999
"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."
- NBC Nightly News, May 2006
''Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. … One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.''
Announcement of iPhone, January 2007
“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. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
Stanford University commencement speech, 2005
“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.”
- Stanford speech 2005
