Walter Isaacson famous quotes

I hope that some day scientists can be considered heroes again, instead of Paris Hilton.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Hero #Paris #Scientist

Without Steve Jobs, you would have well-designed computers, probably open and not integrated, but they wouldn't have sex appeal, they wouldn't have romance.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Sex #Romance

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

#Practice #Discipline #Intuition

I think that genius comes not just from having great mental processing power. It comes from being able to, as Steve Jobs' ad said, think different.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Thinking #Different

It's about doing something larger than yourself. It's about serving this world, helping others.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Helping Others #Giving #Tuesday

I think that notion of being a seeker, somebody who never felt totally fulfilled, but was always passionate about the search, that comes from the background, probably.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Passionate #Backgrounds

One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Inspirational #Veterans Day #Hero

Not playing by the rules, not seeing things conventionally, that's the heart of who he [ Steve Jobs] is, and he does it in small ways of everyday rebellion just almost to assert who he is, like not putting a license plate on his car.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Heart #Car

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs)
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Crazy #Artist

By the end of his career, he [Steve Jobs] has proven that he can do the impossible, and he has gathered probably the most loyal team of eight players of any business in America.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Team #Player

If you act like you can do something, then it will work.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Like You

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Inspirational #Artist #Ideas

I think when you're looking for people to interview, you want to make it fair and honest. You're not just bringing people on so you can beat them up or, you know, make fools out of them or something
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #People #Want

The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Art #Motivation #People

Just being the seeker, somebody whose open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it's the reward for being a seeker in this world
-- Walter Isaacson

#Spiritual #Enlightenment #Important

When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Kindness #Thinking #Trying

The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Hippie #Thinking #Japan

We have to compete in a universe of 200 networks, so we have to carve out our own niche, and to me, that niche is just basic shoe-leather journalism with some good journalists at the helm you can trust as presenters
-- Walter Isaacson

#Shoes #Niche #Journalism

The childhood that Paul and Clara Jobs created for their new son was, in many ways, a stereotype of the late 1950s. When Steve was two they adopted a girl they named Patty, and three years later they moved to a tract house in the suburbs.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Girl #Jobs #Son

I don't think there was enough skepticism because I think most of us kind of believed that Saddam Hussein was building biological, chemical, and perhaps even, nuclear weapons.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Nuclear #Hussein

But the point is to get a whole new generation of people and people in general more re-engaged in news, and this has happened a lot since September 11th of course.
-- Walter Isaacson

#People #September 11 #Generations

I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Biographies #Abundance #Subjects

You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last. Excerpt From: Walter, Isaacson. “Steve Jobs.” Simon & Schuster, 2011-10-23T21:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Believe #Goal

Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Smart #Genius

i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.
-- Walter Isaacson

#College #Ideas #Helping

On Startups: "I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Hate #Moving #People

One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters
-- Walter Isaacson

#Air #Thumbs #Pressure

Let's crowd source, curate, and add royalties to books
-- Walter Isaacson

#Book #Crowds #Add

Vision w/o execution is just hallucination. You need the right combination of visionary + team that can execute
-- Walter Isaacson

#Team #Vision #Hallucinations

Physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky action at a distance.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Distance #Reality #Space

Politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Eternity #Equations

Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Dying #Busy #Born

Innovation requires articulation.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Innovation #Articulation

You know, one of these things that happened in the '60s and '70s was this confluence of, sort of, a counter-culture with computer culture.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Culture #Computer #Confluence

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Able #Use

I wonder now how tough you have to be to get big things done.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Done #Tough #Wonder

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence.
-- Walter Isaacson

#People #Miracle #Evidence Of God

Jobs did not know that Sculley had told Eisenstat he wanted to quit, but by then it didn't matter. Overnight, he had changed his mind and decided to stay. Despite the blowup the day before, he was still eager for Jobs to like him. So he agreed to meet the next afternoon.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Mind #Afternoon

Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $1 a year in pay and no stock options. I make 50 cents for showing up, he liked to joke, and the other 50 cents is based on performance.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Years #Two

If you truly have a passion for what you do, you will care even about the parts unseen.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Passion #Care #Unseen

I think right now we need to look back at the founding values of our country. Rise above partisanship, be less bitter when it comes to important matters that have to be solved.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Country #Thinking #Important

A theme of digital success is keeping it simple.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Simple #Digital #Theme

Most of the collaborations of technology were done by teams...Collaboration is key to creativity
-- Walter Isaacson

#Team #Creativity #Technology

I used to be an angry man myself. I’m a recovering assaholic so I could recognize that in Steve. (quoting Jean-Louis Gassée)
-- Walter Isaacson

#Men #Used #Quoting

Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Smart #Thinking #What Matters

Steve has a reality distortion field.” When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Reality #Fields #Schedules

So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Running #Art #Simple

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Technology #Glasses #Elements

Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,” Cook said. “That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Two #Apples

What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Focus #Adequate #Want

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Running #Jobs #Moving

Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his collegues.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Motivational #Stress #Practice

I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)
-- Walter Isaacson

#Motivational #Jobs #Thinking

He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you. He put his life in my hands. So that made me do something I didn't think I could do.... If you trust him, you can do things. If he's decided that something should happen, then he's just going to make it happen. (Elizabeth Holmes)
-- Walter Isaacson

#Attitude #Thinking #Hands

There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth
-- Walter Isaacson

#Personality #Messy

The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand,
-- Walter Isaacson

#Reality #Hands #Style

I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Smart #Thinking #Engineering

I think when money starts to corrupt journalism, it undermines the journalism, and it undermines the credibility of the product, and you end up not succeeding.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Succeed #Journalism

Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Leader #Care #Take Care

I think that we shouldn't be fixated all the time on the ups and downs of the weekly ratings, of the quarter-hour ratings.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Hours #Quarters

I've asked Jobs why he didn't get an operation then and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened. I didn't want to be violated in that way.'
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Want #Way

Terrorism is a horrible thing that is the great threat to civilization on our planet.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Civilization #Terrorism #Planets

When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amazing: They are human.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Writing #Biographies #Franklin

I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Dumb #Use

Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Children #Light #Two

I was on one of my fruitarian diets" Steve Jobs recalled "I had just comeback from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge of the word 'computer', plus it would get us a head of Atari in the phone book. He told Wozniak if a better name did not hit them by the next afternoon, they would just stick with apple and they did.  1 Apr 1976 
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Fun #Book

...never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Passion #Perfect #Pragmatism

On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Done #Research

The best and most innovative products don't always win...(it's an) aesthetic flaw in how the universe worked
-- Walter Isaacson

#Winning #Flaws #Innovative

I am a fruitarian and I will only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight - Steve Jobs 
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Moonlight #Virgins

if you can't keep him interested, that's your fault.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Faults

I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Technology #Thinking #Innovation

I discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize a company. The whole notion of how you build a company is fascinating." Steve Jobs
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Innovation #Way

Simply handing over your iPod to a friend, your blind date, or the total stranger sitting next to you on the plane opens you up like a book." (Steven Levy)
-- Walter Isaacson

#Book #Ipods #Next

He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe," Joanna Hoffman said. "It's a common trait in people who are charismatic and know how to manipulate people. Knowing that he can crush you makes you feel weakened and eager for his approval, so then he can elevate you and put you on a pedestal and own you.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Crush #Knowing #People

Steve Jobs: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Business #Way

Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.
-- Walter Isaacson

#People #Assuming

One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Art #Memorable #Men

Jobs has within him sort of this conflict, but he doesn't quite see it as a conflict between being hippie-ish and anti-materialistic but wanting to sell things like Wozniak's board. Wanting to create a business.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Hippie #Boards

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

#Jobs #Ice #Apples

More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Book #Romantic Love

People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Inspirational #Talking #People

I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #Parent #Trying

I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant
-- Walter Isaacson

#Jobs #Pain #Home

In the age of the internet when everybody's a pundit, we're still gonna need somebody there to go talk to the colonels, to be on the ground in Baghdad and stuff and that's very expensive
-- Walter Isaacson

#Age #Stuff #Baghdad

Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?
-- Walter Isaacson

#Bells #Telephones #Research

I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.
-- Walter Isaacson

#War #Thinking #Important

I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #People #Discipline

I think it's really good that you have great competition among news networks, and for that matter all the networks in general. It's bringing more and more people in to watching the news.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Thinking #People #Competition

And if you don't have your ears open, you're not going to be able to figure out what you should be doing.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Ears #Able #Figures

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.
-- Walter Isaacson

#Crazy #Squares #Rebel

I think that Benjamin Franklin felt very strongly in foreign policy in this world, that you needed to at least show some humility, especially when you were strong
-- Walter Isaacson

#Strong #Humility #Thinking