Steve Jobs famous quotes

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.
-- Steve Jobs

#Love #Inspirational #Life

People equated burning CDs with theft. That's not what burning CDs is. Theft is about acquiring the music from the Internet.
-- Steve Jobs

#Cds #People #Burning

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Leadership #Morning

We're not a media company. We don't own media. We don't own music. We don't own films or television. We're not a media company. We're just Apple.
-- Steve Jobs

#Apples #Media #Television

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Yoga #Passion

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

#People #Competition #Campaigns

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

Probably death is the best invention of life.
-- Steve Jobs

#Invention

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspiring #Moving #Inspiration

The Macintosh was supposed to be the computer for people that just wanted to use a computer without having to learn how to use one.
-- Steve Jobs

#People #Use #Computer

The most precious resource we have is time.
-- Steve Jobs

#Resources

Stealing music is not right, and I can understand people being very upset about their intellectual property being stolen.
-- Steve Jobs

#People #Upset #Intellectual

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Life #Fear #Failure

In order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system. And that's the problem with most philanthropy - there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation.
-- Steve Jobs

#Order #Ideas #Giving

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
-- Steve Jobs

#Heart #Follow Your Heart #Intuition

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

#Years #Ipods #Long

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
-- Steve Jobs

#Wish #Graduates #Hungry

I think the Macintosh was created by a group of people who felt that ah there wasn't a strict vision between sort of science and art.
-- Steve Jobs

#Art #Thinking #People

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

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

Apple is the only company in the world that has all of that under one roof. We can invent a complete a solution that works - and take responsibility for it.
-- Steve Jobs

#Responsibility #Apples #World

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

#Inspirational #Business #Eye

A computer is the most incredible tool we've ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communications center, a supercalculator, a planner, a filer and an artistic instrument all in one, just by being given new instructions, or software, to work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility of a computer.
-- Steve Jobs

#Communication #Writing #Tools

I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney -- not replace Disney -- but be the next Disney.
-- Steve Jobs

#Opportunity #Thinking

Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?
-- Steve Jobs

#Running #Retiring

You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
-- Steve Jobs

#Life #Motivational #Karma

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.
-- Steve Jobs

#Creativity #People #Creative

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

#Thinking #Technology #Work Out

Again, 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. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Life #Trust

There will always be music on the Internet that people can steal. What's new is not theft. What's new is a distribution channel for stolen property called the Internet. So there will always be illegal music on the Internet.
-- Steve Jobs

#People #Internet #Stealing

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Crush

Our approach is to think of companies not as businesses but as collections of people. We [Apple]want to qualitatively change the way people work. We don't just want to help them do word processing faster or add numbers faster. We want to change the way they can communicate with one another. We're seeing less paper flying around and more quality of communication.
-- Steve Jobs

#Communication #Thinking #Apples

Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn.
-- Steve Jobs

#Way #Computer #Software

One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free, healthy press.
-- Steve Jobs

#Healthy #Democracy #Belief

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Memorable #Technology

Stealing things is everybody's problem. We [Apple Inc.] own a lot of intellectual property, and we don't like when people steal it. So people are stealing stuff and we're optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don't want to be; there's just no legal alternative.
-- Steve Jobs

#Believe #Apples #People

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Memorable #Artist #Creative

The creative industries tend to dismiss technology as just something to buy and not understand how hard it is and how creative it can be as well.
-- Steve Jobs

#Technology #Creative #Wells

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Life #Graduation

It's understandable that the music companies that are comprised of people that are successful by making good creative decisions - they have to decide which out of fifty artists is the next hot one, with no data to go from. It's an intuitive process, and that's what they do well when they're successful. They don't understand technology.
-- Steve Jobs

#Successful #Technology #Artist

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

#Inspirational #Running #Home

I'd say we [Apple Inc.] are the most creative of the technology companies and definitely the most artist-friendly. Almost everyone in the music business uses a Mac and everyone has an iPod.
-- Steve Jobs

#Technology #Artist #Apples

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Looks #Want

If you tell people they can't burn CDs of their music, as almost every current legal music service has done, or they can only burn one CD with a track or pay per track per burn extra, nobody is going to go for it.
-- Steve Jobs

#Cds #Track #People

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Thinking #Track

The technology companies don't understand creative things at all. Silicon Valley's view of the creative process in Hollywood is a bunch of guys in their young thirties sitting on a couch, drinking beer, and thinking up jokes.
-- Steve Jobs

#Drinking #Beer #Technology

If we don’t cannibalize ourselves, someone else will.
-- Steve Jobs

Music companies are not technology companies any more than technology companies are music companies. They're really different from each other.
-- Steve Jobs

#Technology #Different #Company

Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
-- Steve Jobs

#Hard Work #Simple #Thinking

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Business #Educational

We limit how much technology our kids use at home.
-- Steve Jobs

#Kids #Home #Technology

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Creativity #People

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Motivational #Change

Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.
-- Steve Jobs

#Smart #Technology #Giving

You have to be burning with "an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right." If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.
-- Steve Jobs

#Motivational #Leadership #Passion

Whatever you do, you must never let the voice in your head control the brain in your heart.
-- Steve Jobs

#Heart #Voice #Brain

I admire Mark Zuckerberg... for not selling out, for wanting to make a company. I admire that a lot.
-- Steve Jobs

#Zuckerberg #Selling #Mark

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.
-- Steve Jobs

#Motivational #Leadership #Jobs

The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don't understand the software parts of it. And so you really can't make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple's the only company that has everything under one roof.
-- Steve Jobs

#Engineering #Apples #Long

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Education #Technology

Focusing is about saying No.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Swimming #Power

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Powerful #Gone #Operating Systems

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

#People #Marketing #World

Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
-- Steve Jobs

#People #Mind #Etching

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

#Years #Done

Some people can do one thing magnificently, like Michelangelo, and others make things like semiconductors or build 747 airplanes -- that type of work requires legions of people. In order to do things well, that can't be done by one person, you must find extraordinary people.
-- Steve Jobs

#Airplane #Order #People

I hate it when people call themselves 'entrepreneurs' when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell of go public, so they can cash in and move on. They're unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business.
-- Steve Jobs

#Hate #Real #Moving

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it's like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.
-- Steve Jobs

#Black And White #Technology #Color

Without passion, any rational person would give up!
-- Steve Jobs

#Giving Up #Passion #Rational

I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do.
-- Steve Jobs

#Hero #Kids #Land

This is a very noisy world, so we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us
-- Steve Jobs

#Want #World #Clear

I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.
-- Steve Jobs

#Technology #Thinking #Innovation

Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life.
-- Steve Jobs

#Profound #Important #Lsd

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation
-- Steve Jobs

#Men #Design #Soul

This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.
-- Steve Jobs

#Educational #Mean #Sweat

The journey is the reward
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Inspiring #New Year

When you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Motivational #Weekend

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

#Inspiring #Mean #Thinking

I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since.
-- Steve Jobs

#Night #Keys #Car

When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
-- Steve Jobs

#Wall #Growing Up #Fun

We all have a short period of time on this earth-We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we're going to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I've got to accomplish a lot of these things while I'm young.
-- Steve Jobs

#Opportunity #Ideas #Long

I've read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can't do it forever, and you don't want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.
-- Steve Jobs

#Mean #People #Forever

I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and... it wasn't that important — because I never did it for the money.
-- Steve Jobs

#Important #Dollars #Hundred

A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.
-- Steve Jobs

#Running #Team #Player

I'm as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Innovation #Done

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Thinking #Long

I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
-- Steve Jobs

#Inspirational #Perseverance #Successful

My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.
-- Steve Jobs

#Teamwork #People #Guy

I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.
-- Steve Jobs

#Powerful #Thinking #Impact

The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive.
-- Steve Jobs

#Axes #Today #Conservative

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

#Inspirational #Life #Life Lesson

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.
-- Steve Jobs

#Death #Important #Dying

the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize the company
-- Steve Jobs

#Innovation #Way #Sometimes

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

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

There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.
-- Steve Jobs

#Running #Crazy #Creativity

Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?
-- Steve Jobs

#Business #Humorous #Pirate

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.
-- Steve Jobs

#Creating #Profound #Important

You have to have a lot of passion for what you do... because if you don't, any rational person would give up.
-- Steve Jobs

#Giving Up #Passion #Rational

Manage the top line: your strategy, your people, and your products, and the bottom line will follow.
-- Steve Jobs

#People #Lines #Strategy