Topics: Life Before Apple | How He Saw Himself | Building Apple | Macintosh Memories | Returning to Apple | Leadership Style | The Apple Difference | Apple Products | Design | Creativity & Innovation | Technology | Recruiting | Microsoft | Other Companies | Money | Philosophy & Beliefs | Predicting the Future | Personal Stuff | Death | Lessons Learned
Steve Jobs Quotes: Lessons Learned
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
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.
I end up not buying a lot of things. Because I find them ridiculous.
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.
One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.
The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter.
I think the things you most regret in life are things you didn’t do.
Music is good for the soul.
We humans are tool builders. We can fashion tools that amplify [the] inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes.
Older people sit down and ask, “What is it?” But the boy asks, “What can I do with it?”
Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.
Never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.
Stay hungry, stay foolish. [This quote is often attributed to Jobs, but in reality, Jobs was quoting it from Stewart Brand in The Whole Earth Catalog.]
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.
I don’t think much about my time of life. I just get up in the morning and it’s a new day. Somebody told me when I was 17 to live each day as if it were my last, and that one day I’d be right. I am at a stage where I don’t have to do things just to get by. But then I’ve always been that way because I’ve never really cared about money that much. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I feel the same way now as I felt when I was 17.
That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure, they’re still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure. This Apple thing is that way for me. 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 tried my best. What makes you become conservative is realizing that you have something to lose.
I’ve read something that Bill Gates said… 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.
I can tell you this: I’ve been married for 8 years, and that’s had a really good influence on me. I’ve been very lucky, through random happenstance I just happened to sit next to this wonderful woman who became my wife. And it was a big deal. We have 3 kids, and it’s been a big deal. You see the world differently.
On vacation recently I was reading this book by [physicist and Nobel laureate] Richard Feynmann. He had cancer, you know. In this book he was describing one of his last operations before he died. The doctor said to him, “Look, Richard, I’m not sure you’re going to make it.” And Feynmann made the doctor promise that if it became clear he wasn’t going to survive, to take away the anesthetic. Do you know why? Feynmann said, “I want to feel what it’s like to turn off.” That’s a good way to put yourself in the present — to look at what’s affecting you right now and be curious about it even if it’s bad.
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind’s problems. I believe that very much.
As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.
My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person.
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.
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.