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.
I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don't have a short-term payback.
A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
I believe that with every bone in my body that all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near, if not at the top, as history unfolds and we look back.
Apple took the edge off the word 'computer.'
We are gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me-too' products. For us, it's always the next dream.
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.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.
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'm an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.
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.
I want to put a ding in the universe.
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.
Who wants a stylus. You have to get em and put em away, and you lose em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.
Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.
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.
Creation is messy. You want genius, you get madness; two sides of the same coin.
Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.
Don't sweat for small stuff.
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.
The thing that bound us together at Apple was the ability to make things that were going to change the world. That was very important.
Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?
This revolution, the information revoultion, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It's very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now?
The people who made Mac are sort of on the edge.
Don't let something that doesn't matter cause you to lose something that does.
A child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer.
If you wanna hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don't stay.
People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
We have always been shamelss about stealing great ideas.
These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that.
The Only Way to Do Great Work is To Love What You Do.
The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive.
I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren't random.
Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: 'Oh, that's just the way things are done around here.' Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.
Each year has been so robust with problems and successes and learning experiences and human experienes that a year is a lifetime at Apple. So this has been ten lifetimes.
I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of 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.
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.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.
The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people - as remarkable as the telephone.
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.
You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it's humorous, all the attention to it, because it's hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that's happened to me.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures.
Focus is saying no to 1,000 good ideas.
If you're gonna make connections which are innovative... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.
Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the boy asks, 'What can I do with it?'.
Don't let the noise of other's opinions down 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.
