Steve Jobs quotes

Born
February 24, 1955, San Francisco, California, U.S.

Died
October 5, 2011.

Occupation
Entrepreneur, inventor.

Steven Paul Jobs was an American information technology entrepreneur and inventor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc.

The reason we wouldn’t make a seven-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a price point, it’s because we don’t think you can make a great tablet with a seven-inch screen.
– Steve Jobs

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
– Steve Jobs

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
– Steve Jobs

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.
– Steve Jobs

The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel – one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.
– Steve Jobs

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

It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them – not something they’d want now.
– Steve Jobs

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.
– Steve Jobs

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.
– Steve Jobs

We think Android is very, very fragmented, and becoming more fragmented by the day. And as you know, Apple strives for the integrated model so that the user isn’t forced to be the systems integrator.
– Steve Jobs

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.
– Steve Jobs

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.
– Steve Jobs

Pointing is a metaphor we all know. We’ve done a lot of studies and tests on that, and it’s much faster to do all kinds of functions, such as cutting and pasting, with a mouse, so it’s not only easier to use but more efficient.
– Steve Jobs

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.
– Steve Jobs

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

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

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

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

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.
– Steve Jobs

For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
– Steve Jobs

The desktop metaphor was invented because one, you were a stand-alone device, and two, you had to manage your own storage. That’s a very big thing in a desktop world. And that may go away. You may not have to manage your own storage. You may not store much before too long.
– Steve Jobs

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

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.
– Steve Jobs

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.
– Steve Jobs

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others’ negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.
– Steve Jobs

I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back.
– Steve Jobs

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.
– Steve Jobs

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

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.
– Steve Jobs

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
– Steve Jobs

I met Woz when I was 13, at a friend’s garage. He was about 18. He was, like, the first person I met who knew more electronics than I did at that point. We became good friends, because we shared an interest in computers and we had a sense of humor. We pulled all kinds of pranks together.
– Steve Jobs

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. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.
– Steve Jobs

First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now, we’re going to bring multi-touch to the market. And each of these revolutionary interfaces has made possible a revolutionary product – the Mac, the iPod and now the iPhone.
– Steve Jobs

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

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
– Steve Jobs

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.
– Steve Jobs

Older people sit down and ask, ‘What is it?’ but the boy asks, ‘What can I do with it?’.
– Steve Jobs

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.
– Steve Jobs

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

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.
– Steve Jobs

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator… these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.
– Steve Jobs

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.
– Steve Jobs

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

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.
– Steve Jobs

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.
– Steve Jobs

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.
– Steve Jobs

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.
– Steve Jobs

I get asked a lot why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That’s ridiculous.
– Steve Jobs

But Apple really beats to a different drummer. I used to say that Apple should be the Sony of this business, but in reality, I think Apple should be the Apple of this business.
– Steve Jobs

Apple took the edge off the word ‘computer.’
– Steve Jobs

We want to reinvent the phone. What’s the killer app? The killer app is making calls! It’s amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones. We want to let you use contacts like never before – sync your iPhone with your PC or mac.
– Steve Jobs

Who wants a stylus. You have to get em and put em away, and you lose em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.
– Steve Jobs

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

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

Stay hungry, stay foolish.
– Steve Jobs

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
– Steve Jobs

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.
– Steve Jobs

It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.
– Steve Jobs

The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad.
– Steve Jobs