I collect quotes. (You can see my collection on the web site at
www.catherinechhood.net/quotes.html.) To celebrate the life of Steve Jobs, I'm posting some interesting and favorite Steve Jobs' quotes below.
For some historical perspective
From an interview in Playboy, 1 February 1985:
"The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into 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."
From an interview in Rolling Stone, 16 June 1994:
"Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better."
(For the record, I was in college in 1985, writing programs for IBM mainframes, and scared to death of computers. The idea of actually owning one and putting it in my house would have made me laugh. And now I sit here with one on my lap, and I can't imagine life without it. And my favorite computer is my Toshiba laptop, and it runs Windows, even though I hate MS Windows.)
Steve Jobs on Design
From an interview in BusinessWeek, 25 May 1998:
"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."
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
From an interview in Inc. Magazine:
"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."
In the New York Times, "The Guts of a New Machine," 2003:
"[Design] is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
From CNNMoney:
"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do."
Steve Jobs on business
From an interview on 60 Minutes, 2003:
"My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's 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 on moving forward
From the commencement address at Stanford University, June 2005:
"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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
"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."
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. 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. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
From an interview on the NBC Nightly News, May 2006:
"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."
From an interview in Fortune:
"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? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it."
Steve Jobs on Life
"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. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
