Here are some key quotes from Steve Jobs, the legendary
co-founder and former chief executive of Apple, who died on Wednesday after battling cancer for years.
Commencement speech at Stanford University, 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.
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.
Interview with Business Week, 2004
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 realised something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a
problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has
figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people
think of his idea.
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.
Interview with Fortune magazine, 2000
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer.
It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to
me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the
fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in
successive outer layers of the product or service.
My position coming back to Apple was that our industry
was in a coma. It reminded me of Detroit in the 1970s, when American cars were
boats on wheels.
Interview with Wired, 1996
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. But it's a disservice to constantly
put things in this radical new light - that it's going to change everything.
Things don't have to change the world to be important.
Interview with Playboy magazine, 1985
I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something,
but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone
who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It
was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours
anymore. When we finally presented it at the shareholders' meeting, everyone in
the auditorium stood up and gave it a five-minute ovation. What was incredible to
me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though
none of us could believe that we’d actually finished it. Everyone started
crying.