Steve Jobs has been a man of words, but what about his words? Well, we are paying a tribute to the iGenius, so here are some of his popular quotes that we personally love.
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
“You can’t just ask the customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
“I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.”
“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
“And boy, have we patented it!”
[iPhone introduction]
“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
[Steve Jobs to John Sculley, President of PepsiCo,1977-1983]
“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.“
“You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”
[Comment to New York Times reporter who asked about Jobs’ health]
“My position coming back to Apple was that our industry was in a coma. It reminded me of Detroit in the ’70s, when American cars were boats on wheels.”
“Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin’.”
“I think [technology has] brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television — but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.”
“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. 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.”
“Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.”
“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.”
“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.”