Steve Jobs Quotes

617 Steve Jobs Quotes

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The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs

Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?
Steve Jobs

[On Bill Gates] He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.
Steve Jobs

Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. … One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.
Steve Jobs

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.
Steve Jobs

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.
Steve Jobs

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

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
Steve Jobs

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?
Steve Jobs

There’s no yacht in my future. I’ve never done this for the money.
Steve Jobs



We all have a short period of time on this earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we’re going to be here, nor do I, but my feeling is I’ve got to accomplish a lot of these things while I’m young.
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. But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.
Steve Jobs

Apple is about people who think outside the box, who want to use computers to help them change the world.
Steve Jobs

It’s your book. I won’t even read it.
Steve Jobs

I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.
Steve Jobs

[On why Steve Jobs wanted Walter Isaacson to write his biography] I think you’re good at getting people to talk.
Steve Jobs

[He knew from an early age he was adopted] My parents were very open with me about that.
Steve Jobs

Lightning bolts went off in my head. I remember running into the house, crying. And my parents said, ‘No, you have to understand.’ They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye. They said, ‘We specifically picked you out.’ Both of my parents said that and repeated it slowly for me. And they put an emphasis on every word in that sentence.
Steve Jobs

There’s some notion that because I was abandoned, I worked very hard so I could do well and make my parents wish they had me back, or some such nonsense, but that’s ridiculous. Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned. I’ve always felt special. My parents made me feel special.
Steve Jobs

I thought my dad’s sense of design was pretty good because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him.
Steve Jobs



[On speaking about his adopted parents] They were my parents 1,000%.
Steve Jobs

[On speaking about his biological parents] They were my sperm and egg bank. That’s not harsh, it’s just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more.
Steve Jobs

[On his father] He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see.
Steve Jobs

I wasn’t that into fixing cars. But I was eager to hang out with my Dad.
Steve Jobs

My dad did not have a deep understanding of electronics, but he’d encountered it a lot in automobiles and other things he would fix. He showed me the rudiments of electronics, and I got very interested in that.
Steve Jobs

Every weekend, there’d be a junkyard trip. We’d be looking for a generator, a carburettor, all sorts of components.
Steve Jobs

[On his father] He was a good bargainer, because he knew better than the guys at the counter what the parts should cost.
Steve Jobs

My college fund came from my dad paying $50 for a Ford Falcon or some other beat-up car that didn’t run, working on it for a few weeks, and selling it for $250 – and not telling the IRS.
Steve Jobs

[Joseph] Eichler did a great thing. His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids.
Steve Jobs

I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much. It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.
Steve Jobs



[Real estate agent across the road] He wasn’t that bright, but he seemed to be making a fortune. So my dad thought, ‘I can do that.’ He worked so hard, I remember. He took these night classes, passed the license test, and got into real estate. Then the bottom fell out of the market.
Steve Jobs

[On answering what is it he didn’t understand about the universe] I don’t understand why all of a sudden my dad is so broke.
Steve Jobs

You had to suck up to people to sell real estate, and he [His father] wasn’t good at that and it wasn’t in his nature. I admired him for that.
Steve Jobs

Nearby was an engineer who was working at Westinghouse. He was a single guy, beatnik type. He had a girlfriend. She would babysit me sometimes. Both my parents worked, so I would come here right after school for a couple of hours. He would get drunk and hit her a couple of times. She came over one night, scared out of her wits, and he came over drunk, and my dad stood him down – saying ‘She’s here, but you’re not coming in.’ He stood right there. We like to think everything was idyllic in the 1950’s, but this guy was one of those engineers who had messed-up lives.
Steve Jobs

When we moved here, there were apricot and plum orchards on all of these corners. But it was beginning to boom because of military investment.
Steve Jobs

The first computer terminal I ever saw was when my dad brought me to the Ames Centre. I fell totally in love with it.
Steve Jobs

You had all of these military companies on the cutting edge. It was mysterious and high-tech and made living here very exciting.
Steve Jobs

[Frederick] Terman came up with this great idea that did more than anything to cause the tech industry to grow here.
Steve Jobs

Growing up, I got inspired by the history of the place [Silicon Valley]. That made me want to be a part of it.
Steve Jobs

Most of the dads in the neighbourhood did really neat stuff, like photovoltaics and batteries and radar. I grew up in awe of that stuff and asking people about it.
Steve Jobs



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