Steve Jobs

1955–2011 · American entrepreneur; co-founder of Apple Inc.

Topics: creativity, life, engineering leadership, software design

• 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.

  — 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

• Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.

  — Steve Jobs

• We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.

  — 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

• 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

• A friend of the family asked me which Apple computer she should buy. She couldn’t figure out the differences among them and I couldn’t give her clear guidance, either.

  — Steve Jobs

• We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It's pretty great.

  — Steve Jobs

• Computers are actually pretty simple.

  — Steve Jobs

• I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and that you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do things that no number of average people could do.

  — Steve Jobs

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

  — 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

• 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

• What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

  — Steve Jobs

• It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

  — Steve Jobs

• People think it's this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

  — Steve Jobs

• I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard.

  — Steve Jobs

• I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products.

  — Steve Jobs

• I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

  — Steve Jobs

• Creativity is just connecting things.

  — Steve Jobs