fbpx

“Steve Jobs” Quotes

I recently read “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

“Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.” (55)

“Markkula emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.” (78)

“Among Xerox’s visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” and “People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.” (95)

““Jobs thought of himself as an artist, and he encouraged the design team to think of ourselves that way too,” said Hertzfeld. “The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.”” (123)

“”I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs later explained. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don’t like it if you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain.”” (124)

“The journey is the reward.” (143)

“It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.” (144)

“You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. “It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players,” Atkinson recalled.” (181)

“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.” (190)

“The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.” (190)

“A great company must be able to impute its values from the first impression it makes.” (220)

“When it came time to announce the price of the new machine, Jobs did what he would often do in product demonstrations: reel off the features, describe them as being “worth thousands and thousands of dollars,” and get the audience to imagine how expensive it really should be. Then he announced what he hoped would seem like a low price.” (235)

“Steve created the only lifestyle brand in the tech industry,” Larry Ellison said. “There are cars people are proud to have – Porsche, Ferrari, Prius – because what I drive says something about me. People feel the same way about an Apple product.” (332)

“If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later. That’s what other companies do.” (374)

“The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out. If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.” (407)

“One of Jobs’s business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.” (408)

“There’s a classic thing in business, which is the second-product syndrome,” Jobs later said. It comes from not understanding what made your first product so successful.” (430)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Verified by ExactMetrics