On making things
This first one is my all-time favorite:
When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
— Source: Silicon Valley Historical Association interview (1994)
Here is the video of the above quote:
And in a similar vein:
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
— Source: Silicon Valley Historical Association interview (1994)
There are many ways to be as a person, and people express their appreciation for humanity in different ways. One powerful way is to make something wonderful and put it out into the world. You may never meet the people who experience it, never shake their hands, never hear their stories or tell yours, but through the act of creating something with great care and love, something meaningful is transmitted between people.
— Source: Apple internal meeting (2007)
Here is the video of the above quote:
We feel that, for some crazy reason, we’re in the right place at the right time to put something back. Most of us didn’t make the clothes we wear, grow or cook the food we eat, develop the language we speak, or create the mathematics we use — we are constantly benefiting from the work of others. Being able to put something back into that shared pool of human experience is incredibly meaningful and special.
— Source: International Design Conference in Aspen (1983), one year before Macintosh launched
Here is the video of the above quote:
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
— Source: New York Times interview “The Guts of a New Machine” (2003)
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try and sell it.
— Source: Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (1997)
Here is the video of the conference where the quote is pulled from:
On changing the world
We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?
— Source: Internal meetings Jobs held with the original Macintosh team in (1985)
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
— Source: Think Different advertising campaign (1997)
Here is the Think Different commercial that features the above quote:
On product management
Number one: things are packages of emphasis. Some things are emphasized in a product, some things are not done as well in a product, some things are chosen not to be done at all in a product. And so different people make different choices.
If the market tells us we’re making the wrong choices, we listen to the market. We’re just people running this company. We’re trying to make great products for people.
So we have at least the courage of our convictions to say: we don’t think this is part of what makes a great product, we’re going to leave it out. Some people are going to not like that, they’re going to call us names, and certain companies with vested interests are not going to like that either. But we’re going to take the heat because we want to make the best product in the world for customers.
We’re going to instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers.
And you know what? They’re paying us to make those choices. That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do — to try to make the best products we can. If we succeed, they’ll buy them. If we don’t, they won’t. And it will all work itself out.
— Source: All Things D Conference (2010)
Here is the video where the above quote is featured:
On ownership
But without owning something — owning a project or product over an extended period of time, across multiple stages — you miss out on a lot of real learning.
You need the experience of making decisions, seeing your recommendations implemented, dealing with the consequences — the mistakes, the setbacks — and picking yourself back up. You need to accumulate the scar tissue that comes from going through the whole cycle.
When you’re consulting, you might make recommendations, but you usually don’t own the results. You don’t own the implementation. That limits the depth of what you can learn.
— Source: Lecture at the MIT Sloan School of Management (1992) while Jobs was CEO of NeXT
Here is the video where the above quote is featured:
On focus
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
— Source: Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (1997)
On marketing
Marketing, to me, is about values. We live in a very complicated and noisy world, and companies rarely get a chance to have people remember much about them, so we have to be very clear about what we want them to know about us. Apple is fortunately one of the great global brands, alongside companies like Nike, Disney, Coca-Cola, and Sony, but even a great brand needs care and investment to remain relevant and vital, and Apple’s brand had suffered from neglect.
The way to bring it back is not by talking about speeds and feeds, megahertz, or why we are better than Windows, because great marketing is not about product specifications — it’s about meaning and emotion, like Nike, which sells shoes but focuses on honoring great athletes and athletics rather than technical details.
Apple is not just about making computers, even though we do that well; at its core, Apple believes that people with passion can change the world for the better. We have worked with people like that — developers, customers, and creators who have changed the world in big and small ways — and we believe that those crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do.
Our first brand marketing campaign in years is about returning to that core value, because while markets, products, and strategies change, core values should not. Apple’s core belief remains the same: honoring the people who think differently and push the world forward. That is what Apple stands for, and the campaign “Think Different” expresses this by celebrating those individuals who changed the world and embody the spirit and soul of the company.
— Source: Internal presentation to Apple employees (1997), after Jobs returned to Apple, introducing the Think Different campaign.
On managing people
If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win. Otherwise good people don’t stay.
— Source: All Things D Conference (2010)
We’re organized like a startup — we’re the biggest startup on the planet. We all meet for three hours once a week and we talk about everything we’re doing — the whole business. There’s tremendous teamwork at the top of the company, which filters down to tremendous teamwork throughout the company.
Teamwork is dependent on trusting the other folks to come through with their part without watching them all the time — trusting that they’re going to come through with their parts. That’s what we do really well.
We’re great at figuring out how to divide things up into these great teams and all work on the same thing, touch bases frequently, and bring it all together into a product. We do that really well.
So what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and solve problems — to make new products, to make new marketing programs, whatever it is.
— Source: All Things D Conference (2010)
Here is the video where the above quotes are featured:
On perseverance
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You pour so much of your life into this thing, and there are such rough moments in time that most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough, and it consumes your life. I mean, if you’ve got a family and you’re in the early days of a company, I can’t imagine how one could do it. I’m sure it’s been done, but it’s rough because it’s pretty much an 18-hour-a-day job, 7 days a week for a while. So unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up.
— Source: Smithsonian Institution Oral History Interview (1995).
Startup Archive.
Here is the video where the above quote is featured:
I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love — and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. 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 — and 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. Don’t settle.
— Source: Stanford Commencement Address full speech (2005)
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Thank you all very much.
— Source: Stanford Commencement Address full speech (2005). This is the last sentence.
On failure
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes people who do things from people who just dream about them. You’ve got to act, and you’ve got to be willing to fail. You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn, you know, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.
— Source: Silicon Valley Historical Association interview (1994)
Here is the video of the above quote:
On death
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.
— Source: Stanford Commencement Address full speech (2005)
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
— Source: Fortune magazine interview Steve Jobs Speaks Out (2008).
On following your heart
Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true.
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.
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
— Source: Stanford Commencement Address full speech (2005)
On connecting the dots
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards, ten years later. Again, 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.
You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.
— Source: Stanford Commencement Address full speech (2005)
Other videos
The masterful 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, in full:
Read more about the 20th anniversary of the commencement speech here, in Stanford University’s Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish Steve Jobs Archive.
Various interviews on starting a business
Resources for more videos
Steve Jobs Archive on YouTube — the authoritative home for Steve’s story and a resource for new generations eager to make an impact.