Steve Jobs: in his own words

“And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on

the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new
markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate
on the things that are really important.”
Interview with Business Week, 2004


“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? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting
in a monastery somewhere in Japa. We could be out sailing. Some of the
[executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other
companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it’d better be
damn good.”
Interview with Fortune, 2008


“Putting the Internet into people’s houses is going to be really what the
information superhighway is all about, not digital convergence in the
set-top box.”
Interview with Rolling Stone, 1994
 
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior
decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing
could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul
of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer
layers of the product or service.”
“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.”
Interview with Fortune Magazine, 2000
 
“These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we
might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to
get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information,
the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life.
I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in
this radical new light – that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t
have to change the world to be important.”
Interview with Wired, 1996
 
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on something, but working on
Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked
on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as
though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn’t be ours
anymore. When we finally presented it at the shareholders’ meeting, everyone
in the auditorium stood up and gave it a 5-minute ovation. What was
incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It
was as though none of us could believe that we’d actually finished it.
Everyone started crying.”
Interview with Playboy, 1985 
 
“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.”
Answering a New York Times reporter who asked about his health, 2008 
 
“Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.”
Interview with The New York Times, 2003 
 
“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.”
Interview with The Wall Street Journal, 1993 
 
“You can’t just ask the cutomers what they want and then try to give that
to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
Interview with INC magazine, 1989