15 inspirational quotes from Steve Jobs on the fourth anniversary of his death
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful [at Apple], that's what matters to me.”
“My favourite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”
Jobs emphasizes that time should be spent on the things that matter, such as family, and this usually doesn't correlate with earning money.
“[The] bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.”
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Jobs talks about his move from Pixar to Apple where his goal was to create beautiful products, not wealth. The result of this was the iPod, Mac, iPhone, iPad and, to an extent, Apple Watch.
“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.”
Jobs emphasizes that everything we do in life should be meaningful; we should never do something without thinking just because it seems like the thing we should do.
“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown 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.”
At his Stanford address in 2003, Jobs encouraged free thinking. At university, Jobs dropped out, but continued to take courses that interested him (such as typography) and this resulted in the artistic side of the Mac.
“I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long.”
Wrestling on his laurels was something that Jobs never did. Jobs moved from project to project and, in the process, progressed onto some of his best work. If Jobs had sat back and relaxed after the Mac or iPod, there would be no iPhone or iPad.
“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
Jobs was, at heart, an artist. His sensibilities extended beyond what the consumer could and couldn't see. On Jobs' insistence, the circuit board on the inside of the original Mac was laid out beautifully because he felt it improved the overall product, even though no one would ever see it.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Jobs was unusual as a CEO because he was also an artist who cared deeply about how the product worked, often having a hand in designing it alongside Jony Ive, one of the highest ranking people in Apple currently.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. 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.”
Retrospectively, Jobs' life looks made: he dropped out of college, started Apple, went to Pixar and the rest is history. At the time, however, things likely seemed different and he reflects on that here.
“Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”
One of the many things that make Apple special is the intense focus on design. Jobs worked hard to promote design people to the highest positions within the company, and this has resulted in products such as the iPhone which marry art with technology.
“It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”
The genesis of this quote is from Henry Ford, the American industrialist, who proclaimed: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
This resonated with Jobs who believed that Apple should create products and then tell people why they needed them.
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: 'If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, 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.”
One of Jobs' main focuses in life — especially toward the end — was death, and how the lifetime of a human is limited to a specific period of time and all that you can achieve is limited to that time.
“I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.”
Design is about making choices, and Jobs made the right choices. The original model for the iPhone included an iPod-style click wheel, for example.
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
Jobs emphasizes again just how much of a force death is when considering where to go next, helping focus the mind on what matters.
“Our DNA is as a consumer company — for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply.”
Apple as a company is obsessed with the user experience and this attitude came straight from Jobs.
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