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Minggu, 26 Februari 2012

Pidato Motivasi Alm Steve Jobs English-Indonesia


I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

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. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. 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 your 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. 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 until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

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.

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.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

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. 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 is 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.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. 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.







Cerita pertama adalah tentang menghubungkan titik-titik.
Saya keluar dari Reed College setelah enam bulan pertama, tetapi kemudian tinggal disekitar kampus selama 18 bulan atau lebih sebelum aku benar-benar berhenti. Jadi, mengapa saya drop out?
Ini dimulai sebelum saya lahir. Ibu kandung saya adalah seorang mahasiswi muda, menikah, dan dia memutuskan untuk memberikan saya kepada seseorang untuk diadopsi. Dia benar-benar merasa bahwa saya harus diadopsi oleh keluarga sarjana, jadi semuanya sudah siap bagi saya untuk diadopsi pada saat lahir oleh seorang pengacara dan istrinya. Kecuali bahwa ketika saya muncul keluar, calon orang tua saya memutuskan pada menit terakhir bahwa mereka benar-benar ingin bayi perempuan. Maka orang tua saya, yang ada di daftar urut berikutnya, mendapatkan telepon di tengah malam yang menanyakan: “Kami memiliki bayi laki-laki yang tak terduga, apakah Anda berminat?” Mereka berkata: “Tentu saja.”
Ibu kandung saya akhirnya mengetahui bahwa calon ibu saya tidak pernah lulus dari kuliah dan calon ayah saya tidak pernah lulus dari sekolah tinggi. Dia menolak untuk menandatangani surat adopsi. Sikapnya baru melunak beberapa bulan kemudian, ketika orang tua saya berjanji akan menyekolahkan saya sampai perguruan tinggi.
Dan 17 tahun kemudian saya memang pergi ke perguruan tinggi. Tapi aku naif memilih universitas yang hampir sama mahalnya dengan Stanford, sehingga seluruh tabungan sekelas pekerja orang tua saya hanya habis untuk biaya kuliah saya. Setelah enam bulan, saya tidak bisa melihat nilai di dalamnya. Aku tidak tahu apa yang ingin saya lakukan dengan hidup saya dan bagaimana kuliah akan membantu saya menemukannya. Dan di sini saya sudah menghabiskan seluruh uang orang tua saya seumur hidup mereka. Jadi saya memutuskan untuk drop out dan percaya bahwa semuanya akan baik-baik saja.
Cukup menakutkan pada saat itu, tapi melihat ke belakang itu adalah salah satu keputusan terbaik yang pernah dibuat. Di saat saya drop out, saya bisa berhenti mengambil kelas-kelas yang tidak menarik minat saya, dan mulai mampir pada topik yang tampak menarik.
Memang tidak semuanya romantis. Saya tidak punya kamar kos sehingga nebeng tidur di lantai kamar teman-teman, saya haru mengembalikan botol kokas untuk deposito ¢ 5 untuk membeli makanan, dan saya harus berjalan 11 km melintasi kota setiap Minggu malam untuk mendapatkan satu makanan yang baik dalam seminggu di candi Hare Krishna. Aku menyukainya. Dan banyak yang saya temui saat itu karena mengikuti rasa ingin tahu dan intuisi, ternyata kemudian sangat berharga. Biarkan saya memberi Anda satu contoh:
Reed College pada waktu itu menawarkan ilmu kaligrafi (penulisan) terbaik di negeri ini. Seluruh kampus setiap poster, setiap label di laci, adalah hasil karya tangan indah kaligrafi. Karena sudah DO dan tidak harus mengambil kelas normal, saya memutuskan untuk mengambil kelas kaligrafi untuk belajar bagaimana melakukan ini. Saya belajar tentang serif dan san serif tipografi, tentang memvariasikan jumlah spasi antara kombinasi huruf yang berbeda, tentang apa yang membuat tipografi yang hebat. Hal itu indah, bersejarah, artistik halus dalam cara bahwa ilmu pengetahuan tidak bisa menangkap, dan saya menemukan hal tersebut sangat menarik.
Semua ini bahkan jauh dari harapan bagaimana mengaplikasikan ilmu tersebut dalam hidup saya. Namun sepuluh tahun kemudian, ketika kami mendisain komputer Macintosh yang pertama, semua itu semua kembali kepada saya. Dan kami merancang itu semua ke dalam Mac. Ini adalah komputer pertama dengan tipografi yang indah. Seandainya saya tidak DO dan mengambil kelas kaligrafi, Mac tidak akan memiliki tipografi ganda atau font proporsional spasi. Dan karena Windows menjiplak Mac, kemungkinan bahwa tidak ada komputer pribadi yang akan memilikinya. Seandainya saya tidak DO, saya tidak akan pernah jatuh di kelas kaligrafi ini, dan komputer pribadi mungkin tidak memiliki tipografi yang indah seperti saat ini. Tentu saja mustahil untuk menghubungkan titik-titik sewaktu saya masih kuliah. Tapi itu sepuluh tahun kemudian, sangat gamblang menghubungkan titik-titik tersebut.
Sekali lagi, Anda tidak dapat menghubungkan titik-titik dengan memandang ke depan, Anda hanya bisa melakukannya dengan merenung ke belakang. Jadi, Anda harus percaya bahwa titik-titik Anda bagaimana pun akan terangkai di masa mendatang. Anda harus percaya pada sesuatu – intuisi, takdir, hidup, karma, apapun. Pendekatan ini tidak pernah mengecewakan saya, dan itu telah membuat semua perbedaan dalam kehidupan saya.
Cerita kedua saya adalah tentang cinta dan kehilangan.
Saya beruntung – saya menemukan apa yang saya sukai sejak masih muda. Wozniak dan saya memulai Apple di garasi orang tua saya ketika saya berumur 20. Kami bekerja keras dan dalam 10 tahun Apple berkembang dari hanya kami berdua di garasi menjadi perusahaan 2 milyar dolar dengan lebih dari 4.000 karyawan. Kami baru meluncurkan produk terbaik kami – Macintosh – setahun sebelumnya, dan saya baru menginjak usia 30. Dan saya dipecat. Bagaimana mungkin Anda dipecat dari perusahaan yang Anda dirikan? Yah, seperti pertumbuhan Apple, kami merekrut orang yang saya pikir sangat berkompeten untuk menjalankan perusahaan bersama saya, dan untuk tahun pertama, semua berjalan lancar. Tapi kemudian visi kami mengenai masa depan mulai berbeda dan akhirnya kami sulit disatukan. Ketika kita melakukannya, dewan direksi kami berpihak padanya. Jadi di usia 30 saya keluar. Dan benar-benar keluar. Apa yang menjadi fokus seluruh kehidupan dewasa saya telah hilang, dan itu menghancurkan diri saya.
Aku benar-benar tidak tahu apa yang harus dilakukan selama beberapa bulan. Saya merasa bahwa saya telah mengecewakan generasi entreprenur jaman itu  – bahwa saya seperti telah menjatuhkan tongkat estafet yang dilewatkan ke saya. Saya bertemu dengan David Packard dan Bob Noyce dan mencoba meminta maaf karena telah mengacaukan begitu buruk. Saya adalah contoh figur publik yang gagal, dan bahkan saya berpikir untuk lari terjun dari bukit Silicon Valley. Tapi sesuatu seperti fajar perlahan mulai menghampiri saya – saya masih menyukai pekerjaan saya. Apa yang terjadi di Apple sedikit pun tidak mengubah rasa suka tersebut. Saya telah ditolak, namun saya tetap jatuh cinta. Dan jadi saya memutuskan untuk memulai kembali.
Saat itu saya tidak melihatnya, tapi ternyata bahwa dipecat dari Apple adalah kejadian terbaik yang pernah bisa terjadi padaku. Beban berat sebagai orang sukses tergantikan oleh keleluasaan sebagai pemula lagi, kurang yakin tentang segalanya. Hal itu mengantarkan saya untuk memasuki salah satu periode paling kreatif dalam hidup saya.
Selama lima tahun berikutnya, saya memulai sebuah perusahaan bernama NeXT, perusahaan lain bernama Pixar, dan jatuh cinta dengan wanita istimewa yang kemudian menjadi istri saya. Pixar bertumbuh menjadi perusahaan yang menciptakan komputer film animasi pertama, Toy Story, dan sekarang merupakan studio animasi paling sukses di dunia. Dalam sebuah peristiwa luar biasa, Apple membeli NeXT, dan saya secara resmi kembali ke Apple, dan teknologi yang kami kembangkan di NeXT menjadi jantung bagi kebangkitan kembali Apple. Dan, Laurene dan saya memiliki keluarga yang luar biasa.
Aku cukup yakin semua ini tidak akan terjadi bila saya tidak dipecat dari Apple. Obatnya memang pahit, namun sebagai pasien saya memerlukannya. Terkadang hidup menampar Anda di kepala dengan batu bata. Jangan kehilangan iman. Saya yakin bahwa satu-satunya yang membuat saya terus berusaha adalah karena saya menyukai apa yang saya lakukan. Anda harus menemukan apa yang Anda sukai. Dan layaknya Anda berpacaran, sama halnya saat berhubungan dengan pekerjaan Anda. Pekerjaan Anda akan mengisi sebagian besar hidup Anda, dan satu-satunya cara untuk benar-benar puas adalah melakukan apa yang Anda yakini sebagai pekerjaan besar. Dan satu-satunya cara untuk melakukan pekerjaan besar adalah mencintai apa yang Anda lakukan. Jika Anda belum menemukannya, teruslah mencari. Jangan menetap. Seperti semua masalah percintaan, Anda akan tahu bila Anda telah menemukannya. Dan, seperti hubungan yang hebat, itu hanya akan lebih baik dan lebih baik selama tahun bergulir. Jadi, teruslah mencari sampai Anda menemukannya. Jangan menetap.
Cerita ketiga saya adalah tentang kematian.
Ketika saya berumur 17, saya membaca ungkapan yang kurang lebih berbunyi: “. Jika Anda hidup setiap hari seolah-olah itu adalah hari terakhirmu, maka suatu hari Anda bisa yakin hal tersebut benar”. Itu membuat kesan pada saya, dan sejak itu, selama 33 tahun terakhir, saya selalu melihat di cermin setiap pagi dan bertanya kepada diri sendiri: “Bila ini adalah hari terakhir saya, apakah saya ingin melakukan apa yang saya akan lakukan di hari ini? ” Dan setiap kali jawabannya selalu “tidak” terlalu banyak selama beberapa hari berturut-turut, saya tahu saya perlu mengubah sesuatu.

Mengingat bahwa saya akan segera mati adalah alat yang paling penting yang pernah saya temukan untuk membantu membuat keputusan besar dalam hidup. Karena hampir segala sesuatu – semua harapan eksternal, kebanggaan, takut malu atau gagal – hal-hal ini tidak lagi bermanfaat saat menghadapi kematian, meninggalkan hanya apa yang benar-benar penting. Mengingat bahwa Anda akan mati adalah cara terbaik yang saya tahu untuk menghindari jebakan berpikir Anda akan kehilangan sesuatu. Anda sudah telanjang. Tidak ada alasan untuk tidak mengikuti kata hati Anda.
Sekitar setahun yang lalu saya didiagnosis mengidap kanker. Saya menjalani scan pukul 7:30 pagi dan hasilnya jelas menunjukkan saya memiliki tumor pankreas. Aku bahkan tidak tahu apa itu pankreas. Para dokter mengatakan kepada saya bahwa hampir pasti jenisnya adalah kanker yang dapat disembuhkan, dan bahwa saya harus mengharapkan hidup tidak lebih dari tiga sampai enam bulan. Dokter menyarankan saya pulang ke rumah dan membereskan urusan saya, yang merupakan kode dokter untuk mempersiapkan kematian. Ini berarti untuk mencoba memberitahu semua anak-anak Anda yang Anda pikir Anda akan memiliki 10 tahun ke depan untuk memberitahu mereka hanya dalam beberapa bulan. Ini berarti untuk memastikan segalanya diatur sehingga akan semudah mungkin bagi keluarga Anda. Ini berarti untuk mengucapkan selamat tinggal.
Aku hidup dengan diagnosa itu sepanjang hari. Malam itu saya di biopsi, di mana mereka memasukan endoskopi ke tenggorokan saya, melalui perut saya dan ke dalam usus saya, menaruh jarum ke pankreas saya dan mendapat beberapa sel dari tumor. Saya dibius, namun istri saya, yang ada di sana, mengatakan bahwa ketika melihat selnya di bawah mikroskop, para dokter mulai menangis karena ternyata menjadi bentuk yang sangat jarang dari kanker pankreas yang dapat disembuhkan dengan operasi. Saya dioperasi dan saya baik-baik saja sekarang.
Ini adalah saat terdekat saya dengan kematian, dan saya berharap itu yang paling dekat saya dapatkan untuk beberapa dekade lagi. Setelah melalui pengalaman tersebut, sekarang saya bisa mengatakan ini dengan yakin kepada Anda bahwa kematian adalah konsep yang berguna namun murni intelektual:
Tidak ada yang ingin mati. Bahkan orang yang ingin masuk surga pun tidak ingin mati  untuk mencapainya. Namun kematian adalah tujuan kita semua. Tidak ada yang bisa mengelak. Dan, memang harus demikian, karena kematian adalah ciptaan terbaik dari sebuah kehidupan. Kematian adalah agen perubahan Kehidupan. Kematian membersihkan keluar yang lama untuk membuat jalan bagi yang baru. Sekarang yang baru adalah Anda, tapi suatu hari nanti, tidak terlalu lama dari sekarang, Anda secara bertahap akan menjadi tua dan dibersihkan. Maaf bila terlalu dramatis, tetapi hal tersebut sangat benar.
Waktu Anda terbatas, jadi jangan sia-siakan hidup orang lain. Jangan terperangkap dengan dogma – yaitu hidup dengan hasil pemikiran orang lain. Jangan biarkan suara pendapat orang lain menenggelamkan suara batin Anda sendiri. Dan yang paling penting, miliki keberanian untuk mengikuti hati dan intuisi. Entah bagaimana, hati dan intuisi seakan sudah tahu apa yang Anda benar-benar inginkan. Segala hal yang lain adalah hal sekunder.
Ketika saya masih muda, ada sebuah publikasi yang luar biasa disebut The Whole Earth Catalog, yang merupakan salah satu dari Alkitab dari generasi saya. Buku itu diciptakan oleh seorang bernama Stewart Brand, tidak jauh dari sini di Menlo Park, dan dia membuatnya sedemikian menarik dengan sentuhan puitisnya. Ini adalah akhir 1960-an, sebelum era komputer dan desktop publishing, jadi semuanya dibuat dengan mesin tik, gunting, dan kamera polaroid. Itu seperti Google dalam bentuk kertas, 35 tahun sebelum kelahiran Google: Ini adalah idealis, dan penuh dengan alat-alat rapi dan ungkapan-ungkapan hebat.
Stewart dan timnya sempat menerbitkan beberapa edisi The Whole Earth Catalog, dan ketika mencapai titik ajalnya, mereka membuat edisi terakhir. Saat itu pertengahan 1970-an, dan saya masih seusia Anda. Di sampul belakang edisi terakhir itu ada satu foto jalan pedesaan di pagi hari, gambaran yang mungkin Anda sering lalui jika Anda suka bertualang di pedesaan. Di bawahnya ada kata-kata: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish..” (Tetap Lapar. Tetap Bodoh). Itu adalah pesan perpisahan mereka ketika artikel tersebut ditandatangani. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Dan saya selalu mengharapkan diri saya begitu. Dan sekarang, karena Anda akan lulus untuk memulai kehidupan baru, saya harapkan Anda sekalian.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Terima kasih semua sangat banyak.

English Motivation by STEVE JOBS

Berikut ini adalah berbagai kutipan favourite dari Almarhum Steve Jobs (CEO Apple)

  • “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” – via
  • “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.” – Wikiquote, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Summer 1993).
  • “We’ve gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time.” – ABC News, Jobs on Mac OS X Beta
  • “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
  • “I want to put a ding in the universe.”
  • “I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when
  • I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that
    important because I never did it for the money.”
  • “Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.” – Wikiquote, Interview in Rolling Stone magazine, no. 684 (16 June 1994)
  • “Bill Gates‘d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” – The New York Times, Creating Jobs, 1997
  • “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They
    have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.” YouTube
  • “My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great
    people we have and to push them and make them even better.” – All About Steve Jobs
  • “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” – Wikiquote, as quoted in Fortune magazine (4 January 2000)
  • “Click. Boom. Amazing!” – Macworld keynote 2006
  • “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give
    that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” – Inc. Magazine
  • “That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” – New York Times, The Guts of a New Machine, 2003
  • “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?” - As quoted or paraphrased in Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneur’s Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own (2009) by Robert Tuchman
  • “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – via
  • “I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus,
    Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a
    party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make
    the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.” – CNNMoney
  • “It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and
    it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.” – CNNMoney
  • “So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it
    around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.” – CNNMoney
  • “When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They
    have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple,
    everything else will take care of itself.
  • They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else.” – via
  • “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 [disensor] good. It better be worth it.” – Fortune
  • “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.” – Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Addres
  • “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… You can quote them,
    disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but 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 ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” – Think Different, narrated by Steve Jobs
  • “In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior
    decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me,
    nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the
    fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” – Fortune
  • “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing,
    even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.” – Classic Gaming
  • “The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the restof the organization and keep it at bay.” – Macworld
  • “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 other’s 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.” - Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address
  • “I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.” – Wikiquote, as quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
  • “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” – Businessweek
  • “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” – Businessweek
  • “I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.” – The Seed of Apple’s Innovation
  • “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.” - The Seed of Apple’s Innovation
  • “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.” – Businessweek, 1998
  • “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.” - Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998
  • “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful
    entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
  • “It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.” – Playboy interview, 1985
  • “I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to
    continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great
    computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.” –Playboy, 1987
  • “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. The
    heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” - Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address
  • “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or
    do you want a chance to change the world?” – Steve Jobs’ famous question to John Sculley, former Apple CEO
  • “The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!” – Businessweek
  • “The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to
    innovate its way out of its current predicament.” - As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
  • “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s
    worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over.
    Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.” – Fortune, 1996
  • “You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any
    more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for
    Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.” – Fortune, 1995
  • “Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some
    attention, the company could, could, could — I’m searching for the right word — could, could die.” – TIME, 1997