87 Steve Jobs Quotes On Business, Life & Success
Steve Jobs was one of the most respected entrepreneurs of his time.
Having started Apple Computer Inc with his friend Steve Wozniak in 1976, they went on to create the first personal computer, the Apple I from Steve’s parents garage.
They followed this up a year later with the Apple II, selling 2 million units, propelling Steve Jobs to wealth and fame.
After a long term power struggle within Apple, Jobs was forced out of his own company in 1985.
After leaving Apple, he went on to start the computer company NeXT and the visual effects company Pixar.
Twelve years later, the struggling Apple Computer Inc acquired NeXT and Steve Jobs returned to head Apple once again.
Under his renewed leadership, Apple went on to develop and launch the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad, making Apple the highest valued company in the world.
In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer and he spent the following years fighting the disease, undergoing many work stoppages and periods of hospitalisation. He died October 5th 2011.
With his passion for fine details and making great products, Steve Jobs sure did “dent the universe” and revolutionised 6 industries; computers, phones, music, animation, tablets and digital publishing.
Below are Steve Jobs most inspirational Steve Jobs quotes that you can learn from and I hope they help you to follow your dreams.
87 Inspiring Steve Jobs Quotes
1. “The things I’ve done in my life have required a lot of years of work before they took off.” – Steve Jobs
2. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
3. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” – Steve Jobs
4. “You can’t 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.” – Steve Jobs
5. “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people. Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” – Steve Jobs
6. “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.” – Steve Jobs
7. 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. – Steve Jobs
8. “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” – Steve Jobs
9. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” – Steve Jobs
10. “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
11. “I want to put a ding in the universe.” – Steve Jobs
12. “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others’ negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.” – Steve Jobs
13. “It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work.” – Steve Jobs
14. “It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.” – Steve Jobs
15. “Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‘Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.’ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.” – Steve Jobs
16. “It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them – not something they’d want now.” – Steve Jobs
17. “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.” – Steve Jobs
18. “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.” – Steve Jobs
19. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs
20. “I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.” – Steve Jobs
21. “I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback.” – Steve Jobs
22. “A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” – Steve Jobs
23. “It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.” – Steve Jobs
24. “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.” – Steve Jobs
25. “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs
26. “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” – Steve Jobs
27. “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.” – Steve Jobs
28. “I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.” – Steve Jobs
29. “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.” – Steve Jobs
30. “When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.” – Steve Jobs
31. “Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.” – Steve Jobs
32. “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.” – Steve Jobs
33. “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
34. “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.” – Steve Jobs
35. “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.” – Steve Jobs
36. “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. Just figure out what’s next.” – Steve Jobs
37. “Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” – Steve Jobs
38. “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.” – Steve Jobs
39. “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.” – Steve Jobs
40. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. – Steve Jobs
41. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs
42. “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.” – Steve Jobs
43. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – Steve Jobs
44. “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
45. “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.” – Steve Jobs
46. “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” – Steve Jobs
47. “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 life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: 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… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs
48. “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.” – Steve Jobs
49. “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.” – Steve Jobs
50. “Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.” – Steve Jobs
51. “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.” – Steve Jobs
52. “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?” – Steve Jobs
53. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
54. “Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.” – Steve Jobs
55. “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.” – Steve Jobs
56. “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 put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough and it consumes your life. 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. It’s pretty much an 18-hour day job, seven days a week for a while. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive.” – Steve Jobs
57. “The greatest thing is when you do put your heart and soul into something over an extended period of time, and it is worth it.” – Steve Jobs
58. “I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and… it wasn’t that important – because I never did it for the money.” – Steve Jobs
59. “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.” – Steve Jobs
60. “When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” – Steve Jobs
61. “I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success. You’ll find a lot of people that will tell you I had a very strong opinion, and they presented evidence to the contrary and five minutes later I changed my mind. I don’t mind being wrong, and I’ll admit that I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing.” – Steve Jobs
62. “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” – Steve Jobs
63. “The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person.” – Steve Jobs
64. “You can build your own things that other people can use. And once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs
65. “I always advise people – Don’t wait! Do something when you are young, when you have no responsibilities.” – Steve Jobs
66. “Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs
67. “Don’t take it all too seriously. 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.” – Steve Jobs
68. “People judge you on your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs
69. “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.” – Steve Jobs
70. “On being fired from Apple and called back 12 years later: What a circle of life. You know? Life is just always mysterious and surprising, and you never know what’s around the next corner.” – Steve Jobs
71. “I think the things you most regret in life are things you didn’t do. What you really regret was never asking that girl to dance.” – Steve Jobs
72. “If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.” – Steve Jobs
73. “If you really look at the ones that ended up, you know, being “successful” in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes, it’s the ones who were successful and loved what they did so they could persevere, you know, when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it?” – Steve Jobs
74. “I’ve read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can’t do it forever, and you don’t want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.” – Steve Jobs
75. “Most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.” – Steve Jobs
76. “Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them.” – Steve Jobs
77. Life goes on and you learn from it. – Steve Jobs
78. “You gotta act. And you’ve gotta be willing to fail, you gotta be ready to crash and burn, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.” – Steve Jobs
79. “I have been trained to think in units of time that are measured in several years. With what I’ve chosen to do with my life, you know, even a small thing takes a few years. To do anything of magnitude takes at least five years, more likely seven or eight. Rightfully or wrongfully, that’s how I think.” – Steve Jobs
80. “The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. And when you’re in a field where the dynamic range is 25 to 1, boy, does it pay off.” – Steve Jobs
81. “I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, should learn a computer language because it teaches you how to think.” – Steve Jobs
82. “People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It’s a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things, a specific way of questioning things.” – Steve Jobs
83. “I think all of us need to be on guard against arrogance which knocks at the door whenever you’re successful.” – Steve Jobs
84. “Invest time in yourself to have great experiences that are going to enrich you.” – Steve Jobs
85. “Human minds settle into fixed ways of looking at the world and that’s always been true and it’s probably always going to be true.” – Steve Jobs
86. “Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. 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.” – Steve Jobs
87. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
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