Listen! Ill Tell You,Steve Jobs Quotes,Be a yardstick of quality. Some people arent used to an environment where excellence is expected.,Im convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.,Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.,Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.,Its not about pop culture, and its not about fooling people, and its not about convincing people that they want something they dont. We figure out what we want. And I think were pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too. Thats what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products.,People think focus means saying yes to the thing youve got to focus on. But thats not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.,You cant just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, theyll want something new.,I didnt 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.,To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline.,We are very careful about what features we add because we cant take them away.,Theres a phrase in Buddhism, Beginners mind. Its wonderful to have a beginners mind.,(We want to) get new products out there and have new ways to buy them. I think if we manage the top line, the bottom line will follow. I dont know what the future will bring, but were working as fast as we can.,Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer whos voting thumbs up or thumbs down. Thats who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if its not up to par, its our fault, plain and simply.,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.,Its not about money. Its about the people you have, how youre led and how much you get it.,We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.,Its really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people dont know what they want until you show it to them.,I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and weve just taken it.,We dont 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 weve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.,You know, we dont grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved. I mean, were constantly taking things. Its a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.,If you live each day as if it was your last, someday youll most certainly be right.,I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over $10 million when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and it wasnt that important because I never did it for the money.,My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.,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 wouldnt 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 thats what I try to do.,Your time is limited, so dont waste it living someone elses life. Dont be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Dont let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. 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.,