Thursday, October 03, 2013

Friday, October 07, 2011

“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."

(Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011)
[BusinessWeek, Oct. 12, 2004]

“The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient.

(Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011)

“The problem with the Internet startup craze isn’t that too many people are starting companies; it’s that too many people aren’t sticking with it. That’s somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your values are.

(Steve Jobs)(1955 - 2011)
[Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000]

“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 gave it a five-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 we’d actually finished it. Everyone started crying.”

(Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011)
[Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]

"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 (1955 - 2011)
BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998

Thursday, October 06, 2011

“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.”

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

“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."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[1982, quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987]

“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer Inc., May 1999]

“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 (1955 - 2011)
[Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998]

“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 (1955 - 2011)
[The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[On Mac OS X, Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000]

“For something this complicated, 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 (1955 - 2011) 

“About creativity. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011) 

“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. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011) 

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011) 

“We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011) 
[Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]

“I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television — but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.”

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011) 
[Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003]

“Things don’t have to change the world to be important."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[Wired, February 1996]

“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."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
[Wired, February 1996]

“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.

Steve Jobs
[Wired, February 1996]

“It takes these very simple-minded instructions—‘Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number’––but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.”

Steve Jobs
[Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

"Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it."

(Philip Crosby)
(1926 2001, American business philosopher and writer on quality)

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

"Professionalism means consistency of quality."

(Frank Tyger)

(Brooklyn-born Trenton (NJ) Times editorial cartoonist, humorist, columnist and Promotion Manager, earning him the nickname of "Mr. Times" amongst his colleagues and the Trenton community.)

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."

(Saint Exupery)

Monday, August 01, 2011

"One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory."

(Rita Mae Brown)
(Born November 28, 1944, American writer, best known for her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle)

Friday, June 24, 2011

"If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully."

(Thomas Fuller)
(1608 – 16 August 1661, English churchman and historian)