Do You Want to Change the World? Memorable Quotes from Steve Jobs

The man who is perhaps the best salesman of the modern era has rarely been at a loss for words. Whether talking product design, the direction of technology, thoughts on Apple or life in general, Steve Jobs gives us lots of food for thought about what keeps him going. Here are some of his memorable quotes over the years.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” [Speaking to John Scully, 1983]

“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.”[Playboy, 1985]

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“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people––as remarkable as the telephone.” [Playboy, 1985]

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“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.” [The Wall Street Journal, 1993]

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“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.” [Triumph of the Nerds, 1996]

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“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]

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“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]

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“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” [about Mac OS X, Fortune, 2000]

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“It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can’t overestimate it!” [speaking about the iTunes Music Store, Fortune, 2003]

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“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.” – [Apple Confidential 2.0, 2004]

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“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.” [Apple Confidential 2.0, 2004]

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“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.” [Stanford, 2005]

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“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.” [NBC Nightly News, 2006]

Adam Rosen

Adam Rosen is an Apple certified IT consultant specializing in Macintosh systems new and old. He lives in Boston with two cats and too many possessions. In addition to membership in the Cult of Mac, Adam has written for Low End Mac and is curator of the Vintage Mac Museum. He also enjoys a good libation.