Top 400 Steve Jobs Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.”

— Steve Jobs

302. “I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren’t many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money.”

— Steve Jobs

303. “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

304. “What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been, and super-easy to use. This is what iPhone is. OK? So, we’re going to reinvent the phone.”

— Steve Jobs

305. “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

306. “And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.”

— Steve Jobs

307. “One of the failures of technology companies is that they build technologies thinking everything else will work out.”

— Steve Jobs

308. “Customers always want something new.”

— Steve Jobs

309. “I know from my own education that if I hadn’t encountered two or three individuals that spent extra time with me, I’m sure I would have been in jail.”

— Steve Jobs

310. “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.”

— Steve Jobs

311. “I have enough to last for the rest of my life.”

— Steve Jobs

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

— Steve Jobs

313. “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”

— Steve Jobs

314. “Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down and things may be different tomorrow but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today.”

— Steve Jobs

315. “The reason that Apple is able to create products like iPad is because we always try to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both.”

— Steve Jobs

316. “Without death there would be very little progress.”

— Steve Jobs

317. “We live in an information economy. The problem is that information’s usually impossible to get, at least in the right place, at the right time.”

— Steve Jobs

318. “All the work I’ve done in my life will be obsolete by the time I’m fifty.”

— Steve Jobs

319. “The biggest effect of the personal computer revolution has been to allow millions and millions of people to experience computers themselves decades before they ever would have in the old paradigm.”

— Steve Jobs

320. “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.”

— Steve Jobs

321. “Every good product I’ve ever seen is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. They wanted to use it themselves.”

— Steve Jobs

322. “There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.”

— Steve Jobs

323. “My mother taught me to read before I went to school, so I was pretty bored in school, and I turned into a little terror. You should have seen us in third grade. We basically destroyed our teacher. We would let snakes loose in the classroom and explode bombs.”

— Steve Jobs

324. “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.”

— Steve Jobs

325. “Guess who surprised themselves and changed their minds.”

— Steve Jobs

326. “My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple.”

— Steve Jobs

327. “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

328. “I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney – not replace Disney – but be the next Disney.”

— Steve Jobs

329. “Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening.”

— Steve Jobs

330. “Good PR educates people; that’s all it is. You can’t con people in this business. The products speak for themselves.”

— Steve Jobs

331. “I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success – I have no problem with their success. They’ve earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.”

— Steve Jobs

332. “Nobody has tried to swallow us since I’ve been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.”

— Steve Jobs

333. “It wasn’t that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it’s that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That’s Apple’s problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”

— Steve Jobs

334. “Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.”

— Steve Jobs

335. “By honoring the lives of those we admire, we make our own values known.”

— Steve Jobs

336. “You’ve probably had somebody punch you in the stomach and it knocks the wind of you and you can’t breathe. That’s how I felt.”

— Steve Jobs

337. “If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company.”

— Steve Jobs

338. “What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‘outside the box,’ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.”

— Steve Jobs

339. “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.”

— Steve Jobs

340. “Ad campaigns are necessary for competition. But good PR educates people; that’s all it is.”

— Steve Jobs

341. “It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.”

— Steve Jobs

342. “There will always be music on the Internet that people can steal. What’s new is not theft. What’s new is a distribution channel for stolen property called the Internet. So there will always be illegal music on the Internet.”

— Steve Jobs

343. “That’s what makes great products. It’s not process-it’s content.”

— Steve Jobs

344. “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

345. “The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They’re just like dead fish washing up on the shores.”

— Steve Jobs

346. “We want to reinvent the phone. What’s the killer app? The killer app is making calls! It’s amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones. We want to let you use contacts like never before – sync your iPhone with your PC or mac.”

— Steve Jobs

347. “All we are is our ideas, or people. That’s what keeps us going to work in the morning, to hang around these great bright people. I’ve always thought that recruiting is the heart and soul of what we do.”

— Steve Jobs

348. “The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.”

— Steve Jobs

349. “The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive.”

— Steve Jobs

350. “Making an enduring company was both harder and more important than making a great product.”

— Steve Jobs