Short and long, no matter their shape here they come; the greatest of all Steve Jobs quotes. Clever and brutally honest are the words of Steve Jobs and here’s a list of the most memorable ones. If you miss a quote in the collection, just message us via email or a comment and we’ll add it.

Creation and innovation

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“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.”

“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

“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.”

Business and management

“I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

“Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.”

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

“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.”

“You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”

“You can’t just 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. ”

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

“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.”

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste; they have absolutely no taste. And what that means is–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 product. And you say ‘Why is that important?’ Well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea. If it weren’t for the Mac, they would never have that in their products. And so I guess 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.”

“We can’t ship junk. There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. The difference is, we don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products.”

Wise and clever

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
To John Sculley, asking him to become CEO of Apple

“It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can’t overestimate it!”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”

“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.”

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