Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday

Creativity is just connecting things.

Focus is about saying no to 1,000 things.

Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea.

I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

We didn’t build the Mac to make money, we did it because we wanted to change the world.

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

It’s not the tools you have faith in. Tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves.

They don't know what they want, until you show it to them.Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.

That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

We had a fundamental belief that doing it right would lead to doing it better.

He had the ability to focus with laser intensity on only what mattered most.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Otherwise, as Dylan says, "if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying."

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.

"FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values"--

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Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of 'Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu and on Twitter at @WalterIsaacson

STEVE JOBS

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STEVE JOBS

STEVE JOBS

You need to learn when to say both “yes” and “no.”