Here are 62 of Steve Jobs quotes on life, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Steven Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, and died on October 5, 2011. He was an American business magnate, entrepreneur, inventor, media mogul, and investor.
Jobs was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple, as well as the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors at the time Pixar was acquired, and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT.
He is widely regarded as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, alongside his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak.
62 Steve Jobs Quotes
1. “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
2. “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.”
3. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
4. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
5. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
6. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
7. “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.”
8. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
9. “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.”
10. “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”
Steve Jobs Quotes About Work
11. “If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?”
12. “Life is about creating and living experiences that are worth sharing.”
13. “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
14. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
15. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
16. “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”
17. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
18. “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. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
19. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
20. “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”
Steve Jobs Best Quotes
21. “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.”
22. “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.”
23. “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.”
24. “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”
25. “I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do.”
26. “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
27. “I’ve read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can’t do it forever, and you don’t want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.”
28. “We don’t get a chance to do that many things and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”
29. “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
Steve Jobs Inspirational Quotes
30. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
31. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
32. “Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.”
33. “For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
34. “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.”
35. “Life goes on and you learn from it.”
36. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
37. “We are very careful about what features we add because we can’t take them away.”
38. “If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.”
39. “Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
40. “I do not adopt softness towards others because I want to make them better.”
Steve Jobs Motivational Quotes
41. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
42. “Creativity is just connecting things.”
43. “One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”
44. “Without death, there would be very little progress.”
45. “The greatest thing is when you do put your heart and soul into something over an extended period of time, and it is worth it.”
46. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
47. “I don’t care about being right. I care about success and doing the right thing.”
48. “The greatest thing is when you do put your heart and soul into something over an extended period of time, and it is worth it.”
49. “I’ve been rejected, but I am still in love.”
50. “Most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.”
Steve Jobs Quotes on Success
51. “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.”
52. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
53. “Even if we lose our money, we’ll have a company, For once in our lives, we’ll have a company.”
54. “Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.”
55. “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.”
56. “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”
57. “I don’t care about being right. I care about success and doing the right thing.”
58. “You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
59. “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”
60. “When you need a miracle, be miracle.”
61. “If you’re gonna make connections that are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experience as everyone else does.”
62. “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.”
My favorite Steve Jobs quotes are, “If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?” and “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Additional Read: Steve Jobs Bio: Career, Leadership Style and Quotes