The quotable Steve Jobs

It has been more than a week since the passing away of global icon Steve Jobs, the man who started Apple computer together with friend Stephen Wozniak in a home garage at age 21. He lost his nearly eight-year battle with cancer, just two months after resigning as CEO of the world-renowned company.

As expected, the social media echoed the news of Job’s death. Online memorials were immediately put up. The New York Times launched a Twitter list that curated rejoinders on his demise. Wired.com went black and programmed more than 100 pages of tweets and statements about the creative genius. Several others, including Google.com, altered their homepages to honor Jobs and what he had accomplished. And unsurprisingly, he became an immediate trending topic on Twitter. Bill Gates tweeted, while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg posted about his passing, which was “liked” by more than 85,000 people within an hour.

I was half-finished with a first-rate book on Jobs by Jay Elliot called The Steve Jobs Way when the world received the shocking report of his death. The author worked with Jobs during his early years at Apple and was a firsthand witness to many of Jobs’ critical lessons on his way to leadership greatness. 

The tome talks about Jobs’ uncanny ability to admit when he was wrong after having to face up to a problem. His aggressive confidence was legendary, but he found no difficulty in admitting defeat. It also discusses his core values and illustrates his passionate belief in standards. Elliot notes that Jobs was sometimes lampooned, sometimes feared, but always followed.

Jobs spurred a high level of brand allegiance, created a lifestyle for Apple clients, and altered the way we deal with technology. Many point to him as a shaper of popular culture. Along the way, the man whom US President Barack Obama called “the greatest of American innovators” also provided inspiration on a variety of other topics. Many have become quotable, getting pinned on many school or office walls. In honor of Jobs’ legacy to modern-day living, here are 10 inspiring samples that we can repeatedly refer to for inspiration:

1. Conventionality begets boredom. It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy. (Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987, via The Wall Street Journal)

2. Success is in the details, so sweat the small stuff.  This is what customers pay us for — to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell us what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. (Fortune, January 2000)

3. Products developed by focus groups may not work. For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until we show it to them. (Businessweek, May 1998)

4. Creativity is just connecting things. When we ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it; they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. (Wired, February 1996)

5. When we believe in our product and people, people stick with us. Again, we can’t connect the dots looking forward; we can only connect them looking backwards. So we have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in our future. We have to trust in something — our gut, destiny, life and karma, whatever. This approach has never let us down, and it has made all the difference in our life.

6. Strong corporate shepherds and motivators are what organizations need. What’s reinvigorating this company is two things: one, there’s a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they’re not losers. What they didn’t have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now. (Businessweek, May 1998)

7. It’s not about the size of the organization, but the people that move it. Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars we 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 we have, how we’re led, and how much we get it. (Fortune, November 1998)

8. Traditional media will continue to live. I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for. (All Things Digital, June 2010)

9. Great work is a result of loving what we do.  Our work is going to fill a large part of our life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what we believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what we do. If we haven’t found it yet, we should keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, we’ll know when we find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So we need to keep looking until we find it. We shouldn’t settle.

10. Focus and simplicity can move mountains. Simple can be harder than complex: We have to work hard to get our thinking clean, to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once we get there, we can move mountains.

Futurists like Jobs are able to bring to life great art or great products because their work isn’t confined to an eight-to-five schedule. They are intuitive but inspired, purposeful as they bring to their publics their enviable brand of excitement and potentiality.

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