Today, Steve Jobs “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God“.
I heard the news as I arrived to IESE Business School this morning. I walked into the coffee bar on the north campus, and all the conversation was about Steve. He has affected our lives. My friend Raul writes his thoughts on Steve Jobs:
“I am not sad, because Steve lived, he found himself in this world, he did not live another person’s life. He loved. He created. He inspired us all, and he will be with us forever.”
My first computer was a Vic 20. My second computer was a Commodore 64. My third computer was a Macintosh. Apple has been a daily part of my life for the last 24 years. I am writing this now on my MacBook Pro. I ran yesterday listening to my iPod Nano.
He was the Leonardo DaVinci of our century.
Here are my 10 favourite Steve Jobs quotes:
- “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
- “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one 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.”
- “My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”
- “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”
- “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”
- “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
- “In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
- “I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”
- “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
- “I want to put a ding in the universe.”
