Steve Jobs was a great businessman and a visionary. Here are ten memorable Steve Jobs quotes which have the potential to change your perspective on business, leadership, and innovation:
1. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
2. 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. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
3. Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.
4. 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.
5. If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.
6. You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting.
7. If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.
8. Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.
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. 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.
10. “That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”