Walter Isaacson Quotes

Early on, Mike Markkula had taught Jobs to "impute" - to understand that people do judge a book by i...

Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. " I love the process of unpacking somet...

One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to ...

The unified field theory that ties together Jobs personality and products begins with his most salie...

One of Job's business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. " If you don't canniba...

One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to ...

One of Job's great strengths was knowing how to focus. " Deciding what not to do is as important as ...

It's a complex song, and it's fascinating to watch the creative process as they went back and forth ...

Although Jobs later said that he was not plotting to take over Apple at the time, Ellison thought it...

We kind of missed the boat on that," he recalled. " So we needed to catch up real fast." The mark of...

As Friedland had done and as Jobs would learn to do, he was able to turn charm into a cunning force,...

Nevertheless, by dint of his personality and controlling instincts, Jobs was soon playing a stronger...

Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised th...

Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at...

Under Steve Jobs, there's zero tolerance for not performing," its CEO said. At another point, when V...

Therein lies the key, I think, to Einstein's brilliance and the lessons of his life. As a young stud...

He wished to please everybody," Franklin later said of Keith, "and having little to give, he gave ex...

Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are...

As much as Henry Kissinger wanted to attribute historical movement to impersonal forces, he too conc...

Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make i...

There should be an honored place in history for statesmen whose ideas turned out to be right.

Form follows emotion

Jobs had always been an extremely opinionated eater, with a tendency to instantly judge any food as ...

Just because you can't act EVERYWHERE doesn't mean you don't act ANYWHERE. – Madeleine Albright

Einstein's was a beautiful mix of confidence and awe.

I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroo...

I'd been very influenced by what I'd seen in Japan. Part of what I greatly admired there - and part ...

Steve's head dropped and stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a chall...

Jobs obsessed over every aspect of the new building, from the overall concept to the tiniest detail ...

The thing that struck me was his intensity. Whatever he was interested in he would generally carry t...

So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The...

There is something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve," he said. " He was inter...

When he was turning thirty, Jobs had used a metaphor about record albums. He was musing about why fo...

The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people ...

Jobs described Mike Markkula's maxim that a good company must "impute"- it must convey its values an...

Hertzfeld recalled that Gates just sat there coolly, looking at Steve in the eye, before hurling bac...

Unfortunately his Zen training never quite produced in him a Zen-like calm or inner serenity, and th...

Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating po...

I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I lived a pretty simple life when I was ...

Ever since Apple's first brochure proclaimed "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," Jobs had a...

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box wi...

He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with...

Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. Grand theft. I will spend my las...

Religion was at it's best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. "The ...

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless ...

Unlike other product developers, Jobs did not believe the customer was always right; if they wanted ...

Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that inte...

When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amaz...

Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser at...

Not since the original Mac had a clarity of product vision so propelled a company into the future. "...

Jobs also used the meetings to enforce focus. At Robert Friedland's farm, his job had been to prune ...

If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only ...

Sculley found Jobs as memorable as his machine. " He seemed more a showman than a businessman. Every...

Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just o...

What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you d...

Walter Issacson biographer of Steve Jobs:I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, ...

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was so...

You can't have a sustainable US economy without a great education system. Teach students to do the j...

Years later, on a Steve Jobs discussion board on the website Gawker, the following tale appeared fro...

Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs ...

When the conventional wisdom of physics seemed to conflict with an elegant theory of his, Einstein w...

More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative the...

On its first over was the famous picture of Earth taken from space; its subtitle was "Access to Tool...

Simply handing over your iPod to a friend, your blind date, or the total stranger sitting next to yo...

Customers don't know what they want until we've shown them.

What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take adva...