When Steve Jobs died, the world lost one of the most innovative and creative thinkers of all times. I have always admired Jobs and quotes that he left behind are testimony of how much of a Genius he was. Below is a list of 8 quotes that shows how this Genius really thinks and the kind of mindset entrepreneurs should have today.
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- 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. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
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.
3- 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. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
4- Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.
5- Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they ddidn’treally do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
6- 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.
7- 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.
8- 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.
9- When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.