Top 100 Isaacson's Quotes
#1. conformed to the principle of least action, a foundation of physics that holds that light or any object moving between two points should follow the easiest path.3 Planck's paper not only contributed to the development of relativity theory; it also helped to legitimize it among other physicists.
Walter Isaacson
#2. His fingerprints are all over today's technologies. Photoelectric cells and lasers, nuclear power and fiber optics, space travel, and even semiconductors all trace back to his theories.
Walter Isaacson
#4. love, for instance. Everybody experiences it, craves it, requires it for his or her very existence, knows it's there. But no one can explain it, break it down into physics and chemistry.
Rupert Isaacson
#5. I think it's really good that you have great competition among news networks, and for that matter all the networks in general. It's bringing more and more people in to watching the news.
Walter Isaacson
#6. He lies not because it's in his interest, he lies because it's in his nature." It was in Jobs's nature to mislead or be secretive when he felt it was warranted.
Walter Isaacson
#7. In classic Steve fashion, he would agree to something, but it would never happen," said Lack. "He would set you up and then pull it off the table. He's pathological, which can be useful in negotiations. And he's a genius.
Walter Isaacson
#8. I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.
Walter Isaacson
#9. Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. "There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat," he said. "That's crazy.
Walter Isaacson
#11. What's the difference between Apple and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
Walter Isaacson
#12. Jobs took McCollum's class for only one year, rather than the three that it was offered. For one of his projects, he made a device with a photocell that would switch on a circuit when exposed to light, something any high school
Walter Isaacson
#13. I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom.
Walter Isaacson
#14. Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth.
Walter Isaacson
#15. We'd buy brochures of Dylan lyrics and stay up late interpreting them. Dylan's words struck chords of creative thinking.
Walter Isaacson
#16. Steve Jobs was never going to let Flash on any Apple product again like that after in 1997 - he's got a long memory - they said no and Bill Gates said yes.
Walter Isaacson
#17. Suggested it would be sometime in the second quarter of that year. At the first NeXT retreat back in late 1985, he had refused to budge, despite Joanna Hoffman's pushback, from his commitment to have the machine finished in early 1987. Now it was clear
Walter Isaacson
#18. Franklin's scientific achievements placed him in the pantheon with Newton. Franklin's experiments, he wrote in 1941, "afforded a basis for the explanation for all the known phenomena of electricity."16 Franklin
Walter Isaacson
#19. Had the rights to make all the sequels and exploit the characters. I made a presentation that said, here's the 15% of Pixar that Disney does not already own. So that's
Walter Isaacson
#20. We are in a situation with the huge stimulus package that's going to be spent all across this nation and a big financial crisis and banking crisis. And what we need is good, trained journalists who can play the role of watchdog.
Walter Isaacson
#21. Therein lies the key, I think, to Einstein's brilliance and the lessons of his life. As a young student he never did well with rote learning. And later, as a theorist, his success came not from the brute strength of his mental processing power but from his imagination and creativity.
Walter Isaacson
#22. One of Job's business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. " If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will," he said. So even though an Iphone might cannibalize sales of an IPod, or an IPad might cannibalize sales of a laptop, that did not deter him.
Walter Isaacson
#24. I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)
Walter Isaacson
#25. Jobs put his hand on Ellison's left shoulder, pulled him so close that their noses almost touched, and said, Larry, this is why it's really important that I'm your friend. You don't need any more money.
Walter Isaacson
#26. Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don't get that critical of a government that's leading us in war time.
Walter Isaacson
#27. I do think it's important, if you're going to be very creative, to be a seeker.
Walter Isaacson
#28. Not playing by the rules, not seeing things conventionally, that's the heart of who he [ Steve Jobs] is, and he does it in small ways of everyday rebellion just almost to assert who he is, like not putting a license plate on his car.
Walter Isaacson
#29. something that's so thoughtful on the outside you say, 'Oh, wow, it must be really thoughtful
Walter Isaacson
#30. When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amazing: They are human.
Walter Isaacson
#31. I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business.
Walter Isaacson
#32. Apple in 1996, bought NeXT, bringing Jobs back. BILL ATKINSON. Early Apple employee, developed graphics for the Macintosh. CHRISANN BRENNAN. Jobs's girlfriend at Homestead High, mother of his daughter Lisa.
Walter Isaacson
#33. TV was on Mr. Jobs's to-do list. "I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use," he told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. "I finally cracked it." But then he died,
Anonymous
#34. Don't worry about people stealing an idea," he once told a student. "If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
Walter Isaacson
#35. It's about doing something larger than yourself. It's about serving this world, helping others.
Walter Isaacson
#36. A physicist is one who's concerned with the truth," he later said. "An engineer is one who's concerned with getting the job done.
Walter Isaacson
#37. been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison's conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates's philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high
Walter Isaacson
#39. A few days after he unveiled the iPad in January 2010, Jobs held a "town hall" meeting with employees at Apple's campus.
Walter Isaacson
#40. I'll always remember Apple like any man remembers the first woman he's fallen in love with." But he was also willing to fight with its management if need be. "When someone calls you a thief in public, you have to respond." Apple's
Walter Isaacson
#41. Half-formed ideas, they float around. They come from different places, and the mind has got this wonderful way of somehow just shoveling them around until one day they fit. They may fit not so well, and then we go for a bike ride or something, and it's better."12
Walter Isaacson
#42. He said, 'From then on, I realized that I was not just abandoned. I was chosen. I was special.' And I think that's the key to understanding Steve Jobs.
Walter Isaacson
#43. Steve has a reality distortion field." When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. "In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.
Walter Isaacson
#44. A recurring theme in his autobiography, as well as in his tales and almanacs, was his amusement at man's ability to rationalize what was convenient. At
Walter Isaacson
#45. You read everything - that's part of the job," he said. "You accumulate all this trivia, and you hope that someday maybe a millionth of it will be useful.
Walter Isaacson
#46. In the age of the internet when everybody's a pundit, we're still gonna need somebody there to go talk to the colonels, to be on the ground in Baghdad and stuff and that's very expensive.
Walter Isaacson
#47. CUNNINGHAM. Publicist at Regis McKenna's firm who handled Apple in the early Macintosh years. MICHAEL EISNER. Hard-driving
Walter Isaacson
#48. For Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it's better, it's simpler, and it's at the forefront of technology. That's where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.
Walter Isaacson
#49. Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.
Walter Isaacson
#50. The thing that Von Neumann had, which I've noticed that other geniuses have, is the ability to pick out, in a particular problem, the one crucial thing that's important.
Walter Isaacson
#51. freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.
Walter Isaacson
#52. Steve Jobs had a tendency to see things in a binary way: A person was either a hero or a bozo, a product was either amazing or shit
Walter Isaacson
#53. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. 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.
Walter Isaacson
#54. The childhood that Paul and Clara Jobs created for their new son was, in many ways, a stereotype of the late 1950s. When Steve was two they adopted a girl they named Patty, and three years later they moved to a tract house in the suburbs.
Walter Isaacson
#55. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.
Walter Isaacson
#56. Jobs has within him sort of this conflict, but he doesn't quite see it as a conflict between being hippie-ish and anti-materialistic but wanting to sell things like Wozniak's board. Wanting to create a business.
Walter Isaacson
#58. New idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way," Einstein once said. "But," he hastened to add, "intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience."8
Walter Isaacson
#59. Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his collegues.
Walter Isaacson
#60. At age twelve, when he got a summer job at Hewlett-Packard, he learned that a properly run company could spawn innovation far more than any single creative individual. I discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize a company,
Walter Isaacson
#61. Let's crowd source, curate, and add royalties to books
Walter Isaacson
#62. Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different ... to think out of the box.
Walter Isaacson
#63. I think Henry Kissinger grew up with that odd mix of ego and insecurity that comes from being the smartest kid in the class. From really knowing you're more awesomely intelligent than anybody else, but also being the guy who got beaten up for being Jewish.
Walter Isaacson
#64. ATKINSON. Early Apple employee, developed graphics for the Macintosh. CHRISANN BRENNAN. Jobs's girlfriend at Homestead High, mother
Walter Isaacson
#65. I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn't cost much," he said as he pointed out the clean elegance of the houses. "It was the original vision for Apple. That's what we tried to do with the first Mac. That's what we did with the iPod.
Walter Isaacson
#67. Laurene, Eve, Erin, and Lisa at the Corinth Canal in Greece, 2006: For young people, this
Walter Isaacson
#68. I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant.
Walter Isaacson
#69. Man is very capable of imagining infinite happiness, and he should be able to grasp the infinity of space - I
Walter Isaacson
#70. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep.
Walter Isaacson
#71. I want to make this a revolution, not an effort to squeeze out profits.
Walter Isaacson
#72. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they're dragging you down. They're turning you into Microsoft. They're causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.
Walter Isaacson
#73. You shouldn't whitewash it. He's good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I'd like to see that it's all told truthfully.
Walter Isaacson
#74. Finally, on the day that he was scheduled to make the big announcement, Amelio called Jobs in. He needed an answer. Steve, do you just want
Walter Isaacson
#75. In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.
Walter Isaacson
#76. One of Job's great strengths was knowing how to focus. " Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do, " he said. " That's true for companies, and it's true for products.
Walter Isaacson
#77. Most outside experts disagreed. "Maybe it's time Steve Jobs stopped thinking quite so differently," Business Week wrote in a story headlined "Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work.
Walter Isaacson
#78. For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence.
Walter Isaacson
#79. I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it.
Walter Isaacson
#80. He fell silent for a very long time. "But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone." Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.
Walter Isaacson
#81. One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters.
Walter Isaacson
#82. Wozniak began to rankle at Jobs's style. Steve was too tough on people. I wanted our company to feel like a family where we all had fun and shared whatever we made.
Walter Isaacson
#83. Alto: She's a pistol and has the strongest will of any kid I've ever met. It's like payback.
Walter Isaacson
#84. The best and most innovative products don't always win ... (it's an) aesthetic flaw in how the universe worked
Walter Isaacson
#85. crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. - Apple's "Think Different" commercial, 1997
Walter Isaacson
#86. It's also a narrative of how they collaborated and why their ability to work as teams made them even more creative.
Walter Isaacson
#88. Sculley began to believe that Jobs's mercurial personality and erratic treatment of people were rooted deep in his psychological makeup, perhaps the reflection of a mild bipolarity.
Walter Isaacson
#89. launched his "Think Different" campaign, featuring iconic
Walter Isaacson
#90. The Macintosh lacked a fan, another example of Jobs's dogmatic stubbornness. Fans, he felt, detracted from the calm of a computer. This caused many component failures and earned the Macintosh the nickname "the beige toaster," which did not enhance its popularity.
Walter Isaacson
#91. A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.
Walter Isaacson
#92. Just being the seeker, somebody whose open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it's the reward for being a seeker in this world.
Walter Isaacson
#93. There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth
Walter Isaacson
#94. Authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired, and creativity should be nurtured.
Walter Isaacson
#97. First and foremost is that creativty is a collaborative process. Innovation comes from teams more often than the lightbulb moments of lone geniuses.
Walter Isaacson
#98. In other words, the future might belong to people who can best partner and collaborate with computers. In
Walter Isaacson
#100. Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,
Walter Isaacson
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