I wanted to be an industrial designer, so I went to business school for that, and I then went on to marketing at Interpublic Group of Companies, which was one of the first organizations to actually think about brand marketing. I worked on Coca Cola's account, and then I was recruited by Pepsi, and I ended up being Pepsi's first MBA. I was called the High Wire Act because I was in my 20s and I was given jobs of increasing responsibility that I was totally unqualified for.

You can't be No. 1 unless you think like No. 1. You have to appear like No. 1.

Nothing will divide this nation more than ignorance, and nothing can bring us together better than an educated population.

People who take risks are the people you'll lose against.

When I was 5 or 6 years old, I never wanted toys; I wanted electrical parts so I could build things. And I was better at taking things apart and putting them back together, but I always had extra pieces left over, so I think it was an early warning that I was a better designer than an engineer.

The real challenge is not to get people to remember more, but to get them to understand better. We're just now beginning to be able to show what we can implement with technological tools. I think our interest at Apple is to be the provider of the instruments that will help educators and students create and entirely new kind of learning than what we have now.

Steve Jobs was not an engineer: He was a brilliant individual with this ability to see around corners, to see things that other people couldn't see. I've learned over the years in the Apple that there are some really talented people who can take the same evidence, the same facts, and look at them and see them in a way that interprets those facts entirely different than most people do.