We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it's humorous, all the attention to it, because it's hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that's happened to me.

We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet-- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock--open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it-- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

You know, Dr. Edwin Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years, but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to leave his own company - which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of.

You can't win on innovation unless you have a way to communicate it to customers.

It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime.