People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on marketing research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

In order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system. And that's the problem with most philanthropy - there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation.

For most of my life, I’ve felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye. This is who I am, and you can’t expect me to be someone I’m not.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Many companies forget what it means to make great products. After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out.

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.