If you want to be a great American, you have got to understand Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, how the American Revolution happened. I think if you want to be a good citizen of the digital age, it helps to feel comfortable with both the people and the ways of thinking that created the digital revolution.
Walter IsaacsonYou should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last. Excerpt From: Walter, Isaacson. “Steve Jobs.” Simon & Schuster, 2011-10-23T21:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
Walter IsaacsonLeonardo da Vinci was lucky to be born the same year that Johannes Gutenberg opened his printing shop. As a young person, he could get information about whatever struck his curiosity. The Internet is to our age what Gutenberg's press was to his, so he would have loved being alive today.
Walter Isaacsoni had no idea what i wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.
Walter IsaacsonGood telling of human stories is the best way to keep the Internet and World Wide Web from becoming a waste vastland.
Walter IsaacsonI think Leonardo da Vinci teaches us the value of both being focused on things that fascinate us but also, at times, being distracted and deciding to pursue some shiny new idea that you happen to stumble upon. Balancing intense focus with being interested in a whole lot of different things is something that we have to do in the Internet age.
Walter IsaacsonI think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.
Walter IsaacsonI discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize a company. The whole notion of how you build a company is fascinating." Steve Jobs
Walter IsaacsonMainly, the reason people who didn't succeed had trouble because they had trouble forming teams. They didn't know how to collaborate.
Walter IsaacsonI think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.
Walter IsaacsonIt seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ...[Showing the misery of Afghanistan ran the risk of] promoting enemy propaganda...we must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harboured the terrorists responsible for killing close up to 5,000 innocent people.
Walter IsaacsonYou and I love understanding American Revolution, but let's also understand the digital revolution, because that makes us more comfortable with our technology.
Walter IsaacsonI 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 IsaacsonI've asked Jobs why he didn't get an operation then and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened... I didn't want to be violated in that way.'
Walter IsaacsonThe 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 IsaacsonThe people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence.
Walter IsaacsonSmart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box.
Walter Isaacsonfor 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 IsaacsonLeonardo da Vinci was comfortable being illegitimate, gay, a misfit, a heretic. But he also respected other people. He didn't get into disputations. He was a genius but he had a certain humility. In his notebooks you see lists of people he wanted to grill about things like how the water diversions in Milan work; he was always interested in learning from other people.
Walter IsaacsonThe best and most innovative products don't always win...(it's an) aesthetic flaw in how the universe worked
Walter IsaacsonWe relate to Leonardo da Vinci because his genius was just being passionately curious about everything. He wanted to know everything he could know about our universe, including how we fit into it. We can't all have a superhuman intellect like Albert Einstein's, but we can be super-curious. And we can also quit smashing curiosity out of the hands our children.
Walter IsaacsonJobs 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 IsaacsonI am a fruitarian and I will only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight - Steve Jobs
Walter IsaacsonAsked 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 IsaacsonWhat 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 IsaacsonI was on one of my fruitarian diets" Steve Jobs recalled "I had just comeback from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge of the word 'computer', plus it would get us a head of Atari in the phone book. He told Wozniak if a better name did not hit them by the next afternoon, they would just stick with apple and they did. 1 Apr 1976
Walter IsaacsonIt's about doing something larger than yourself. It's about serving this world, helping others.
Walter IsaacsonSometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his collegues.
Walter Isaacson