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Walter Isaacson QUOTES

1 " If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

2 " Walter Issacson biographer of Steve Jobs:

I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.”

Then he paused for a second and said, “Yea, but sometimes, I think it’s just like an On-Off switch. Click. And you’re gone.” And then he paused again and said, “ And that’s why I don’t like putting On-Off switches on Apple devices.”

Joy to the WORLD! There IS an after-life! "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

3 " Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

4 " A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth. "

― Walter Isaacson

5 " When the conventional wisdom of physics seemed to conflict with an elegant theory of his, Einstein was inclined to question that wisdom rather than his theory, often to have his stubbornness rewarded. "

― Walter Isaacson

6 " The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

7 " Just because you can't act EVERYWHERE doesn't mean you don't act ANYWHERE. – Madeleine Albright "

― Walter Isaacson , American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

8 " Form follows emotion "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

9 " He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

10 " The journey is the reward. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson QUOTES

11 " Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough. "

― Walter Isaacson , American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

12 " There should be an honored place in history for statesmen whose ideas turned out to be right. "

― Walter Isaacson , American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

13 " Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,” Cook said. “That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

14 " 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 , Steve Jobs

15 " Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him- the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store-he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something - a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug- he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options.
He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

16 " Einstein's was a beautiful mix of confidence and awe. "

― Walter Isaacson , American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

17 " So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

18 " 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 , Steve Jobs

19 " Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products—Android, Google Docs—are shit. [Steve Jobs] "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs

20 " Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great art science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor. "

― Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs