‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’: The best Steve Jobs quotes

Steve Jobs’ passing will leave a hole in the hearts of tech fans. He was revered for his industry-changing devices and progressive ideas, with fans hanging onto his every word at Apple events.

In his famous Stanford commencement speech Jobs urged eager students to “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish”.

Steven Paul Jobs helped to shape the modern world of tech and he will be remembered for more than the quotes listed below.

1985 — Playboy magazine

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn’t be ours anymore. When we finally presented it at the shareholders’ meeting, everyone in the auditorium stood up and gave it a 5-minute ovation. What was incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though none of us could believe that we’d actually finished it. Everyone started crying.”

At almost every Apple product launch

“One more thing …”

1996 — Wired

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light – that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

Other Jobs quotes

So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know — just explore things.

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It’s very character-building.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Death…the single best invention of Life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

US President Barack Obama may have put it best. “The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”