Quotes from Walter Isaacson

In two days he saw Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and the management of their Wall Street Journal; Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and the top executives at the New York Times; and executives at Time, Fortune, and other Time Inc. magazines. "I would love to help quality journalism," he later said. "We can't depend on bloggers for our news.

You always have to keep pushing to innovate.

Everything you've ever done in your life is shit," Jobs said, "so why don't you come work for me?

I think Henry Kissinger grew up with that odd mix of ego and insecurity that comes from being the smartest kid in the class. From really knowing you're more awesomely intelligent than anybody else, but also being the guy who got beaten up for being Jewish.

the Macintosh lacked a fan, another example of Jobs's dogmatic stubbornness. Fans, he felt, detracted from the calm of a computer. This caused many component failures and earned the Macintosh the nickname "the beige toaster," which did not enhance its popularity.

The sexual act of coitus and the body parts employed for it are so repulsive that, if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornment of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.

Sculley found Jobs as memorable as his machine. He seemed more a showman than a businessman. Every move seemed calculated, as if it was rehearsed, to create an occasion of the moment.

Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change. Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible. And he created a corporation crammed with A players.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and "People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.

Knowing that great conceptions are worth little without precision execution

A physicist is one who's concerned with the truth," he later said. "An engineer is one who's concerned with getting the job done.

Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. "There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat," he said. "That's crazy.

Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging, said Ive. I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.

Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling, according to Amelio. He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.

he never finished any of the works he began because, so sublime was his idea of art, he saw faults even in the things that to others seemed miracles.

Falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do," Einstein scribbled on the letter, "but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.

In other words, the idea for the iPad actually came before, and helped to shape, the birth of the iPhone. 

Einstein was asked what the next war would look like. "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought," he answered, "but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks.

Jobs had always been an extremely opinionated eater, with a tendency to instantly judge any food as either fantastic or terrible. He could taste two avocados that most mortals would find indistinguishable, and declare that one was the best avocado ever grown and the other inedible.

Innovation requires articulation.

When he was turning thirty, Jobs had used a metaphor about record albums. He was musing about why folks over thirty develop rigid thought patterns and tend to be less innovative. People get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them, he said. At age forty-five, Jobs was now about to get out of his groove.

Leonardo became known in Milan not only for his talents but also for his good looks, muscular build, and gentle personal style. "He was a man of outstanding beauty and infinite grace," Vasari said of him. "He was striking and handsome, and his great presence brought comfort to the most troubled soul.

It's better to be a pirate than to join the navy.