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It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime.
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You have to be burning with "an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right." If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.
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Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don't know any better.
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I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since.
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Don't just live a life; build one.
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Be ready to catch the ball when it is thrown by life.
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The thing that drives me and my colleagues at both Apple and Pixar is that you see something very compelling to you, and you don't quite know how to get to it, but you know, sometimes intuitively, it's within your grasp. And it's worth putting in years of your life to make it come into existence.
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What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I didn't really know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down. I was a very public failure.
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To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
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Most people do not ever pick up the phone. They never ask, and that is what separates the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You have to act, and you have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to crash and burn, because if you are afraid of failing, you will not get very far.
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Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?
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It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans.
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I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it.
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People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
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We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from those that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late sixties and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.
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At Apple, people are putting in 18-hour days. We attract a different type of person—a person who doesn’t want to wait five or ten years to have someone take a giant risk on him or her. Someone who really wants to get in a little over his head and make a little dent in the universe. We are aware that we are doing something significant. We’re here at the beginning of it and we’re able to shape how it goes.
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I don't want to fail, of course. But even though I didn't know how bad things really were, I still had a lot to think about before I said yes. I had to consider the implications for Pixar, for my family, for my reputation. I decided that I didn't really care, because this is what I want to do. If I try my best and fail, well, I've tried my best.
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You have to have a lot of passion for what you do... because if you don't, any rational person would give up.
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We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
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Whatever you do, you must never let the voice in your head control the brain in your heart.
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You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.
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Our approach is to think of companies not as businesses but as collections of people. We Apple want to qualitatively change the way people work. We don't just want to help them do word processing faster or add numbers faster. We want to change the way they can communicate with one another. We're seeing less paper flying around and more quality of communication.
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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.
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I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.