Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman, co-inventor, and investor. A pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, Jobs co-founded Apple Inc. with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. After the company's board of directors fired him in 1985, he founded NeXT the same year and purchased Pixar in 1986, becoming its chairman and majority shareholder until 2007. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as CEO, where he was closely involved with the creation and promotion of many of the company's most influential products until his resignation in 2011.

Quotes

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.
I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

Design
It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much.
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
Insanely Great!
It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I'm only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I've got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.
I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Design
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
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.
Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.