Quotes by Walter Isaacson

“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 th...”

“Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make it.”

“Simply handing over your iPod to a friend, your blind date, or the total stranger sitting next to you on the plane opens you up like a book." (Steven Levy)”

“Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great," he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a s...”

“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 dont. ...”

“Religion was at it's best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. "The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith, rather than living like Jesus ...”

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

“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.”

“Nevertheless, by dint of his personality and controlling instincts, Jobs was soon playing a stronger role. He spewed out a stream of ideas - some reasonable, others wacky - about what Pixar's hardw...”

“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 f...”

“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 netwo...”

“Just because you can't act EVERYWHERE doesn't mean you don't act ANYWHERE. Madeleine Albright”

“As much as Henry Kissinger wanted to attribute historical movement to impersonal forces, he too conceded to "the difference personalities make".”

“Form follows emotion”

“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.”

“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 t...”

“What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because theyre dragging you down. Theyre turning you into Microsoft. Theyre causing you to turn out products that are adequate ...”

“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 th...”

“One of Job's great strengths was knowing how to focus. " Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do, " he said. " That's true for companies, and it's true for products.”

“One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to "have skin in the game" and take the payout in stock that he would agree to hold for at least a y...”