To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

Everybody around me had a Snapchat, and I said I would never get on it. I’m still on Instagram, you know? They convinced me to get Snapchat.

I built a company at the same time I built a career.

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

People use technology only to mean digital technology. Technology is actually everything we make.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it’s taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, ‚Let’s get out the camera and get that shot.‘ You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

While still working for others, your goal at some point must be to carve out little areas that you can operate on your own, cultivating entrepreneurial skills.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

The rich don’t work for money – the rich invent money.

I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone’s inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Google’s done a super good job on search; Apple’s done a great job on the IPod.

It is easier to go to the Internet than to go to the library, undoubtedly. But the shift from no libraries to the existence of libraries was a much greater shift than what we’ve seen with the Internet’s development.

I remember flying in, driving down 101 in a cab, and passing by all these tech companies like Yahoo! I remember thinking, ‚Maybe someday we’ll build a company. This probably isn’t it, but one day we will.‘

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

My early business ventures included growing Christmas trees and breeding birds.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

The real question for me is, do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well? And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions… If people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.

An important priority for me is a business must get their own house in order. Be or become an agent of positive change in your own enterprise and adopt responsible practices to eliminate the risks that often lie at the root of inequality and poverty.

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.

Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It’s really sad.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

We’re running the company to serve more people.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

As an entrepreneur, as an investor, I’m trying to be as educated as I can to where the progression of technological capability is going and what it does to these different categories that, me as an artist and an influencer, I can get involved and bring value.

We must ensure that technology is accessible, affordable, and adds value.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Woz is living his own life now. He hasn’t been around Apple for about five years. But what he did will go down in history.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn’t an MP3.