We raise our glasses to you, Sir.

Techtaffy.com editors combine six of their favorite Steve Jobs quotes…

Find out who you are

The problem with the Internet startup craze isn’t that too many people are starting companies; it’s that too many people aren’t sticking with it. That’s somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your values are.

(Apple’s one-dollar-a-year man, Fortune, 2000. You can find the article here.)

Focus and simplicity

That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

(Back to the future at Apple, Businessweek, 1998. You can find the article here.)

Creativity is just connecting things

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

(Steve Jobs: The next insanely great thing, Wired. You can read the article here.)

Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

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 others’ 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.

(Commencement Address, Stanford University, 2005. You can read the full text here.)

The Problem with Microsoft

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.

(Speaking on Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires, a television documentary about the history of the computer industry, written and produced by Robert X. Cringely, 1996)

He’d [talking about Bill Gates] be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.

(Creating Jobs, The New York Times, 1997. You can find the article here.)

 Always make a profit

HP’s primary goal was to make great products. And our primary goal here is to make the world’s best PCs — not to be the biggest or the richest. We have a second goal, which is to always make a profit — both to make some money but also so we can keep making those great products.

(The seed of Apple’s innovation, Business Week, 2004)