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.

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

Computer games don’t affect kids. I mean if Pacman had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company.

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

Feedback is a business term which refers to the joy of criticizing other people’s work. This is one of the few genuine pleasures of the job, and you should milk it for all it’s worth.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

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.

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.

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

“Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’”

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”

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.

“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.”

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of Quality.”

“Virtue does not come from money, but rather from virtue comes money, and all other things good to man.”

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.

“It must be allowed to make mistakes.
It is always the mediocre people who are negative, who spend their time proving that they were not wrong”

Not because things are hard, that we do not confront. But by not confronting, we make things hard.