Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because 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.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me. Summer 1993.

If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right. From his speech at Stanford University during graduation in the spring of 2005.

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

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.

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

Our friends up north (Microsoft) spend over five billion dollars on research and development and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple. WWDC, August 2006.

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.