Walter Isaacson

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Mainly, the reason people who didn't succeed had trouble because they had trouble forming teams. They didn't know how to collaborate.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Team
Image of Walter Isaacson
I think America is really well-positioned, because we do train people to be creative and sometimes resist authority, which helps in being an innovator. I think you're going to see for the next phase of the revolution all sorts of wonderful ways of connecting art and literature and journalism into new forms of digital expression.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Art
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I think that notion of being a seeker, somebody who never felt totally fulfilled, but was always passionate about the search, that comes from the background, probably.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Thinking
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Not playing by the rules, not seeing things conventionally, that's the heart of who he [ Steve Jobs] is, and he does it in small ways of everyday rebellion just almost to assert who he is, like not putting a license plate on his car.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Jobs
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Without Steve Jobs, you would have well-designed computers, probably open and not integrated, but they wouldn't have sex appeal, they wouldn't have romance.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Jobs
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Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Research
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So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Running
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Steve has a reality distortion field.” When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Reality
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It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ...[Showing the misery of Afghanistan ran the risk of] promoting enemy propaganda...we must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harboured the terrorists responsible for killing close up to 5,000 innocent people.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: People
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for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Technology
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I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Motivational
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Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $1 a year in pay and no stock options. I make 50 cents for showing up, he liked to joke, and the other 50 cents is based on performance.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Jobs
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Let's crowd source, curate, and add royalties to books
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Book
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On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Jobs
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I was on one of my fruitarian diets" Steve Jobs recalled "I had just comeback from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge of the word 'computer', plus it would get us a head of Atari in the phone book. He told Wozniak if a better name did not hit them by the next afternoon, they would just stick with apple and they did. 1 Apr 1976
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Jobs
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One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Air
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Politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Eternity
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He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you. He put his life in my hands. So that made me do something I didn't think I could do.... If you trust him, you can do things. If he's decided that something should happen, then he's just going to make it happen. (Elizabeth Holmes)
- Walter Isaacson
Collection: Attitude