The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends

Let’s not be narrow, nasty, and negative.

A great mind becomes a great fortune.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Anyway, one of our biggest challenges, and the one I think John Sculley and I should be judged on in five to ten years, is making Apple an incredibly great 10 or 20 billion-dollar company. ‘Will it still have the spirit it does today?’ We’re charting new territory.

The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians. Some are better than others, but they all consider that an important part of their life. I don’t believe that the best people in any of these fields see themselves as one branch of a forked tree. I just don’t see that. People bring these things together a lot.

Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stone at the quarry.

As you are growing and changing, the more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you that it thinks you are, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to go, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” Click to tweet And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.

It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they’re rare.

One of my role models is Bob Dylan. As I grew up, I learned the lyrics to all his songs and watched him never stand still. If you look at the artists, if they get really good, it always occurs to them at some point that they can do this one thing for the rest of their lives, and they can be really successful to the outside world but not really be successful to themselves. That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure, they’re still artists.

Look at the way artists work. They’re not typically the most ‘balanced’ people in the world. Now, yes, we have a few workaholics here who are trying to escape other things, of course. But the majority of people out here have made very conscious decisions; they really have.

What I do see is a small group of people who are artists and care more about their art than they do about almost anything else. It’s more important than finding a girlfriend, it’s more important… than cooking a meal, it’s more important than joining the Marines, it’s more important than whatever.

I don’t think that most of the really best people that I’ve worked with worked with computers for the sake of working with computers. They worked with computers because they are the medium that is best capable of transmitting some feeling that you have, that you want to share with other people.

To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can't stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do 'anything.' If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.

I wouldn't say 'most' people are prone to negativity. I think it's probably that most people allow negativity to color their thinking, depending on circumstances, but I also believe most people make the necessary efforts to return to positive thinking as quickly as possible.

The more you recognize and express gratitude for the things you have, the more you will have to express gratitude for.

When you choose to be pleasant and positive in the way you treat others, you have also chosen, in most cases, how you are going to be treated by others.

When you focus on problems, you get more problems. When you focus on possibilities, you have more opportunities.

When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.

To raise positive kids, we as parents must identify the qualities necessary for success, convince our children that they have the potential for success, and show them how to stake their claims in life.

You don't drown by falling in water. You only drown if you stay there.

That's exactly the way parents develop positive, successful kids. Don't look for the flaws, warts, and blemishes. Look for the gold, not for the dirt; the good, not the bad. Look for the positive aspects of life. Like everything else, the more good qualities we look for in our children, the more good qualities we are going to find.

It is not your aptitude, but your attitude, that determines your altitude.

If you can dream it, you can achieve it.