Steve Jobs Quotes

The difference between the top performers and the average or mediocre performers is not a great, massive difference. It is just a tiny difference because the top performers do things just a tiny bit.

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.

If you look at the world-class performers at the top of the game, their numbers are just exceptional and that is the level he is at.

Any complex activity, if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a 'genius'.

A good actor is like a racehorse or a Ferrari. If a cylinder is missing on a Chevy, it's doesn't matter that much. But if something's not working right on a Ferrari, it makes a big difference. It's the three percent that makes the difference between good and great. It's a fine line. If you're not there, it's very painful.

When you're standing around for an hour doing stand up it's no big deal but when you're standing around watching a show for an hour - it's a big difference. It's annoying - your feet hurt, your back hurts - it's just not the most comfortable way to see stand-up comedy.

There is a big difference between being good and being great.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

I'm still a really shitty programmer, but I know enough to hack a prototype together.

The only real difference between one organization and another is the performance of its people.

It would've been amazing [to work as programmer]. You're good at numbers, you're good with people, you like to wear shorts in the summertime.

When somebody has learned how to program a computer ... You're joining a group of people who can do incredible things. They can make the computer do anything they can imagine.

'Is that really the best you can say? An average-looking boy? An awful lot of boys are average-looking, S.Q.!' And poor S.Q., he just kept arguing that 'this boy was especially average-looking.' " ~ Kate Wetherall, The Mysterious Benedict Society

What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.

What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.

The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was make-believe, while to hime make-believe and true were exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that they had had their dinners.

Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

Most importantly, how impressive can I be to people that bought tickets, where they never feel, "It was pretty good." If anyone thinks my show was "pretty good," then I've completely failed. I think every comic should think that.

Celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts.

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

The situation is so much better for programmers today - a cheap used PC, a linux CD, and an internet account, and you have all the tools necessary to work your way to any level of programming skill you want to shoot for.

The world is so average, it doesn't take much to be a genius, just do a little extra

I'd rather him (Grover Alexander) pitch a crucial game for me drunk, then anyone I've ever known sober. He was that good.