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Steve Jobs Quotes: Returning to Apple
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.
This company is in shambles, and I don’t have time to wet-nurse the board. So I need all of you to resign. Or else I’m going to resign and not come back on Monday. [Said to Apple’s Board of Directors upon returning to the company and being appointed interim CEO in 1997]
John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place — which was making great computers for people to use.
The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament. [1997, when Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy]
I make 50 cents for showing up… and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.
Funny enough, 20 years after we started Apple, there was nobody building computers for people again. You know? They were trying to sell consumers last year’s corporate computers. We said, “Well, these are our roots. This is why we’re here. The world doesn’t need another Dell or Compaq. They need an Apple.”
The reason I went back to Apple is that I feel like the world would be a better place with Apple in it than not. And it’s hard to imagine the world without Apple now.
