Kirk Lin > Kirk's Quotes

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“If you act like you can do something, then it will work.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“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.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Out job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think, he [Einstein] said.”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“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, Steve Jobs

“Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.”
― Walter Isaacson

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”
― Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

“When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him.”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life