Walter Isaacson is an American writer and journalist. He is the CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.
Isaacson has also been the chairman and CEO of CNN and the managing editor of Time Magazine. However, this article comes from Walter being the author behind the biography of Steve Jobs.
These are the best Walter Isaacson quotes; many of which are taken from the Steve Jobs biography:
30 Walter Isaacson Quotes
1. “In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.” – Walter Isaacson
2. “Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.” – Walter Isaacson
3. “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.” – Walter Isaacson
4. “If you act like you can do something, then it will work.” – Walter Isaacson
5. “The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.”” – Walter Isaacson
6. “Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature’s phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace.” – Walter Isaacson
7. “Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs. He made a point of being brutally honest.” – Walter Isaacson
8. “Reality has an odd habit of catching up with satire.” – Walter Isaacson
9. “I had no idea what i wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.” – Walter Isaacson
10th of 30 Walter Isaacson Quotes
10. “If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things” – Walter Isaacson
11. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” – Walter Isaacson
12. “To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.” – Walter Isaacson
13. “One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.” – Walter Isaacson
14. “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
15. “I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important.” – Walter Isaacson
16. “If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much.” – Walter Isaacson
17. “The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently.” – Walter Isaacson
18. “What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.” – Walter Isaacson
19. “People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.” – Walter Isaacson
20th of 30 Walter Isaacson Quotes
20. “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.” – Walter Isaacson
21. “I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.” – Walter Isaacson
22. “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
23. “The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.” – Walter Isaacson
24. “You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.” – Walter Isaacson
25. “Picasso had a saying – ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” – Walter Isaacson
26th of 30 Walter Isaacson Quotes
26. “Form follows emotion.” – Walter Isaacson
27. “I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.” – Walter Isaacson
28. “The best and most innovative products don’t always win…(it’s an) aesthetic flaw in how the universe worked.” – Walter Isaacson
29. “There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth.” – Walter Isaacson
30. “Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.” – Walter Isaacson
Summary
Thanks for viewing this collection of Walter Isaacson quotes! Don’t forget to share them on social media.
