The Law Is Strange But It Is the Law

Here's a fabulous collection of Strange Laws in the United States that can date back very far. Most of these laws remain in the books today, even if rarely enforced.

Laws shown here have been collected from sources believed to be reliable, however, there are no guarantees. Some might have been repealed some time ago while others may have been amended to make them less ludicrous

I suppose a collection of Philippine strange laws would be longer than this considering the penchant of our legislators to be funny  wit or without.

 Here are some of my legal interpretations and juridical notes on these Strange Laws:

In Texas, it's against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession. The way my dentist uses his pliers is criminal. In Philadelphia, you can't put pretzels in bags based on an Act of 1760.   Having a brick in your bag is considered a deadly weapon. They must have heard of my mother in law’s pretzels Alaska law says that you can't look at a moose from an airplane. It has to be face to face. In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to raise alligators in your home. Should apply to the Philippine Congress In Miami, it is forbidden to imitate an animal. Should apply to Congress, too. It is against the law to mispronounce the name of the State of Arkansas in that State. Ang daming nahuling Pinoy dito who insist on pronouncing it as Arkansas as spelled  instead of Arkansaw In Illinois, the law is that a car must be driven with the steering wheel. This law is for the prevention of backseat driving. California law prohibits a woman from driving a car while dressed in a housecoat. In California the dress code is less is good. Bikinis are appropriate. In Memphis, Tennessee, a woman is not to drive a car unless a man warns approaching motorists or pedestrians by walking in front of the car that is being driven. This is chauvinist. Equal rights dictate that women should do the same for men drivers In Tennessee, it is against the law to drive a car while sleeping.  But I’ve always dreamt of driving a Ferrari In New York, it is against the law for a blind person to drive an automobile.  They must be accompanied by a seeing eye dog tethered to the hood In West Virginia, only babies can ride in a baby carriage.  Adult prams are still to be introduced in the market In Georgia, it is against the law to slap a man on the back or front.  In Italy it is considered a complement to slap a pretty woman’s butt but the front should be with consent A barber is not to advertise prices in the State of Georgia.   Try negotiating the price with someone holding a sharp razor In Louisiana, a bill was introduced years ago in the State House of Representatives that fixed a ceiling on haircuts for bald men of 25 cents.       Barbers should be allowed to charge more. It takes a longer time to cut hair of bald men because it takes time to look for hair to cut In Oklahoma, no baseball team can hit the ball over the fence or out of a ballpark. No wonder they don’t have a baseball team of note In Rochester, Michigan, the law is that anyone bathing in public must have the bathing suit inspected by the police  Some jobs have the nicest perks

In Kentucky, it's the law that a person must take a bath once a year. At second bath they issue a warning In Utah, birds have the right of way on any public highway.  Reduces highway pizza In Ohio, one must have a license to keep a bear. If you can’t afford one you just have to grin and bear it. In Tennessee, a law exists which prohibits the sale of bologna (sandwich meat) on Sunday. Gay parties...”never on Sunday” In Virginia, the Code of 1930 has a statute which prohibits corrupt practices or bribery by any person other than political candidates. How handy for politicians In Providence, Rhode Island, it is against the law to jump off a bridge. Your suicide letter must contain permission from your Mom In the State of Kansas, you're not allowed to drive a buffalo through a street. It’s okay to drive a Mustang In Florida, it is against the law to put livestock on a school bus.  An extension of the old segregation busing act In New Jersey, cabbage can't be sold on Sunday. Germans can’t have their favourite meals on Sundays...another racist law In Galveston, Texas, it is illegal to have a camel run loose in the street. But you could walk it a mile on a leash.

In North Carolina, it is against the law for dogs and cats to fight.  It causes a pandemonium when it rains cats and dogs In Singapore, it is illegal to chew gum. Betel nut is the chew of choice In Cleveland, Ohio, it is unlawful to leave chewing gum in public places. Sticking it in private parts is allowed In Virginia, chickens cannot lay eggs before 8:00 a.m., and must be done before 4:00 p.m. But chicks may be laid at anytime In New York, it is against the law for children to pick up or collect cigarette and cigar butts.   Adults should pick them up themselves In Massachusetts, it is against the law to put tomato e s in clam chowder. Clams are optional

In Washington State, you can't carry a concealed weapon that is over 6 feet in length. It would be difficult to carry and conceal anything that big anyway In San Francisco, there is an ordinance, which bans the picking up and throwing of used confetti. It would be unhygienic and can spread yellow fever (Cory’s confetti) In Kentucky, it is illegal for a merchant to force a person into his place of business for the purpose of making a sale. Their version of the anti-entrapment statute It is against the law in Connecticut for a man to write love letters to a girl whose mother or father has forbidden the relationship. But the mother is fair game In Michigan, married couples must live together or be imprisoned. It is a fate worse than imprisonment In the state of Colorado, a pet cat, if loose, must have a taillight    Makes it easier for tomcats on the prowl for loose cats

In Phoenix, Arizona, you can't walk through a hotel lobby with spurs on. You may with galoshes on In California, a law created in 1925 makes it illegal to wiggle while dancing. Wiggling your ears is just a misdemeanour In Utah, daylight must be visible between dancing couples. The guy who composed “Dancing In the Dark” must be from out of state In Michigan, it is against the law for a lady to lift her skirt more than 6 inches while walking through a mud puddle. They haven’t heard of the mini nor the micro-mini skirts In North Carolina, it is against the law for a rabbit to race down the street. But Hefner’s bunnies are allowed to parade in the streets In Georgia, it's against the law to spread a false rumour.  Ricky Lo can get away with it if it is a blind item In West Virginia, one can't cook sauerkraut or cabbage due to the odours and the offence is subject to imprisonment.  A racist law that must have been enacted at the height of WWII. Somewhere in the US a law against cooking “tuyo” in an apartment building must also exist In Missouri, a man must have a permit to shave. He must have a shaver too The law states that more than 3000 sheep cannot be herded down Hollywood Blvd. at any one time.   More applicable to Australia or New Zealand. Hollywood Blvd. has wolves in sheep’s clothing In Texas, it is still a "hanging offense" to steal cattle.  Texans love a hanging

OccupyWall Street – What It’s All About

Occupy Wall Street or OWS is a response to the discomfiture that Americans feel on the aftermath of economic and financial debacles which led to the loss of money, homes and jobs of the ordinary Americans, I think...I’m not sure.

 At its present status it may well just be an expression of disgust, helplessness, discomfort for the vagaries of life that visited them. Also, at this point in time there doesn’t seem to be any identifiable objectives advocated by the protestors. What one sees at Zuccotti Park is a mosaic of disconnected plaints and advocacies in an omnibus protest movement. One group would be crying for blood against corporate graft, CEO largesse, disenfranchisement of rights while others speak out for environment, toxic threats in food products and then groups that lambast government programs, spiritual healing, small enterprises and even a woman with a vagina hand puppet striking conversations with anyone caring to do so but advocating nothing...as if saying that all these are vagina talk. The protests, despite the seeming willy-nilly directions it is taking is becoming a burgeoning groundswell, a large amorphous mass, fearsome because of the magnitude it has taken and all the more threatening because of its ambiguity.

Critics have dismissed OWS as nuisance because of its lack of purpose...political purpose. This could be fomented by the left who delight in any display of anarchy in the democratic system; or the political opposition ...something similar to the Tea Party movement which by now has been outstripped OWS. Plausible but within the realm of possibility.

People love to ascribe meaning to events going around us even if there seems to be no apparent ones. Some would liken it as meaningless theatrics...sort of a social  theatre of the absurd, others legitimize it as valid protests to the sins of the corporate and financial worlds with Wall Street as its metonymy. Others, still said that it is a test of how effective the Egyptian model of protest is with the use of social networks and texting to rally the people which is somewhat similar to the EDSA 2 revolution where celfones played a vital role. But testing for what and for whom?

Is present day America responding like third world rabble? Is this what Thoreau referred to as men leading lives in quiet desperation? Is this the nation who once stood tall and proud in the community of nations? The representatives of 99% of America all milling around Zuccotti square in senseless anticipation of an inspiration or perhaps something apocalyptic.  One wonders whether this is symptomatic of the impending demise of the US...soon to become the late great American nation.   

A friend from the US, Ed de Guzman, suggests that it may be a scheme from the left to foment unrest and transform it into a class war. He says that the US is already in the brink of one. The elitist group of Corporate America and Wall Street who the proponents of “making money out of money” a dubious productive endeavour whose true worth or no worth has been exposed by the recent debacles of the financial and economic world. Wealth generated by the system is merely notional and evanescent. In retrospect it does look criminal to put at risk society and nations in a la la land of promises fuelled by dreams concocted by those who plot the wholesale defrauding of people’s security and well being. It paved the way to perdition for millions of people around the globe with the US taking the brunt of it. It is indeed in the category of a heinous crime, a vile abominable act that should be pulled and uprooted from where it grows and interred where it will never surface again to bedevil mankind. He refers to the verse of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Queen Mab which goes...

“Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;
And where its venomed exhalations spread
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay
Quenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness
Surpassing fabled Eden.”

He says further that it makes for interesting discussion when seen against what Steve Jobs, the recent deceased icon of the technological world had to say about a few men’s propensity for speaking out in outrage against the world that we have been heir to but without our permission. Steve Jobs said...

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. .
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Seen from this light the OWS incident may not be so nonsensical at all. There has to be change even if this is led by the anti-heroes aptly described by Steve Jobs . The misfits, the rebels and the trouble makers now find themselves as part of the oppressed and the victimized 99%. They no longer are the minority but they are the new leaders and heroes in a desolate landscape of desperate humans, a new breed of leaders who are not timid to complain and complain vehemently. They pick up the cudgels for the rest of shell shocked society who are frozen in disbelief that they have become so destitute. The misfits, the rebels and the crazies spearhead the OWS movement. It all sounds like anarchy and disorganized mayhem but it empathically makes the point that the present system must go and that a new order must surface from the debris that litters Zuccotti Park leading to a balanced commercial system, a responsible and risk averse safeguarding of people’s rights, liberties and privileges rather than disenfranchising and defrauding them of their provenance.

If change is actually achieved, the transition period seems worrisome as it is an aftermath of radical changes and would put societies and institutions in turmoil. Is it going to be a violent upheaval or a peaceful transition? Would new ideologies emerge, would the left assert itself and how much intervention from foreign powers will come about? I envision all sorts of scenarios all of them make me shudder.

I reflect on what the woman who had a vagina hand puppet accosting people and striking conversations with them. It might be her way of saying “...hey guys, we’re all fucked up.”

Philippines and Brazil: Declining Catholic Populations l

 

Decline In Catholic Populations:
Philippines and Brazil, Lessons In Parallel

Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world. It has long surpassed the numbers of the congregation enjoyed by European countries from whence Catholicism has had roots.
Of late there seems to be trouble in this Catholic dominant country due to the rate of decline of its membership caused by the slow rate of conversions and the alarming increase of defections to other religious sects mainly to the Pentecostals and other Protestant denominations.
A new study conducted by Brazil's top research institute found that the youth seek out other beliefs from the religion that has been foisted on them at birth. This represents a sea change among a younger generation of Brazilians. It is a fresh challenge for church leaders who are already at grips with the problems of low conversions as well as losses by attrition of parishioners across Latin America. From a robust share of religious affiliation similar to that of the Philippines, Brazil’s Catholic membership has bottomed out at 68% last year. With the rate of decline of the Church in Brazil, Mexico is poised to taking the place of Brazil as the largest Catholic country. Although Mexico is also in a decline its membership is still at high 84% almost similar to that of the Philippines. There seems to be a correlation between a strong Catholic population to the economic level of a country. The lower the economic standing of a country is the stronger the hold to its Catholic congregation. This is a hypothesis that needs validation.
For the Philippine Catholic Church there are lessons to be learned here in parallel. A similar kind of heritage is shared as colonies of Iberian countries and one could speculate that the same oppression of the “indios” existed with the secular government and  similarly, abuses experienced from the religious authority. These may have been influential factors that formed their present socio-cultural character. The Brazilians and Filipinos may have similar predispositions towards rebelliousness to an oppressive colonial government. The oppressive colonial government and the abusive religious practices of that time are merged, and perceived as one and the same. With the passing of Spain’s secular rule, religion, is the only remnant of a past hurt and may be burdened with carryover antagonism. The aforesaid may be deemed speculative but in some instances, where it may apply, they may be relevant and explicatory. Our archetypal backgrounds are identical, and that being the case, our reactions and responses to stimuli will not vary too much. Factors that are deemed contributory to Brazil’s decline in its Catholic population may also be present and at work in the Philippine situation. 
 Other similarities are in the development of the counter forces that have contributed to the Catholic Church’s decline. Namely, these are the aggressive Protestant missionary activities such as Pentecostal efforts at conversion which had opportunities among the poor because of their easy to practice attraction, a media distracted youth, the improvement of life conditions making everyone in awe of technological bling blings, the rigidness of the Catholic stance towards contraception and the existence of more attractive social alternatives other than church events and activities. Add to all these are the promiscuous scandals of Catholic clerics. All these events are helped out by highly efficient telecommunication networks that have a hot housing effect on the development of trends. 
In Brazil, a growing middle class which started in the early eighties was a major factor in the decline trend. It seemed that improved living conditions added to the secularization of the public as well as in the rejection of the Catholic Church. It is a curious fact because the middle class has always been the bulwark of morality and that they tend to stay religious more than any other demographic grouping. Sociologists tend to conclude that the hedonistic inclination of a society is an offshoot of material prosperity. More than defections, rejection of any kind of faith or godlessness seems to be the more worrisome trend that has been spurred by prosperity.
Another phenomenon which seems different from ours is that in Brazil it is believed that the Catholic decline was sparked by a “female revolution.” A foundation study discovered that Catholic women, instead of giving up entirely on religion, are largely going to traditional Protestant denominations such as the Presbyterians or Methodists, which are viewed by many as less patriarchal.

There is definitely a downtrend in the Catholic population in countries where they have been dominant. The decline has historical roots which have started from the Reformation in Martin Luther’s time. Initially, Counter-reformation efforts of the Catholic Church were effective but the early gains of the Reformation really hurt the Church in terms of the number of defections and in terms of political influence in the European continent. Through time, despite the Counter- reformation efforts, the decline continued. Some blame it on the focus of the counter-reformation which were on the outward efforts to stem the external bleeding but not in instituting change  within a church that has been blamed for being stodgy and incapable of adapting to outward demands of changing times and changing people’s perspectives and attitudes. The convening of the Council of Trent and the much more recent Vatican II would be the counter-reformation responses that would be of some consequence, but, it seemed to be a case of doing too little too late. What transpired in Europe some time ago and contemporary examples like Brazil and other Latin American countries may very well be the template that is repeating itself in Catholic countries outside the Americas and the European continent.  

 The Catholic Church remains as one of the bastions of Christianity. Its strength is based on discipline and constancy of its practice which at times may also be a reason for disenchantment of some of the flock. Those who have been steeped in Catholic practice, its lore, the observance of sacraments, its unrelenting insistence on its dogma and doctrine are proud to be part of this tradition and heritage and would be difficult to lure them out of the fold. The younger generation who have been waylaid into joining the born again groups have been lured by the "easy to practice" and "interpret as you like" denominations. These enticements plus the fact that this is something new and that peers have joined are hard to ignore. The next step after joining these new groups is complete abandonment of the faith or godlessness. It is so easy to junk a faith that was so easy to acquire and practice because of the shallowness of the joiners' convictions. Strength of faith comes from a high regard of a religion that is steeped in lore and tradition that one fully understands and one that is constant in its stand and consistent in its actions.

Its strength is in its traditional observances of its rites, its practices and the unwavering constancy by which it abides by its doctrines and dogmas, but, it is this very strength that may have been instrumental in causing disenchantment to those who have defected from its fold.
Despite the fact that this has been happening from long years ago and patterns are easily recognized and many lessons from observation and hindsight derived from what has transpired in other countries from early times to the contemporary, the Church may not have learned from these. Perhaps they may have, but, there are no easy solutions to this dilemma that faces the Catholic hierarchy. Addressing the problems and applying solutions to most of them would be tantamount to turning against its long held essential principles.

Steve Jobs : What He Leaves Us

 

Steve Jobs is gone. He has left us with a lot of toys and indispensable gadgets to remember him by. A technically excellent person, an innovator, a free-wheeling genius who challenged convention, tore down boiler-plated wisdom, created a workplace where inspiration for excellence was the word. 


From some of the memorable quotes ascribed to this great man one can catch a glimpse his beliefs on relationships, his regard of competition (Microsoft, the Japanese), his unique management style, approach to marketing, his lifestyle and philosophical musings.


Truly an iconoclast, he debunks some of the more established principles in marketing such as consumer orientation. He believes that consumers don’t know what they want and it is up to the marketer to show the consumer the product that they will want. This is contrary to what established marketers of consumer products inculcate to all their marketing cadets upon their entry. He doesn’t trust the consumer to know what they want. The only time they would know is when you show it to them.


He thinks that market research is tedious and slow; before the marketer can decide what to sell the consumer has already changed its mind and wants something else. Having been a market researcher, I couldn’t help but consider seriously his not so flattering view of my erstwhile profession.  The best retort I could have is to say that it is arguable and may not apply to most fast moving consumer goods. However, it provoked me to summon up and review the raison d’etres of market research momentarily.


A marvellous rugged individualist he frowned upon copycats and those without a pioneering spirit he remarked; “Why join the navy when you can be a pirate.” A frivolous thought and yet so intriguing...beckoning to explore treasure islands of new notions and challenges.  He also expressed a long time plaint by the parents of talented young graduates in business schools, who couldn’t understand, how with all the investment they made on their children and the time spent on cultivating business acumen, end up selling soap or in his quote, selling sugared water.  This further reinforces the disdain he had about formal and regimented education and lauds those who dare to be different unfettered with the self imposed limits that convention insists on. In his youth he delved into eastern mysticism, even learned calligraphy and experimented with LSD.
His philosophical musings about mortality is inspirational. The transitoriness of our existence should make us set aside vanity, pride and the fear of being embarrassed and of being a failure; all these fall by the wayside at death. Then, shouldn’t we follow our heart and our intuition? he asked...everything else is secondary. 


What struck me as gold leafed wisdom are his thoughts on man management. After going through a thorough recruitment intensive interviews,  he vested trust on those he has selected and gave them as much space as possible where they can let loose their imagination and talent in a carefully nurtured environment conducive to extracting the best out of people. He demands excellence on his chosen few. He said that his job is not to be easy on people but to make them better.  What is remarkable about Steve Jobs is his concern about the team that he built and would not allow the retrenchment of people from his company which is really contrary to any hardnosed businessman’s logical and instinctive response to a crisis. He is responsible for a multibillion dollar business and yet runs it like a Mom and Pop store where loyalty, trust and confidence are given premium over the bottom line. It probably was the reason why he was ousted from a company that he founded because Apple became a public company and the professional management guys taken in to help manage the business where not comfortable with how he chose to run the business. 


To Steve Jobs the product is everything. He sets aside the conventional procedure of learning first what the consumer wants and desires then produce a product to match that need. His approach is to select an idea which has been winnowed from a thousand others generated by his enormous brain trust of more than a hundred of wildly imaginative crazed bunch, all in search of “insanely great products” and with high focus harness and apply every available resource to come up with a marvellous creation, a god’s handiwork . 


He once remarked that he was as proud of what they didn’t do as he is of what they actually do. The thousands of ideas churned out by his brilliant product development team is the result of long hours of diligent hard work. Most of the ideas are brilliancies by themselves, but, are all set aside once the brightest gem of an idea is recognized. The last words uttered as imprimatur of the completion of a new product is “Click. Boom. Amazing!”
 
Steve Jobs did not have kind words to his main competitor, Bill Gates. He thinks that Bill is not capable of original ideas and that Microsoft is a company without class and taste and does not bring much culture to their products.  The Japanese are even less regarded as he considers them as wasted fish washed ashore.

I guess what sums up his core conviction is the urgency by which one should live our evanescent life and living it with quality minutes, to use a basketball game phrase, since...“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life.”

Just now the Internet is replete with Steve Jobs items. Reprints of earlier articles on Steve, pictures of him, anecdotes and quotations that are beginning to grow at dizzying rate. 


Here are a few quotes culled from the early posts in the internet.




On Work Attitude

They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. (this actually reiterates my oft-repeated mantra of “ubiquitous evangelism” in companies)”

 “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

On Facing Mortality

“Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. 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.”

Life is brief, and then you die, you know?"

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

On Accomplishment

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”

 “I want to put a ding in the universe.”

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

On Competiton

“The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They’re just like dead fish washing up on the shores.”

“Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.”

“Bill Gates‘d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”

On Putting Together A Team

“The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.”

“Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.
So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.”

“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”

“We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place – the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.”

“I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple.
My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.”

“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.

On Research

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

Product Development

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

“We’ve gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time.”

“The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”

“Insanely Great!” (referring to his products)

“It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.”

“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”

 “You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

 “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

“Click. Boom. Amazing!”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

 “It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.
We just want to make great products. (I think he means “insanely great products!”

“So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.”

On Excellence

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life.

And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”

On Being Differrent

“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

“It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.”

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Early Rebuffs

“I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.”

“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.”

 “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”

On Business Principles

 “I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”

 “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

 “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

 “Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could — I’m searching for the right word — could, could die.”

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

“That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder."

“Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simple.”     

"I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.”

Innovation

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

(quotes gathered by Federico Viticci)