Quotes by Tim Cook

“A back door is a nonstarter. It means we are all not safe. I don't support a back door for any government, ever.”

“A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.”

“All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news. We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press, but we must also help the reader.”

“Anything can change, because the smartphone revolution is still in the early stages.”

“Apple doesn't do hobbies as a general rule.”

“Apple has a culture of excellence that is, I think, so unique and so special. I'm not going to witness or permit the change of it.”

“At one point in time, you had to choose, 'Do you want to do consumer or enterprise?' But the reality today is a bit different: Enterprises are a collection of consumers.”

“Augmented reality will take some time to get right, but I do think that it's profound.”

“Companies that get confused, that think their goal is revenue or stock price or something. You have to focus on the things that lead to those.”

“Creativity is people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it.”

“Eighty percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that”

“Every time I meet Prime Minister Modi and listen to him and then see his actions, including GST, I see bold things that I don't see in any other place. I am super impressed and optimistic.”

“Everybody doesn’t want to have to be a computer scientist to protect themselves. Most people have no desire to do that.”

“Everybody in technology seems to want big numbers. Steve never got carried away with that. He focused on making the best.”

“For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.”

“France has always had a special place for Apple. This is the best place to discover and chat with all musicians, graphic designers, designers, or photographers who use our products. There is such creative energy.”

“From an app point of view, if you looked at innovation on the PC, you'd be hard pressed to find companies innovating. The list is small.”

“Graduates, your values matter. They are your north star. And work takes on new meaning when you feel you’re pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it’s just a job. And life is too short for that.”

“Honestly, we’ll compete with everybody. I love competition. As long as people invent their own stuff, I love competition.”

“Hopefully, people will look at our stance on privacy in general and know that we're not trying to operate outside of a fairly distinct line that we're drawing. I hope that people trust us to do the right thing there.”

“I am driven by great work and seeing people do incredible things and having a part in that.”

“I am very bullish on India because of its people, its culture, and the leadership. I love the culture and warmth of people.”

“I am who I am, and I'm focused on that, and being a great CEO of Apple.”

“I despise politics. There is no room for it in a company. My life is going to be way too short to deal with that.”

“I don't really think anything Microsoft does puts pressure on Apple.”

“I don't subscribe to the view some people have in the industry that you should purposefully design products that do not last that long. I don't think it is good for anyone.”

“I don't think Apple has to own a content business.”

“I don't view Apple or myself as an activist. What we do is for some things where we think we have deep knowledge, or think we do, or a strong point of view, we're not shy. We'll stand up, speak out - even when our voice shakes.”

“I have to feel myself doing what's right. If I'm the arbiter of that instead of letting the guy on TV be that or someone who doesn't know me at all, then I think that's a much better way to live.”

“I hope people remember me as a good and decent man. And if they do, then that's success.”

“I learned that focus is key. Not just in your running a company, but in your personal life as well.”

“I love museums but I don't want to live in one.”

“I personally think 3D Touch is a game changer. I find that my efficiency is way up with 3D touch because I can go through so many emails so quickly.”

“I see the Mac being a key part of Apple for the long term, and I see growth in the Mac for the long term.”

“I think it's smart for the United States to have some kind of tax revenue for international earnings - if that tax were reasonable.”

“I think of a traditional CEO as being divorced from customers. A lot of consumer company CEOs - they're not really interacting with consumers.”

“I think that some people will never buy a computer because I think now we're at the point where the iPad does what some people want to do with their PCs.”

“I think the iPhone is the best consumer product ever. That's what I feel about it. And it's become so integrated and integral to our lives, you wouldn't think about leaving home without it.”

“I think the most diverse group will produce the best product; I firmly believe that.”

“I think two people with strong points of view can appreciate each other even more.”

“I want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change.”

“I'd rather Apple cannibalize Apple than somebody else cannibalize Apple.”

“I'm excited about Augmented Reality because unlike Virtual Reality, which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what's happening presently.”

“I've always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it.”

“If you embrace that the things that you can do are limitless, you can put your ding in the universe. You can change the world.”

“If you look at iPod, iPod wasn't viewed as a success, but today it's viewed as an overnight success. The iPhone was the same way. People were writing about there's no physical keyboard. Obviously nobody would want it.”

“If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”

“In my view the tablet and the PC are different. You can do things with the tablet if you are not encumbered by the legacy of the PC.”

“In the world of cyber security, the last thing you want is to have a target painted on you.”

“Intuition is critical in virtually everything you do. But, without relentless preparation and execution, it is meaningless.”

“It gives me a lot of energy to talk to developers or meet students in classrooms who are using our technology to help learn faster and better. Watching them pursue their passion.”

“It turns out that people - in every country in the world, there's a segment of buyer that wants the best product and the best experience. And that's what we're about providing.”

“It's hard to edit. It's hard to stay focused. And yet, we know we'll only do our best work if we stay focused. And so, you know, the hardest decisions we made are all the things not to work on, frankly.”

“It's not what Apple and Beats are doing today. It's what we believe pairing the two together can produce for the future.”

“Let your joy be in your journey - not in some distant goal.”

“Let your joy be in your journey, not in some distant goal.”

“Life is fragile. We're not guaranteed a tomorrow so give it everything you've got.”

“Most business models have focused on self interest instead of user experience. Those are the kinds of problems we solve to solve.”

“Music's always been at the heart of Apple. It's deep in our DNA. We've sold Macs to musicians since the beginning of Macs.”

“My business is not reading your messages. I don’t have a business doing that. And it’s against my values to do that. I don’t want to read your private stuff.”

“My view on working with any government in the world is that there are things that you will agree upon and things that you will not. And you don't want to let the things you don't mean that you don't have any interface.”

“National security always matters, obviously. But the reality is that if you have an open door in your software for the good guys, the bad guys get in there, too.”

“Our goal has never been to make the most. It's always been to make the best.”

“Our values are that we do think that people have a right to privacy. And that our customers are not our products.”

“Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn't know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can't imagine your life without it. And you can count on Apple doing that.”

“People like things they can do now, not just think about.”

“People love our products. They love using our services. All of this, to me, equals great opportunity.”

“Price is rarely the most important thing. A cheap product might sell some units. Somebody gets it home and they feel great when they pay the money, but then they get it home and use it and the joy is gone.”

“Prior to the App Store, the chances of that happening, of somebody really young forming a company and in a period of no time really becoming a global provider of a game or something else, it really didn't happen. Now there are these success stories popping up everywhere.”

“Right to privacy is really important. You pull that brick out and another and pretty soon the house falls.”

“So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

“That has always been the objective of Apple: to do things that really enrich people's lives. That you look back on and you wonder, 'How did I live without this.”

“The iPad remains Apple’s second bestselling product – all the more reason why the iPad Pro needs to be big in every sense of the word.”

“The kind of investors we seek are long term because that's how we make our decisions.”

“The most important thing is, Do you have the courage to admit that you're wrong? And do you change? The most important thing to me as a CEO is that we keep the courage.”

“The North Star has always been the same, which for us, is about making insanely great products that really change the world in some way - enrich people's lives.”

“The pre-owned market allows us to reach customers who really want an Apple device but can't really reach that point. I think it is great for people, or otherwise, we wouldn't we doing it. If we were not proud of the product, we wouldn't be doing it.”

“The reality is, is that we love competition, at Apple. We think it makes us all better. But we want people to invent their own stuff.”

“The reality of today, from a cybersecurity point of view, is that I think some of the top people predict that the next big war will be fought on cybersecurity.”

“The right focus for the U.S. is on advanced manufacturing - something that requires innovation.”

“The sidelines are not where you want to live your life. The world needs you in the arena!”

“The way we look at manufacturing is this: the U.S.'s strategy should be to skate where the puck is going, not where it is.”

“The worst thing in the world that can happen to you if you're an engineer that has given his life to something is for someone to rip it off and put their name to it.”

“The worst thing in the world that can happen to you if you’re an engineer that has given his life to something is for someone to rip it off and put their name to it.”

“There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate – when a particular course of action just feels right.”

“There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door's for everybody - for good guys and bad guys.”

“There’s a mountain of information about us. I mean there’s so much. Anyway, I’m not an intelligence person. But I just look at it and it’s a mountain of data.”

“Think about what you're passionate about. I did not learn something early enough: if I could go back, I'd tell the younger me that there's a big difference between loving to work and loving the work.”

“This is Steve's company. This is still Steve's company. It was born that way; it's still that way. And so his spirit, I think, will always be the DNA of this company.”

“Those who try to achieve success without hard work ultimately deceive themselves-or worse-deceive others.”

“To me, this is the perfect marriage. There's no friction. There's just, we have what they need, they have what we need. And so IBM is in the process, with our help, of designing many different apps for many different verticals.”

“To whom much is given, much is expected. I do believe this. It's embedded in me.”

“To whom much is given, much is expected. I do believe this. It’s embedded in me.”

“Virtual reality sort of encloses and immerses the person into an experience that can be really cool but probably has a lower commercial interest over time. Less people will be interested in that, but there are some really cool areas there for education and gaming that we have a lot of interest in.”

“We are constantly auditing our supply chain. Making sure that safety standards are - are, you know, are the highest. We're making sure that working conditions are the highest.”

“We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.”

“We collectively, to get things done, work together as a team. Because the work really happens horizontally in our company, not vertically. Products are horizontal. It takes hardware plus software plus services to make a killer product.”

“We could build just about anything that you could dream of. But that's not the question. The thing that Beats provides us is a head start. They provide us with incredible people that don't grow on trees.”

“We didn't make the first mp3, smartphone, or tablet. But you can say we made the first modern mp3, smartphone, and tablet. And I think now we're making the first modern smartwatch.”

“We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.”

“We don't collect a lot of your data and understand every detail about your life. That's just not the business that we are in.”

“We don't really look at the stock, you know? Because for us, it's about the long term. And so we're very much focused on long-term shareholder value but not the short-term kind of stuff.”

“We generally acquire a company every three to four weeks on average. And so it's a rare month that there's not a company being bought. We typically buy for technology and really great people.”

“We have never said that we're perfect. We've said that we seek that. But we sometimes fall short.”

“We have three post-PC devices: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, the revolutionary device that defined a whole new categoryit’s outstripping the wildest of predictions.”

“We have to make sure, at Apple, that we stay true to focus, laser focus - we know we can only do great things a few times, only on a few products.”

“We have to make sure, at Apple, that we stay true to focus, laser focus – we know we can only do great things a few times, only on a few products.”

“We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.”

“We see that in the top problems in the world between haves and have-nots, generally we find that the root cause is education.”

“We shouldn't all be fixated just on what's not available. We should take a step back and look at the total that's available, because there's a mountain of information about us.”

“We think coding should be required in every school because it's as important as any kind of second language.”

“We think the government should be pushing for more encryption. That it's a great thing. You know, it's like the sun and the air and the water.”

“We try to continually push ourselves to do more and more, not just on the hardware side but also in terms of developers' tools so they can take advantage of the hardware that's there, in the best way.”

“We're very simple people at Apple. We focus on making the world's best products and enriching people's lives.”

“What all of us have to do is to make sure we are using AI in a way that is for the benefit of humanity, not to the detriment of humanity.”

“What Beats brings to Apple are guys with very rare skills. People like this aren't born every day. They're very rare. They really get music deeply.”

“When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years. It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.”

“When I think of civil liberties I think of the founding principles of the country. The freedoms that are in the First Amendment. But also the fundamental right to privacy.”

“When technological advancement can go up so exponentially, I do think there's a risk of losing sight of the fact that tech should serve humanity, not the other way around.”

“When we launch a product, we're already working on the next one. And possibly even the next, next one.”

“While infusing technology with humanity, we are trying to make sure it's used for good and also trying to foresee some of the ways it can be used in a bad way and eliminate those.”

“While our team managed the manufacturing ramp better than ever before, we could have sold many more iPhones with greater supply and we are working hard to fill orders as quickly as possible.”

“Work takes on new meaning when you feel you are pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it's just a job, and life is too short for that.”

“You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.”

“You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem.”

“You can only do so many things great, and you should cast aside everything else.”

“You don't have to choose between doing good and doing well. It's a false choice, today more than ever.”

“You have to find the intersection of doing something you're passionate about and that, at the same time, is in the service of other people. I would argue if you don't find that intersection, you're not going to be very happy.”

“You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change.”