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Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.

Walter Isaacson

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Walter Isaacson
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: May 20
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Generally
Avoid
Leaders
Leader
Velvety
Others
Bruising
Change
Forcing
Care
Polite
Take
Effective

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The Mona Lisa, to me, is the greatest emotional painting ever done. The way the smile flickers makes it a work of both art and science, because Leonardo understood optics, and the muscles of the lips, and how light strikes the eye - all of it goes into making the Mona Lisa's smile so mysterious and elusive.
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I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom.
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Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his collegues.
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Good telling of human stories is the best way to keep the Internet and World Wide Web from becoming a waste vastland.
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On Startups: I hate it when people call themselves entrepreneurs when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.
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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.
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Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.
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When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.
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Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,” Cook said. “That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.
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if you can't keep him interested, that's your fault.
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...never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.
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I think that genius comes not just from having great mental processing power. It comes from being able to, as Steve Jobs' ad said, think different.
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Steve has a reality distortion field.” When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. “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.
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More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other.
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Mainly, the reason people who didn't succeed had trouble because they had trouble forming teams. They didn't know how to collaborate.
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And if you don't have your ears open, you're not going to be able to figure out what you should be doing.
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Most of the collaborations of technology were done by teams...Collaboration is key to creativity
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I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business.
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Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius.
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I think it's really good that you have great competition among news networks, and for that matter all the networks in general. It's bringing more and more people in to watching the news.
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