Mission
Connecting the work to a purpose and a long-term direction.
Leaders who emphasize mission explain why the work matters and where it is headed. They tie today's priorities to a longer arc, and they will give up a short-term win that pulls away from it.
Quotes are tagged by what they are about, not by who said them. A quote here is not a rating of the speaker.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
Verified sourceThe Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination · Watch at 11:41 · Harvard Gazette
11:41 of 23:51All quotes from this speech →
Instead of working for a living, think of it as your life's work.
Verified source2009 Commencement Address at Oregon State University · Watch at 0:30 · Oregon State University on YouTube
We learned that we were not just a chip or a technology company. Nvidia was really a company at the intersection of technology and art.
Verified source2009 Commencement Address at Oregon State University · Watch at 3:22 · Oregon State University on YouTube
Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.
Verified sourceInaugural Address · Watch at 10:04 · John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
10:04 of 15:11All quotes from this speech →
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
Verified sourceInaugural Address · Watch at 10:59 · John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
10:59 of 15:11All quotes from this speech →
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it.
Verified sourceInaugural Address · Watch at 13:03 · John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
13:03 of 15:11All quotes from this speech →
AI can't decide which problems are worth solving. It can't make the hard judgments when the data is not there. It can't take responsibility for the outcomes.
Verified source2026 Commencement Address at MIT · Watch at 11:24 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology on YouTube
The world does not just need people who know how to use powerful tools. It needs people who know what to use them for, people with a sense of purpose, judgment, courage.
Verified source2026 Commencement Address at MIT · Watch at 11:54 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology on YouTube
The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.
Verified source2017 Commencement Address at Harvard University · Watch at 5:50 · Harvard University on YouTube
Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.
Verified source2017 Commencement Address at Harvard University · Watch at 6:14 · Harvard University on YouTube
You see, my hope was never to build a company, but to make an impact.
Verified source2017 Commencement Address at Harvard University · Watch at 8:41 · Harvard University on YouTube
It's good to be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision will get called crazy, even if you end up right.
Verified source2017 Commencement Address at Harvard University · Watch at 12:18 · Harvard University on YouTube
Let's do big things, not only to create progress, but to create purpose.
Verified source2017 Commencement Address at Harvard University · Watch at 14:23 · Harvard University on YouTube
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
SourceThe Gettysburg Address (1863) · via Wikiquote
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
SourceThe House Divided speech (1858) · via Wikiquote
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
SourceKnox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005) · via Wikiquote
I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.
SourceResponse when he was asked whether he believed in God, at his interview with Rolling Stone magazine. March 27, 2014. · via Wikiquote
The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.
SourceGeneral Orders · National Archives on Founders Online
My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than can be reasonably expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you probably can never do under any other circumstances.
SourceEncouraging his men to re-enlist in the army · Mount Vernon Ladies' Association on George Washington's Mount Vernon
All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity.
SourceLetter to Catherine Macaulay Graham · National Archives on Founders Online
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
SourceMy Life and Work (1922) · via Wikiquote
We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
SourceJeffrey Bezos, Washington Post’s next owner, aims for a new ‘golden era’ at the newspaper. September 2013 · via Wikiquote
To help the Einstein and da Vinci of our time do their life's work.
Source2023 Commencement Address at National Taiwan University · Watch at 3:18 · Alive Industries on YouTube
Strategic retreat, sacrifice, deciding what to give up is at the core, the very core of success.
Source2023 Commencement Address at National Taiwan University · Watch at 19:00 · Alive Industries on YouTube
Build something worthy of your education, your potential, and the people who believed in you long before the world did.
Source2026 Commencement Address at Carnegie Mellon University · Watch at 17:51 · Carnegie Mellon University on YouTube
Connectivity just can't be a privilege for people in the richest countries. We believe that connecting everyone in the world is one of the great challenges of our generation, and that's why we are happy to play whatever small part in that that we can.
SourceSource: 120 Mark Zuckerberg Famous Entrepreneurship & Inspirational Quotes · via Wikiquote
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.
SourceOn the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Summer 1993) · via Wikiquote
And 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. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
SourceAs quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in BusinessWeek (12 October 2004) · via Wikiquote
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.
SourceInterview with the New York Times (5 June 2007) · via Wikiquote
Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
SourceThe Quotable Walt Disney (2001) · via Wikiquote
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
SourceThe Quotable Walt Disney (2001) · via Wikiquote
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.
On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we're going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.
Through every victory and every setback, I've insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn't meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.
Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.
Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.
In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil.
When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.
We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.
I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.
The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy - even beyond the market opportunities - that's something that appropriately ought to be done.
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.
Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.
I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It's a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that's what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.
The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we're going to take a step back and think about what's most likely to achieve that goal.
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.
I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.
If you don't have sustainable energy, you have unsustainable energy. The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.
The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it's going to become multiplanetary, or it's going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there's going to be an extinction event.
It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible, and that window could be open for a long time - hopefully it is - or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now.
Obviously Tesla is about helping solve the consumption of energy in a sustainable manner, but you need the production of energy in a sustainable manner.
I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.
In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization.
What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.
If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.
My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there.
The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.
Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
My vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online.
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
Our philosophy is that we want to be an ecosystem. Our philosophy is to empower others to sell, empower others to service, making sure the other people are more powerful than us. With our technology, our innovation, our partners - 10 million small business sellers - they can compete with Microsoft and IBM.
I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.
If you want to invest in us, we believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. If they don't want to buy that, that's fine. If they regret, they can sell us.
I even don't dare to watch our stock price, because this is what other people think who you are. I dare not watch it. I think, let the market take care of themselves; we should take care of the business.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
Alibaba spends money on improving the products and services, not on kickbacks. That's a good thing. It's called a value system, and because of that, we get more and more small- to medium-sized companies to support us in China.
The most important thing is to make the technology inclusive - make the world change. Next, pay attention to those people who are 30 years old, because those are the internet generation. They will change the world; they are the builders of the world.
Alibaba is an ecosystem that helps small business to grow.
I tell the government, if people have no jobs, you are in trouble. Government will be in trouble. My job is to help more people have jobs.
My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.
Our philosophy is, using internet technology, we can make every company become Amazon.
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.
I don't think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you're willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn't work. If you're going to invent, it means you're going to experiment, and if you're going to experiment, you're going to fail, and if you're going to fail, you have to think long term.
When it comes to space, I see it as my job, I'm building infrastructure the hard way. I'm using my resources to put in place heavy lifting infrastructure so the next generation of people can have a dynamic, entrepreneurial explosion into space.
A life of stasis would be population control, combined with energy rationing. That is the stasis world that you live in if you stay. And even with improvements in efficiency, you'll still have to ration energy. That, to me, doesn't sound like a very exciting civilization for our grandchildren's grandchildren to live in.
No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it's government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.
The vision is to figure out how there can really be dynamic entrepreneurialism in space.
The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.
I don't know all the future steps, but I know one of them: we need to build a low-cost, highly operable, reusable launch vehicle. No matter which path we take, it has to include that gate, and so that's why that's Blue Origin's mission.
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we'll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.
Two kids in their dorm room can't start anything important in space today. That's why I want to take the assets I have from Amazon and translate that into the heavy-lifting infrastructure that will allow the next generation to have dynamic entrepreneurialism in space, to build that transportation network.
We fly to 106 kilometers. We've always had as our mission that we always wanted to fly above the Karman line because we didn't want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you're an astronaut or not.
If you're changing the world, you're working on important things. You're excited to get up in the morning.
It really matters whether people are working on generating clean energy or improving transportation or making the Internet work better and all those things. And small groups of people can have a really huge impact.
Lots of companies don't succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.
My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they're having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we're doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.
If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach.
We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren't that many things people use twice a day.
We're at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity... Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That's boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don't exist.
We have a mantra: don't be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.
Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful.
Leaders don't look backwards to condemn what has already been done; they look forward to create a better future.
Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happy. Listen to them. Make them happy. But don't rely on them to create the future road map for your product or service. That's your job.
Make sure you are the boss. I don't think I would encourage executives that work for me to blog. There can be only 1 public vision for an organization.
Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.
By giving people the power to share, we're making the world more transparent.
People don't care about what someone says about you in a movie - or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people's life better, then that's something that's really good.
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.
When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.
My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don't care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that - building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.
Our mission is to connect every person in the world. You don't do that by having a service people pay for.
The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.
The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.
It's really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.
Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn't smooth. You'll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don't believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don't give up.
We're running the company to serve more people.
There are good examples of companies - Coca-Cola is one - that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.
Bill Gates has always been a mentor and inspiration for me even before I knew him. Just growing up, I admired how Microsoft was mission-focused.
In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people's perspectives... I really try and live the mission of the company and... keep everything else in my life extremely simple.
The connectivity declaration is about uniting the whole industry - a lot of companies that typically compete very fiercely - to push in a coherent direction.
When we are thinking about stuff like embeds, we are not thinking about how we are competing with YouTube. We are thinking about how are we going to make it more useful for people to share stuff on Facebook.
We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money.
We talk about this concept of openness and transparency as the high-level ideal that we're moving towards at Facebook. The way that we get there is by empowering people to share and connect. The combination of those two things leads the world to become more open.
There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn't how we've approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.
What really motivates people at Facebook is building something that's worthwhile, that they're going to be proud to show to friends and family.
A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.
What we figured out was that in order to get everyone in the world to have basic access to the Internet, that's a problem that's probably billions of dollars. Or maybe low tens of billions. With the right innovation, that's actually within the range of affordability.
A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: 'If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?'
If you go through some big corporate change, it's just not going to be the same. If we sold to Yahoo, they would have done something different; if you want to continue your vision of the company, then don't sell because there's inevitably going to be some change.
When I started Facebook from my dorm room in 2004, the idea that my roommates and I talked about all the time was a world that was more open.
Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community.
We want to make it so that anyone, anywhere - a child growing up in rural India who never had a computer - can go to a store, get a phone, get online, and get access to all of the same things that you and I appreciate about the Internet.
We started off as this platform inside Facebook; and we were pretty clear from the beginning that that wasn't where it was going to end up. A lot of people saw it and asked, 'Why is Facebook trying to get all these applications inside Facebook when the web is clearly the platform?' And we actually agreed with that.
I'm trying to make the world a more open place.
Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.
The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open.
I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world... If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.
While some doubted that connecting the world was actually important, we were building. While others doubted that this would be sustainable, you were forming lasting connections. We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today.
It's a juicy thing to say we're building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it's so clearly the wrong strategy for us.
No matter who we are or what we look like or what we may believe, it is both possible and, more importantly, it becomes powerful to come together in common purpose and common effort.
The goal of my shows, my interviews, my business, my philanthropy, all of it, whatever ventures I might pursue, would be to make clear that what unites us is ultimately far more redeeming and compelling than anything that separates me.
Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.
My whole reason for creating a network is literally to bring little pieces of light. It's to continue to spread little pieces of light in the world, to illuminate the possibility of the human spirit.
From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better.
I've never gone into business to make money. Every Virgin product and service has been made into a reality to make a positive difference in people's lives. And by focusing on the happiness of our customers, we have been able to build a successful group of companies.
Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It's also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.
There's no point in starting a business unless you're going to make a dramatic difference to other people's lives. So if you've got an idea that's gonna make a big difference to other people's lives, then just get on and do it.
Can you imagine what a different world we will live in when businesses do what's right for the communities and the environment in everything they do?
A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren't proud of what you're doing, why should anybody else be?
We are going to transform Britain's rail system from the worst in the world to the best. If you can do a few things like that, when the body gives out, you can say you've lived a good life.
It's a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur's metric for success. It's not, and nor should it be.
As more airlines consolidated and grew larger and more focused on the bottom line, flying in the U.S. became an awful experience. Despite moves to block our airline from flying, Virgin America began service in August 2007 - with the goal of making flying good again.
Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that's what a number of us are trying to do.
When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives.
The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform.
To me, Microsoft is about empowerment... we are the original democratizing force, putting a PC in every home and every desk.
I think reconceptualizing Microsoft as a devices and services company is absolutely what our vision is all about. Office 365 and Azure on the services side are representative of it.
We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.
My ambition with connectivity is not to fly balloons in the national airspace of other countries, but my dream is to be able to enable the local entrepreneurs to have low-cost connectivity solutions.
One thing we've talked a lot about, even in the first leadership meeting, was, what's the purpose of our leadership team? The framework we came up with is the notion that our purpose is to bring clarity, alignment and intensity.
What matters is 'Have you done a better job of making our experiences feel like home on Windows?' That's our real goal, and that's what we're going to stay focused on.
We want to be able to service our customers more, like an Internet service. Our goal is to run one of the largest Internet services that enables people to use Windows on an everyday basis.
You've got to remember even the Apple regeneration started with colorful iMacs. So let us first get the colorful iMacs. I think with what we're doing with Lumia, we're at that stage. I want to do good devices that people like, and then we will go on to doing the next thing and the next thing.
The unique value that Microsoft can add is around productivity and platforms. Productivity is broadly something we can uniquely do.
We want to build intelligence that augments human abilities and experiences.
At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.
We're not in hardware for hardware's sake. We're in hardware to be able to express all our platform and productivity software in a way that's unique.
At the core of the products we build, I want to think about productivity centered around people.
Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.
I want to put a ding in the universe.
Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.
We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life.
What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.
It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building companies or if they're just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don't really want to build a company, they won't luck into it. That's because it's so hard that if you don't have a passion, you'll give up.
Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
This revolution, the information revoultion, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It's very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now?
We've demonstrated a strong track record of being very disciplined with the use of our cash. We don't let it burn a hole in our pocket, we don't allow it to motivate us to do stupid acquisitions. And so I think that we'd like to continue to keep our powder dry, because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.
I've always wanted to tell a story about Lincoln. I saw a paternal father figure; I saw someone who was completely, stubbornly committed to his ideals, to his vision.
Lincoln's leadership is based on a number of precepts, but my favorite one is that he acted in the name, and for the good, of the people.
The thing which attracted me to Google and to the Internet in general is that it's a great equalizer. I've always been struck by the fact that Google search worked the same, as long as you had access to a computer with connectivity, if you're a rural kid anywhere or a professor at Stanford or Harvard.
For me, it matters that we drive technology as an equalizing force, as an enabler for everyone around the world. Which is why I do want Google to see, push, and invest more in making sure computing is more accessible, connectivity is more accessible.
When Larry and Sergey founded Google Search, one of the things that struck me is that it was available for everyone to use. We deeply desire our services to work for everyone. And that inherently means we have to work with partners. That is the thesis underlying everything we do.
The core of what Google is about is bringing information to people.
One of the great things about an open system like Android is it addresses all ends of the spectrum. Getting great low-cost computing devices at scale to the developing world is especially meaningful to me.
We need to bring Android and Chrome to every screen that matters for users, which is why we focused on phone, wearables, car, television, laptops, and even your workplace.
Google is all about information. So the notion of using and presenting information in the right point at the right time to users is what, in essence, describes Google.
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.
We're very simple people at Apple. We focus on making the world's best products and enriching people's lives.
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.
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.
You don't have to choose between doing good and doing well. It's a false choice, today more than ever.
You can only do so many things great, and you should cast aside everything else.
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.
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.
People should have values, so by extension, a company should. And one of the things you do is give back. So how do you give back? We give back through our work in the environment, in running the company on renewable energy. We give back in job creation.
For us, the most important thing we can do is raise people up - that is, either by giving the ability to do things they could not otherwise do, allow them to create things they couldn't otherwise create. It's about giving them tools; it is about empowering people.
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.
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.
Apple doesn't do hobbies as a general rule.
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 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.
Our goal has never been to make the most. It's always been to make the best.
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 Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can't, and if we can't own the key technologies, we don't do it.
Everybody in technology seems to want big numbers. Steve never got carried away with that. He focused on making the best.
Our values are that we do think that people have a right to privacy. And that our customers are not our products.
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.
The kind of investors we seek are long term because that's how we make our decisions.
It's not what Apple and Beats are doing today. It's what we believe pairing the two together can produce for the future.
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?'
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.
Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.
We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.
Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
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