Key Quotes
On Simplicity
"True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity."
Multiple sources
"Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product."
Objectified, 2009
"There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is."
Multiple sources
"Just because something is uncluttered doesn't mean it's good. It can be cold, it can be soulless."
Desert Island Discs, 2025
On Inevitability
"So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think 'of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?' It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve."
Multiple sources
"Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural. It's so hard!"
Objectified, 2009
"We strive to define objects that appear effortless... so simple... there could be no rational alternative."
Designed by Apple in California, 2016
On Care
"Above all, I have come to feel sure that human beings sense care in the same way we sense carelessness."
Multiple sources
"If you expect me to buy something where all I can sense is carelessness, actually I think that is personally offensive. It's offensive culturally, because it shows a disregard for our fellow human."
Design Museum, London, 2014
"There's something so powerful in making something that is a kind of celebration of being human. That communicates: I see you, I thought about this, and I cared."
Stripe Sessions, 2025
"The most important thing is that you actually care, that you do something to the very best of your ability."
AppleInsider, 2013
"Most of our world is just carelessly made. I wanted to change that."
Multiple sources
"Products are a form of communication. They demonstrate your value system, what you care about."
Multiple sources
On Innovation vs. Novelty
"'Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard."
Multiple sources
"Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see... rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better."
Multiple sources
On the Creative Process
"There's something about the creative process that I still find remarkable, that you know, on the Tuesday there's not an idea. It's just Tuesday. And on Wednesday, there's an idea."
New Yorker TechFest, 2017
"A great idea cannot be predicted, but you can increase the probability of having a good idea, which is the reason I pay so much attention to the creative process."
McKinsey Quarterly, 2023
"Ideas, by definition, are always fragile. If they were resolved, they wouldn't be ideas. They would be products that were ready to ship."
Multiple sources
"I take enormous encouragement, and massive solace, in reminding myself how many times I've been in this position, where I feel that there are no ideas and I feel horribly stuck."
McKinsey Quarterly, 2023
"We shouldn't be afraid to fail. If we are not failing we are not pushing."
Multiple sources
"80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work."
Multiple sources
"A lot of mistakes are made when you frame a problem, because you could already be dismissing 60-70 percent of the potential ideas."
Multiple sources
On Design's Purpose
"A beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly."
Vanity Fair, 2014
"There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively."
Multiple sources
"A designer... it's the way you look at the world... you're constantly looking at something and thinking, 'Why is it like that?'"
Objectified, 2009
"We're important, and we deserve at least a sincere effort."
New Yorker TechFest, 2017
"You can express gratitude to the species through what you make."
Stripe Sessions, 2025
"What we make stands testament to who we are."
Stripe Sessions, 2025
On Steve Jobs
"Our curiosity united us. It formed the basis of our joyful and productive collaboration."
WSJ Magazine, 2021
"We had lunch together most days and spent our afternoons in the sanctuary of the design studio. Those were some of the happiest, most creative and joyful times of my life."
Multiple sources
"He better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished."
Steve Jobs memorial, 2011
"For Steve, wanting to learn was far more important than wanting to be right."
Fortune, 2026
"I wonder what Steve would do? I think, 'Ha! I'm doing exactly what you didn't want.'"
Desert Island Discs, 2025
On Responsibility
"Even if you're innocent in your intention, if you're involved in something that has poor consequences, you need to own it."
Stripe Sessions, 2025
"The nature of innovation is there will be unpredicted consequences... Just because the not-so-positive consequences weren't intended, that doesn't matter relative to how I feel responsible."
Desert Island Discs, 2025
"I think joy in humans has been missing... sometimes joy gets confused with being trivial."
Stripe Sessions, 2025
"The devices should make us happy, more peaceful, and less anxious."
On the OpenAI device
On Focus & Process
"There are measures of focus, and one of them is how often you say no."
New Yorker TechFest, 2017
"The art of focus is even if it is something you care passionately about, focus means ignoring it, putting it to the side."
New Yorker TechFest, 2017
"Design is very much about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, the final result suffers."
Multiple sources
"It's a completely false notion that there is inherent value in what is made by hand, or an inherent lack of value in what is made by machine."
Met Gala, 2016