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Steve Jobs: Those guys think they're revolutionaries. They're not revolutionaries, we are.
Steve Wozniak: We are?
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Businessman: Steve - it is Steve, right? You say this gadget of yours is for ordinary people. What on earth would ordinary people want with computers?
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Ballmer: Bill, I don't know if it's the clothes on the floor or you, but something in here definitely needs to be hosed down.
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Steve Jobs: What is this? This is like doing business with a praying mantis. You get seduced, and then eaten alive afterwards?
Bill Gates: Get real, would ya? You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor - Xerox - who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set. Only when you get there, you realize that I got there first. I got the loot, Steve! And you're yellin'? "That's not fair. I wanted to try to steal it first." You're too late.
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Bill Gates: There may be a few... similarities.
Steve Jobs: Similarities? Similarities? Try theft.
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IBM Executive: The profits are in the computers themselves, not this software stuff.
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Mike Markkula: Steve Wozniak's employee number one, you're number two.
Steve Jobs: Wait a minute. I'm employee number one. Woz?
Steve Wozniak: Doesn't matter to me.
Steve Jobs: I'm employee number one around here.
Mike Markkula: I'm not saying anything. I wasn't implying anything.
Steve Jobs: All right, then I'll be zero. Woz, you can be number one. I'll be zero. Okay?
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Steve Jobs: Good artists copy, great artists steal.
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Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!
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Arlene: Steve, why do you care what I call the baby?
Steve Jobs: Because I don't want the baby named Rainbow! Or Orisha, or Ravi Shankar, or any other name like that.
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Bill Gates: Now, we know that IBM has set up this place to complete head-on with Apple, and that you're gearing up to come out with a personal computer that will wipe them out. So we can get you an operating system.
IBM executive: What kind of operating system?
Bill Gates: It's called DOS.
Ballmer (narrating): This is amazing. Not just amazing, it's historic. It should be taught in all the history books. Hung and framed in the National Gallery or something, because this is the instant of creation of one of the greatest fortunes in the history of the world. I mean, Bill Gates is the richest guy in the world because of what started in this room. And you wanna know what else? It wasn't exactly smoke and mirrors, but we didn't have anything! I mean, not a damn thing! Here we were, this two-bit little outfit, telling IBM we had the answer to their problems. The DOS? The Disk Operating System? To make all those zillion IBM computers compute? We didn't remotely own anything like what Bill was selling them. Nada. Zip.
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Ballmer: You're the only guy I know who pays strippers to put their clothes on!
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Ballmer: Bill, you're gonna have to come up with a better pickup line because asking her her SAT score is NOT going to do it!
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Tim Patterson: Why do you want to buy my operating system?
Paul Allen: We think we might be able to, uh, mess with it, and, uh, resell it.
Tim Patterson: Who to?
Paul Allen: We've got some people we're sorta talkin' to. Some of 'em don't really want it known what we're doin' with 'em and they made us sign a secrecy agreement.
Tim Patterson: And you're offering us...?
Paul Allen: Fifty thousand.
Tim Patterson: Dollars?
Paul Allen: Dollars.
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[first lines]
Steve Jobs: I don't want you to think of this as just a film - some process of converting electrons and magnetic impulses into shapes and figures and sounds. No. Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or poet. That's how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing.
Ridley Scott: Right. Well, Steven, at the moment I'm a touch more worried about getting light on the actress. Do you know what I mean?
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Steve Jobs: What's he talking about, the Altair? I never had a problem with the Altair - 'til I tried to use it!
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Chris Larson: [laughs] Eureka! I created a program that can play blackjack.
Bill Gates: Chris, you've been here two days, and you're into blackjack?
Chris Larson: Yeah, so?
Bill Gates: So we've got work to do.
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Steve Jobs: Maybe in a past life I was a poet - or an artist.
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Bill Gates: Think they're hookers?
Paul Allen: Either that or motel inspectors. I saw one of them go into the room next to ours about a dozen times yesterday.
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Bill Gates: I don't understand - how does the hardware handle the mouse/cursor display?
Gilmore: No, it's all right here in the software...
Steve Jobs: Enough!
[angrily mashes button, closing the Macintosh display]
Gilmore: Sorry, Steve.
Steve Jobs: There's no use torturing our guests with what they can't have.
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Steve Jobs: You are putting poison into your body.
Steve Wozniak: That's french fries, man. You know, all-American food?
Steve Jobs: That's what I'm talking about.
Steve Wozniak: Come on, I can't eat like you do. Eatin' fruit all the time? That's weird.
Steve Jobs: It's not weird. It's pure.
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Steve Wozniak: Where's your beard?
Steve Jobs: In the bathroom sink. I shaved it off.
Steve Wozniak: Well, how come?
Steve Jobs: 'Cause banks don't like beards.
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Steve Jobs: What, like I have to have a moustache?
Steve Wozniak: A suit! You actually bought a suit!
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Steve Jobs: You're stealing from us!
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Paul Allen: Bill, why did you tell them we had an operating system? We don't have a thing to sell them now, you know? We're dead!
Bill Gates: We're not dead, you're going to give us that miracle, right, Paul?
Paul Allen: Huh? Oh yeah, right...
Bill Gates: Come on, I thought you said you knew a guy we could buy an operating system from!
Paul Allen: I said I "sort of" know one.
Bill Gates: Sort of? Don't tell me "sort of"! I just told IBM!
Paul Allen: Sort of...
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Steve Jobs: Are you sure this thing is even gonna work?
Steve Wozniak: If it doesn't catch fire.
Steve Jobs: Don't even joke.
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Steve Jobs: Maybe fun is just fragments of existence with better packaging.
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Steve Wozniak: Microsoft? Nobody I knew ever heard of Microsoft. Or Bill Gates. I mean, they were nobodies. But then we were all nobodies, which was perfect for us. Because all the respectable, straight-arrow guys were busy doing what they always do, which is be respectable. Which meant the rest of us could run around acting like crazies, which is what we did best. I miss those days.
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Steve Wozniak: I've always wondered what it was like for Steve. Ever since we were kids, everything he ever did was somewhere between a religious experience and some sort of crusade, like with this
[Macintosh]
Steve Wozniak: commercial...
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Bill Gates: Success is a menace. It fools smart people into thinking they can't lose.
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John Sculley: Steve, I'm worried. About what's happening. All the "them versus us" stuff. Macintosh versus Apple II.
Steve Jobs: You don't understand, John. People need a cause.
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[last lines]
Bill Gates: It's going to be very interesting, you know... you and me, working together?
Steve Jobs: Yeah. Yeah, it sure is.
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Bill Gates: Honest to God, Ballmer. You have no culture.
Ballmer: Oh yeah, like you go around reading Plato! You're the only guy I know who can make furniture out of Playboys. Look, you got enough to make a chair. You don't have to worry about 'em moving around, 'cause they're all stuck together...
[laughs at his own joke]
Ballmer: They're all stuck together!
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Mac Designer: Yes, I'm listening! I am so sick of your abusiveness. That's all you know. Tearing people down, throwing tantrums. You miserable son of a bitch.
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Steve Wozniak: Steve... you demolished that guy.
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Steve Jobs: Are you a virgin?
Mike Markkula: Steve, come on.
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Steve Jobs: How old were you when you first got laid?
Job Applicant: I don't - I don't...
Mike Markkula: Steve, will you leave him alone?
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Bill Gates: Steve, all cars have steering wheels, but no one tries to claim that the steering wheel was their invention.
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Bill Gates: You know how you survive? You make people need you. You survive because you make them need what you have. And then they have no where else to go.
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Steve Wozniak: [about their first prototype] They hated it.
Steve Jobs: Woo hoo!
[hugging him, dancing about]
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Steve Wozniak: Sometimes not knowing how crazy something is, is a good thing.
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Steve Wozniak: [to Jobs] All I'm doing now is being a brake pedal for you as you're heading for the wall.
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Bill Gates: I think I had a date tonight with Ann.
Ballmer: I thought she was away on business.
Bill Gates: She is.
Ballmer: Then how can you have a date?
Bill Gates: Well, I go to a movie here, and then she goes to the same movie in Denver, and then we talk on the phone about it afterwards.
Ballmer: Jeez Bill, I hate to see what happens when you two have sex.
[cackling]
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Steve Jobs: [seeing first version of Microsoft Windows] I made a mistake. I trusted. I believed. "Family?" Maybe a Mafia family. You turn your back, and you get whacked.
Pirates of Silicon Valley Quotes
Extended Reading
