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Did Steve Jobs make following statement:

"We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas"

Andrew Grimm
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vartec
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1 Answers1

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From the 1996 PBS television special "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires."

Triumph of the Nerds [Source]

Part 3 - Great Artists Steal:

Steve Jobs:
"Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing.

I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas ehm and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

[Watch video clip]

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Oliver_C
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  • Full transcript can be found on PBS site here http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html – going Sep 03 '12 at 23:28
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    Did Picasso actually say that? – BCLC Jun 30 '15 at 16:49
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    @BCLC The wikiquote page suggests that the attribution to Picasso is accurate, though I'm not sure I'd consider a reference to InfoWorld from 1989 to be a great source. However, it appears that he has said similar things in the past, which takes away more of my doubt that he actually said it. Example: "When there's anything to steal, I steal" https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso – Ten Bitcomb Mar 17 '16 at 23:32