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Who really said it

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected

Attributed to Steve Jobs 1955–2011 · Co-founder of Apple & NeXT, chairman of Pixar
Attributed In copyright

Credited to Jobs on essentially every quote site, and squarely in character for the man who ran the Macintosh team. But no primary source pins this wording to him: Wikiquote keeps it in its unsourced pile, and the only citation trail we could follow is a 2011 quote compilation that points back to Jeffrey S. Young’s 1987 biography — a page reference nobody has produced.

Last verified 22 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected” attributed to Steve Jobs; no primary source has been produced. Wikiquote lists it as unsourced; a 2011 compilation credits Jeffrey S. Young's 1987 biography, unverified. Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Steve Jobs, and the publishers of the works in which the line is printed). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Steve Jobs — Co-founder of Apple & NeXT, chairman of Pixar. Theme: "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail, such as it is

Quote as circulated
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
Cited in
I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words, ed. George Beahm, 2011
Which credits
Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward, Jeffrey S. Young, 1987 — unverified
Wikiquote status
Listed as unsourced since March 2009

People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. Unsourced

The fuller three-sentence form as printed in George Beahm’s 2011 compilation, under the heading “Excellence.” The popular one-line version drops the opening sentence.

Wikiquote: Talk:Steve Jobs — the unsourced list

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Talk:Steve Jobs ↗ page carries this exact sentence in its “Unsourced” section, opened by an editor in March 2009 with the note that Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations. It is still sitting there — nobody has produced the reliable, precise source that would move it across.
  • It is correspondingly absent from the sourced Wikiquote article on Steve Jobs ↗, which is where quotations go once a citation is verified.
  • George Beahm’s 2011 collection I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words ↗ prints the three-sentence form under the heading “Excellence” and appends a source line pointing to Jeffrey S. Young’s 1987 biography. That is the closest thing to a citation anyone offers.
  • Young’s Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward ↗ is a real book — Scott, Foresman, first published 1987 — but the Internet Archive copy is lending-restricted and we could not search inside it, so we treat that page reference as unconfirmed rather than repeat it as fact.
In copyright

Every candidate source here is a modern publication — Young’s 1987 biography, Beahm’s 2011 compilation — so nothing about this line is in the public domain in the United States. Treat it as in-copyright and quote it briefly, with attribution.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Know a source that supports or challenges this? Add a link →

Paste a URL and we’ll check it. This doesn’t change the page — it goes to our review queue, and if it holds up we update the record with a citation.

Fact-check

Sources it gets pinned to that don’t hold

The attribution to Jobs himself may well be right. The sources attached to it online are the problem — two circulate widely and neither survives a look.

Fortune / CNNMoney, February 2008 Not in the transcript

Several sites tie the line to Jobs’s 2008 Fortune interview with Betsy Morris. The published transcript of that interview ↗ contains neither “yardstick” nor “excellence is expected.” The likeliest explanation is a misread of Beahm’s compilation, where the CNNMoney credit belongs to the quotation printed immediately before this one.

Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs (Prabhat Prakashan) Anthology, not origin

LibQuotes ↗ cites a modern quote anthology as the source. Anthologies of this kind reprint from other anthologies; citing one tells you the line was in circulation, not where it came from.

The one-sentence version

As printed in Beahm’s collection ↗ the passage opens “People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome” before reaching the yardstick line. The version that travels online is a trimmed excerpt.

The honest position: the sentiment and the phrasing are entirely Jobs-like, no rival claimant exists, and Wikiquote’s editors have nonetheless left it in the unsourced pile ↗ since 2009. Credit it to Jobs if you like — but do not attach a date or an interview to it.

Context

Why this one is hard to pin down

Jobs is one of the most heavily quoted people of the last half-century, and most of the famous lines have receipts: the Stanford commencement address is on video, the Playboy and Fortune interviews are transcribed, the internal Apple memos have been reproduced. This sentence has none of that — it surfaces fully formed in quote collections, without a stage, a date or an interviewer attached.

That pattern is the signature of a line that entered circulation through a compilation rather than a recording. It does not make the quote false. It does mean that anyone citing it with a confident year is citing the compilation, not Jobs.

No stage, no date, no interviewer — just the sentence.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Work Leadership Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Talk:Steve Jobs (unsourced list)en.wikiquote.org

Carries this exact sentence in the “Unsourced” section opened in March 2009.
Wikiquote: Steve Jobs (sourced quotations)en.wikiquote.org

The verified-citation article — the line does not appear in it.
Fortune 2008 interview, full transcriptallaboutstevejobs.com

Betsy Morris’s Fortune interview in full; contains no “yardstick” passage.
Young, Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Rewardarchive.org

The biography named as the source by later compilers; this Internet Archive copy is a 1988 Scott, Foresman printing.
I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words (Beahm, ed.)openlibrary.org

Catalogue record for the 2011 compilation that prints the fuller three-sentence form.
Steve Jobsen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 24 February 1955, died 5 October 2011; co-founder of Apple and NeXT, chairman of Pixar.

The man it’s credited to

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

1955–2011 · Co-founder of Apple & NeXT, chairman of Pixar

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976, was pushed out in the mid-1980s, built NeXT and bankrolled Pixar, then returned to Apple in 1997 to oversee the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. His reputation for demanding excellence — and for being brutal about it — is exactly why lines like this one stick to him so easily. He died on 5 October 2011, after which quote collections about him multiplied faster than anyone could source them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

Attributed to Steve Jobs. Listed as unsourced at Wikiquote, “Talk:Steve Jobs,” Unsourced section (opened March 2009). The furthest citation trail we could follow: George Beahm, ed., I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words (2011), which credits Jeffrey S. Young, Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1987) — unverified in that text.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-a-yardstick-of-quality-some-people-arent-used-to-an/

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