Larry Ellison in an interview with CNN Money¹:

I remember when Steve was my neighbor in Woodside, California, and he had no furniture. It struck me that there wasn’t furniture good enough for Steve in the world. He’d rather have nothing if he couldn’t have perfection.

And I jokingly said, “The difference between me and Steve is that I’m willing to live with the best the world can provide. With Steve that’s not always good enough.” And if you look at how he tackles building a phone, or building a laptop, he really is in pursuit of this technical and aesthetic perfection. And he just won’t compromise.

But he’s never been motivated by money. Once we were hiking, and Steve looked at me, put his right hand on my left shoulder and his left hand on my right shoulder, and said, “Larry, that’s why it’s really important that I’m your friend. See, you don’t need any more money.”

When I first read this interview, not long after it started doing the rounds, I remember thinking that it was one of those rare quotes that manages to capture someone almost perfectly; to distill someone’s essence into a soundbite without diminishing that person.

Today, a few years later and a few days after Steve Jobs passed away, I still think that. No matter how good his forthcoming autobiography is — and he was heavily involved in its writing, so it will be good — I can’t help feeling that it won’t capture the Steve Jobs that we knew quite as well as a hundred and fifty words from Larry Ellison.

I might not always agree with the direction Steve Jobs took Apple in, but I still admire him, and consider him an inspiration: proof that, sometimes, doing what you know to be right is the best thing, “common wisdom” be damned.