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You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi
As I would not be a slave, I would not be a master.
- Abraham Lincoln
| | | design | |
Less is more.
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1947
We have no art. We do everything as well as possible.
- Balinese villager
One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in.
- Francis Jourdain
But what if we are dealing with fools? (On design juries)
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects.
- Adolf Loos
For the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable.
- Aristotle
Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.
- Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.
- Paul Rand
If the house is white all over, the shapes of things stand out without any possible ambiguity; the volume of things will appear clear-cut; the colour of things is categorical. The white of whitewash is absolute. Everything stands out against it and is displayed absolutely: black against white, frank and truthful. Put in objects that are unsuitable or in bad taste, and you can't miss them. You might call it the X-ray of beauty, a permanent court of judgement, the eye of truth.
- Le Corbusier
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
- William Morris
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everyone is a lot of people to design for.
- Joshua Rose
If we build in the desert, let the house know the desert and the desert be proud of the house.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Designers are not highly paid cake decorators.
- Spencer Murrell
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Leonardo da Vinci
There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself; you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The 'stunt typographer' learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
- The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible
by Beatrice Warde. London 1955.
I've found that engineers who don't care about how things look on the outside generally don't care too much about how they work on the inside either.
- dasmegabyte, on Slashdot
| | | engineering | |
I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuities. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat may come along and make a fortuitous life preserver. This is not to say, though, that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
The most powerful designs are always the result of a continuous process of
simplification and refinement.
- Kevin Mullet
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked....A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
- J. Gall
Absolute certainty about the fail-proofness of a design can never be attained, for we can never be certain
that we have been exhaustive in asking questions about its future.
- Henry Petroski
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
- Marcus Aurelius, circa 150 AD
Meanwhile, those of us who can compute can hardly be expected to keep writing papers saying 'I can do the following useless calculation in two seconds', and indeed what editor would publish them?
- Oliver Atkin
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- C. A. R. Hoare
A well-designed and humane interface does not need to be split into
beginner and expert subsystems.
- Jef Raskin
The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.
- C.A.R. Hoare in The Emperor's Old Clothes, Turing Award Lecture (27 October 1980)
Simplicity of device is always the sign of the master, whether in science or in art.
- Richard C. Maclaurin
..in all the things,
the supreme excellence is simplicity.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases.
The terrible temptation to tweak should be resisted unless the payoff is really noticeable.
- Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy
| | | innovation | |
Dare to be naive.
- Buckminster Fuller
Don't worry about people stealing an idea;
if it's original, you'll have to shove it down their throats.
- Howard Aiken
If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Mahatma Ghandi
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
- Vaclav Havel
Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization.
- Jon Bentley
A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment.
An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning
over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul.
What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.
- Max Planck
If you leave nothing to chance, you won't do much wrong,
but you won't do much either
- anonymous
The truth will set you free, but first it will probably piss you off.
- Anonymous
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed,
it's the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
| | | money | |
Too many people spend money they haven't earned,
to buy things they don't want,
to impress people they don't like.
- Will Rogers
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
then this is the best season of your life.
- Wu-Men
Simplicity is the essence of happiness.
- Cedric Bledsoe
Be wary of any enterprise that requires new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
| | | politics | |
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
- Mahatma Ghandi
But it is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected... Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is
a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the
bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by
legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A
Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our
government was founded.
- Abraham Lincoln Speech, 18 Dec. 1840
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
- U.S. President (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Theodore Roosevelt
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States
When you argue with a fool, chances are he is doing just the same.
- anonymous
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
- Bertrand Russell
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
- Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
- Bertrand Russell
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
- Bertrand Russell
No man treats a motor car as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, he does not say, "You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go." He attempts to find out what is wrong and set it right.
- Bertrand Russell
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
- Bertrand Russell
Let us not pretend to deny in our philosophy what we know in our hearts to be true.
- E.O. Wilson, 1992
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
- Bertrand Russell
| | | religion | |
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
- Stephen Roberts
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
- Don Hirschberg
People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.... This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.
- Martin Luther
Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power.
- Salmon Rushdie
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
- Epicurus
I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
- Thomas Jefferson
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
- Bertrand Russell
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- Douglas Adams
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg
An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
- Albert Einstein
Why do you write to me "God should punish the English"?
I have no close connection to either one or the other.
I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their
numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible;
in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
- Albert Einstein, Letter to Edgar Meyer colleague Jan 2, 1915
The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.
- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
The United States is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles and beliefs.
- President George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States
| | | belief | |
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
- Bertrand Russell
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
- Bertrand Russell
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard
such departure as a criticism of themselves.
- Bertrand Russell
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Bertrand Russell
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
- Bertrand Russell
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
- Bertrand Russell
| | | education | |
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
- Bertrand Russell
| | | work | |
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
- Bertrand Russell
| | | leaders | |
First, it was not a strip bar, it was an erotic club. And second, what can I say? I'm a night owl.
- M. Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC
I am a great mayor; I am an upstanding Christian man; I am an
intelligent man; I am a deeply educated man; I am a humble man.
- M. Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC
I don't want to just sit here blaming Congress. I mean, we're all in this together.
- President George Bush Jr., 11/20/91 to news anchor Bill Stuart of KCNC-TV, Denver.
I think the Congress should be blamed.
- several minutes later, to Warner Saunders of WMAQ-TV, Chicago
I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
- President George Bush Jr., Sep. 29, 2000
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