Inspirational Quotes — Design, Money, and Success
If you’ve read my book research post you can see I’ve consumed multiple Phaidon products recently in the name of research for my book — DE$IGN — A guide to wealth & success in design.
One thing I’ve definitely taken away from this research is I TOTALLY NEED FULL PAGE QUOTES! Like Picasso said: good artists copy, great artists steal. So, I’m stealing their technique and dropping some quotes throughout the book. Below are a collection of inspiring quotes I’m thinking of adding:
Design
“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”
— Paul Rand“Design is so simple. That’s why it’s so complicated.”
— Paul Rand
“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
“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.”
— Charles Eames
“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
— Charles Eames
“Do not seek praise. Seek criticism.”
— Paul Arden
“Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.”
— Massimo Vignelli
“If you do it right, it will last forever.”
— Massimo Vignelli
“There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.”
— Massimo Vignelli
“Those who don’t build must burn.”
— Ray Bradbury
I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, “No. I will solve your problem for you. And you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how. And you use it or not. That’s up to you. You’re the client. But you pay me.” And there was a clarity about the relationship that was refreshing.
— Steve Jobs on working with designer Paul Rand on the NeXT logo
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
— Steve Jobs
“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
— Steve Jobs
“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.”
— Ralf Speth
“Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.”
— Brian Reed
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
— Henry Ford
“Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.”
— John Maeda
“Design everything on the assumption that people are not heartless or stupid but marvelously capable, given the chance.”
— John Chris Jones
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Leave it better than you found it.”
— Robert Baden-Powell
“They don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes.”
— Leo McGinneva
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”
— M.C. Escher
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
— Albert Einstein
“There’s the whole Buddhist thing about the essence of a bowl being its emptiness — that’s why it’s useful. Its emptiness allows it to hold something. I guess that means that design must talk about something else. If you make design about design, you’re just stacking bowls, and that’s not what bowls are for.”
— Frank Chimero
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
— E. F. Schumacher
“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”
— Elon Musk
“No. I don’t think the Empire had Wookiees in mind when they designed it, Chewie.”
— Han Solo to Chewbacca about the Tydirium imperial shuttle they’re flying
“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”
—Martin LeBlanc, Iconfinder
“Design isn’t crafting a beautiful textured button with breathtaking animation. It’s figuring out if there’s a way to get rid of the button altogether.”
— Edward Tufte
“Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.”
— B.J. Fogg
“The soul never thinks without an image.”
— Aristotle
“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”
— David Ogilvy
“It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.”
— Paula Scher
“If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. If you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients.”
— Michael Bierut
“Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores. If the one you’re with isn’t doing the job, there’s always, always, always another.”
— Chip Kidd
“Design is not art. It is about crafting solutions to real issues.”
— Mark Boulton
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
— Pablo Picasso
Money/Wealth
“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
— Jonathan Swift
“Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.”
— Nelson Mandela
Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.
— John Wooden
“Money can’t buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy.”
— Spike Milligan
“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”
— Miguel de Cervantes
“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”
— Voltaire
“Money is the wise man’s religion.”
— Euripides
Success
The way get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
—Walt Disney
“Do what you must,
And your friends will adjust.”— Robert Brault
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
— Winston Churchill
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
— Vince Lombardi
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.”
— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle and giving 110% all the time.”
— Don Zimmer
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
— Dr. Seuss
“Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for.”
— Oliver James
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“If things go wrong, don’t go with them.”
— Roger Babson
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“Be there for others, but never leave yourself behind.”
— Dodinsky
Thanks for reading through, shoot me any quotes you think I should add!
In putting together DE$IGN — A guide to wealth & success in design, I’ve decided to share selections of content via Medium in the hopes of gaining interest as wells feedback while I’m writing the book. For more information check out the original post. If you made it this far here’s a gif:
