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My Favourite Inspirational Quotes on Life and Design

by Olegs Belousovs • Luglio 22, 2015

My collection of random famous (and not) quotes, taken from various books, articles, and said by parents/friends, on the topics of life, work, and design.

The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.

— Jim Barksdale

To understand is to know what to do.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

— Thomas Edison

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

Everybody is interesting when they are interested in something.

— Amy Poehler

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

— André Gide

You can do anything, but not everything.

— David Allen

Non lo so quale sia la chiave del successo, ma la chiave per il fallimento è nel cercare di accontentare tutti.

— Bill Cosby

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.

— Warren Buffet

The most important things in life aren’t things.

— Anthony J. D’Angelo

Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.

— Milton Erickson

The beginning is the half of every action.

— Greek Proverb

What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.

— Ray Eames

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.

— Eugene Delacroix

When there’s nothing, you can do anything.

— Shimon Peres

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.

— Émile Zola

…there is nothing new under the sun.

— Bible

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.

— African Proverb

When the wind of change blows, some people build walls, others build windmills.

— Chinese Proverb

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.

— Shunryu Suzuki

It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.

— Sankofa

The good life consists in enjoying the creativity of others, and in sharing our own, not just in having our basic needs met.

— Tim O'Reilly

Being right keeps you in place, being wrong forces you to explore.

— Steven Johnson

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

— John Lennon

When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.

— Alexander Den Heijer

Leave something for someone but don’t leave someone for something.

— Enid Blyton

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

— Lao Tzu

Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make decision when you are sad.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

View obstacles as opportunities for growth.

— Unknown

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, For the want of a shoe the horse was lost, For the want of a horse the rider was lost, For the want of a rider the battle was lost, For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

— Benjamin Franklin

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

— Warren Buffet

Comparison is the death of joy.

— Mark Twain

As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

— John Archibald Wheeler

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

— Burrhus Frederic Skinner

It is difficult to judge beauty: beauty is an enigma.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

— Henry David Thoreau

Gran parte dello stress deriva da impegni – presi con se stessi o con gli altri – gestiti in modo non adeguato.

— David Allen

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

— Gretchen Rubin

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

— Abraham Lincoln

Life is too short to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.

— Grace Hopper

Fall seven times and stand up eight.

— Japanese Proverb

An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

— Ernst Friedrich Schumacher

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

— John Lennon

Do not judge me by my successes; judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.

— Nelson Mandela

…a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention…

— Herbert A. Simon

Data explains, stories inspire.

— Paul Kenny

Design is like air, you only notice it when it’s bad.

— Unknown

What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.

— Unknown

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

— Winston Churchill

Time is the only resource we have that is nonrenewable.

— Porter Gale

Men have become the tools of their tools.

— Henry David Thoreau

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

— Carl Jung

Work to become, not to acquire.

— Elbert Hubbard

Designer can design a solution to a problem, but they can’t design a solution to a disagreement.

— Mike Monteiro

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

— Leo Tolstoy

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

— Peter Drucker

Diciamo di ammazzare il tempo come se, purtroppo, non fosse il tempo ad ammazzare noi.

— Alphonse Allais

Always in motion is the future.

— Yoda

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.

— Bill Cosby

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

— Neil Postman

Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

— Paul Valery

You can only organize something if you understand how it works.

— John Maeda

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

— Jimi Hendrix

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

— Harry S. Truman

Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.

— William Edwards Deming

La conoscenza non è sufficiente, dobbiamo applicarla. La volontà non è abbastanza, dobbiamo agire.

— Bruce Lee

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

— Nelson Mandela

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

— Seneca

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

— Ernst Friedrich Schumacher

The best defense is a good offense.

— Unknown

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.

— Kenneth Tynan

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Waiting for inspiration is like standing at the airport waiting for a train.

— Leigh Michaels

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

— Vincent Van Gogh

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

— Albert Einstein

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.

— Eric Hoffer

Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.

— Clayton Christensen

If everything is important, then nothing is.

— Patrick Lencioni

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

— Aristotle

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

— Will Rogers

The real risk is in not changing. I have to feel that I’m after something. If I make money, fine. But I’d rather be striving. It’s the striving, man, it’s that I want.

— John Coltrane

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

— D. H. Lawrence

Everywhere is a walking distance if you have the time

— Steven Wright

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

— Harrington Emerson

Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn.

— Austin Kleon

La motivazione è il carburante del lavoro intellettuale.

— Unknown

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

— William James

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

— Gretchen Rubin

If you get, give. If you learn, teach.

— Maya Angelou

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

— Benjamin Franklin

If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose the intuition to notice the beauty.

— Jay O’Callahan

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

— Albert Einstein

When you stop moving, the music stops.

— Andrew Weinreich

The best design is the simplest one that works.

— Albert Einstein

What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.

— Margaret Mead

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

When you are tired of saying it, they are starting to hear it.

— Jeff Weiner

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

— Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The days are long, but the years are short.

— Gretchen Rubin

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The future is a journey, not a destination.

— Bruce Sterling

Those who tell the stories rule society.

— Plato

The days are long, but the years are short.

— Gretchen Rubin

There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.

— George Shine

It’s better to see once than hear a hundred times.

— Russian Proverb

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.

— Stephen R. Covey

Don’t criticize unless you can do better.

— Donald A. Norman

You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Believe in yourself and stop trying to convince others.

— James De La Vega

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

— Aristotle

If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose the intuition to notice the beauty.

— Jay O’Callahan

You are as great as the cause that you serve and as young as your dreams.

— Shimon Peres

Quit picking fights and go make something!

— Austin Kleon

You can’t TRY to do things, you must simply DO them.

— Ray Bradbury

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Everything popular is wrong.

— Oscar Wilde

If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it.

— George Pólya

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

— Albert Einstein

Hell is other people.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.

— Pablo Picasso

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.

— Frank Zappa

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

— Albert Einstein

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

— Stephen Covey

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

— Katharine Hepburn

Senza crisi non ci sono sfide, senza sfide la vita è una routine, una lenta agonia.

— Albert Einstein

Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.

— Voltaire

The best design tool is a long eraser with a pencil at one end.

— Marty Neumeier

Ciò che conta è quello che impari quando sai già tutto.

— John Wooden

It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

— Neil Young

Не имей сто рублей, а имей сто друзей.

— Russian Proverb

Many of the things you can count, don’t count. Many of the things you can’t count really count.

— Albert Einstein

It’s easier to make things people want, than it is to make people want things.

— Intercom

Dovete andare fieri del vostro nemico; allora i successi del vostro nemico saranno anche i vostri successi.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

— Peter Drucker

Even the strongest man cannot lift himself up.

— Confucius

Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.

— Mark Cook

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

— Heraclitus

You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

— Richard Feynman

A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Make yourself become who you are.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose the intuition to notice the beauty.

— Jay O’Callahan

Whatever we say, we are always talking about ourselves.

— Alison Bechdel

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.

— Dalai Lama

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

— Albert Einstein

Art is theft.

— Pablo Picasso

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

— Anaïs Nin

The distance between dreams and reality is called discipline.

— Unknown

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

You never know what you can do till you try.

— Russian Proverb

The things you own end up owning you.

— Tyler Durden

If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.

— Malcolm X

I don’t know what I think until I write it down.

— Joan Didion

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

— Thomas Huxley

Every entrepreneur I have ever met is an artist. They are all forced to become comfortable with failure. And for entrepreneurs, their canvas is their company.

— John Maeda

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

— Donald A. Norman

Meglio vivere d’istanti e d’istinti che distanti e distinti.

— Anonim*

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

— Albert Einstein

I think you just have to work hard for about 10 years before you know what you’re doing.

— Ben Chestnut

A dream will not become an innovation if there is no realisation.

— Ciputra

Good design is as little design as possible.

— Dieter Rams

È meglio essere primi che meglio degli altri.

— Al Ries

Moderation is a fatal thing… Nothing succeeds like excess.

— Oscar Wilde

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

— Walter Bagehot

Your work is something you do, not who you are.

— Austin Kleon

I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.

— Lily Tomlin

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

— Amelia Earhart

Music is the space between the notes.

— Claude Debussy

Come il ferro è consumato dalla ruggine, così gli invidiosi sono consumati dalla loro stessa passione.

— Antistene

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

— Salvador Dalí

Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

— Jeff Bezos

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

— Leonardo da Vinci

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

— Mahatma Gandhi

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

— Morpheus

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.

— David Allen

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

— Voltaire

The problem contains the solution.

— Michael Beirut

It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

— Grace Hopper

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

— Peter Drucker

Finché la gente accetterà la spazzatura, sarà redditizio venderla.

— Dick Cavett

A true leader does not give orders. A true leader gives explanations.

— William Edwards Deming

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

— William James

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