My Favourite Inspirational Quotes on Life and Design
by Olegs Belousovs •
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.
You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
The best defense is a good offense.
Those who tell the stories rule society.
Waiting for inspiration is like standing at the airport waiting for a train.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
You are as great as the cause that you serve and as young as your dreams.
What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.
You can do anything, but not everything.
Love your job but don’t love your company, because you may not know when your company stops loving you!
A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
Designer can design a solution to a problem, but they can’t design a solution to a disagreement.
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.
Finché la gente accetterà la spazzatura, sarà redditizio venderla.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.
Art is theft.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Being right keeps you in place, being wrong forces you to explore.
If you get, give. If you learn, teach.
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.
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
It’s better to burn out than to fade away.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Quit picking fights and go make something!
In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
The best design tool is a long eraser with a pencil at one end.
If everything is important, then nothing is.
Ciò che conta è quello che impari quando sai già tutto.
Time is the only resource we have that is nonrenewable.
When the wind of change blows, some people build walls, others build windmills.
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.
Make yourself become who you are.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Don’t criticize unless you can do better.
The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.
It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.
Hell is other people.
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
…there is nothing new under the sun.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.
Leave something for someone but don’t leave someone for something.
Believe in yourself and stop trying to convince others.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Не имей сто рублей, а имей сто друзей.
The problem contains the solution.
If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.
I don’t know what I think until I write it down.
A dream will not become an innovation if there is no realisation.
What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
You can’t TRY to do things, you must simply DO them.
Music is the space between the notes.
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.
I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.
Your work is something you do, not who you are.
…a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention…
The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.
Always in motion is the future.
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
Gran parte dello stress deriva da impegni – presi con se stessi o con gli altri – gestiti in modo non adeguato.
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.
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.
You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.
Come il ferro è consumato dalla ruggine, così gli invidiosi sono consumati dalla loro stessa passione.
What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
It’s easier to make things people want, than it is to make people want things.
When you stop moving, the music stops.
The things you own end up owning you.
You can only organize something if you understand how it works.
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Even the strongest man cannot lift himself up.
If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose the intuition to notice the beauty.
Without great solitude no serious work is possible.
If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.
What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
The days are long, but the years are short.
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
The future is a journey, not a destination.
I think you just have to work hard for about 10 years before you know what you’re doing.
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
The best design is the simplest one that works.
The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
The days are long, but the years are short.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.
Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn.
Life is too short to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
When you are tired of saying it, they are starting to hear it.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Diciamo di ammazzare il tempo come se, purtroppo, non fosse il tempo ad ammazzare noi.
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
Everybody is interesting when they are interested in something.
La motivazione è il carburante del lavoro intellettuale.
When there’s nothing, you can do anything.
View obstacles as opportunities for growth.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
It’s better to see once than hear a hundred times.
The most important things in life aren’t things.
Fall seven times and stand up eight.
The good life consists in enjoying the creativity of others, and in sharing our own, not just in having our basic needs met.
Meglio vivere d’istanti e d’istinti che distanti e distinti.
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.
What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.
A true leader does not give orders. A true leader gives explanations.
When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.
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.
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.
If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it.
You never know what you can do till you try.
Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
The distance between dreams and reality is called discipline.
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Dovete andare fieri del vostro nemico; allora i successi del vostro nemico saranno anche i vostri successi.
Design is like air, you only notice it when it’s bad.
There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
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.
If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station; the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
To understand is to know what to do.
Everything popular is wrong.
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.
Whatever we say, we are always talking about ourselves.
Non lo so quale sia la chiave del successo, ma la chiave per il fallimento è nel cercare di accontentare tutti.
If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose the intuition to notice the beauty.
If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose the intuition to notice the beauty.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.
Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
Everywhere is a walking distance if you have the time
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
La conoscenza non è sufficiente, dobbiamo applicarla. La volontà non è abbastanza, dobbiamo agire.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Many of the things you can count, don’t count. Many of the things you can’t count really count.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Do not judge me by my successes; judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
The beginning is the half of every action.
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.
Comparison is the death of joy.
Moderation is a fatal thing… Nothing succeeds like excess.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.
Senza crisi non ci sono sfide, senza sfide la vita è una routine, una lenta agonia.
It is difficult to judge beauty: beauty is an enigma.
Work to become, not to acquire.
È meglio essere primi che meglio degli altri.
As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Data explains, stories inspire.
Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make decision when you are sad.
Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.