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