Design quotes
2.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside design — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It's funny, I don't even consider myself a rapper, I don't consider myself a designer, or even an actor. I just like creating stuff and trying to make good work, whatever it is. I don't care if it's designing toothbrushes. It's just making cool stuff to leave behind, that's all it is, it's nothing more."
"I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me."
"The artist in me cries out for design."
"A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe."
"Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant."
"Graphic designers should be literate in graphic design history. Being able to design well is not always enough. Knowing the roots of design is necessary to avoid reinvention, no less inadvertent plagiarism."
"Good designers copy; great designers steal."
"You don't build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them."
"In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled that of a bulldozer; it did not harness subtlety, though subtlety went into its design."
"The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one's designs to one's means."
"Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors."
"All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out."
"Nowhere on the shore is the relation of a creature to its surroundings a matter of a single cause and effect; each living thing is bound to its world by many threads, weaving the intricate design of the fabric of life."
"When it comes to innovation, business has much to learn from design. The philosophy in design shops is, 'try it, prototype it, and improve it'."
"Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design."
"If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare."
"From testimonials and personal experience we have enough information to conclude that IT'S POSSIBLE TO DESIGN AND LIVE AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE"
"Feeling creative produces great work in approximately the same way that "feeling like a doctor" makes you a gifted thoracic surgeon."
"Everything that can be said, can be said clearly."
"At some point in your life, if you're lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve."
