If you enjoy quotes — as I do very much — read on. You may even catch a glimpse of who I am and what inspires me.

Get an e-mail when I add new quotes. (Hardly ever.)

My favorite quote:

“The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.” – Thomas Babington Macaulay

Other great quotes, by category:

Advertising

“I’m appalled by those who [judge] advertising exclusively on the basis of sales. That isn’t enough. Of course, advertising must sell. By any definition it is lousy advertising if it doesn’t. But if sales are achieved with work which is in bad taste or is intellectual garbage, it shouldn’t be applauded no matter how much it sells. Offensive, dull, abrasive, stupid advertising is bad for the entire industry and bad for business as a whole. It is why the public perception of advertising is going down in this country.” – Norman Berry, a British creative director at Ogilvy & Mather

Art

“Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever.” – Paul Klee

“Unlike the artist, the designer is not free to concentrate exclusively on those issues which seem most interesting. Clearly one of the central skills in design is the ability rapidly to become fascinated by problems previously unheard of…. Not only must designers face up to all the problems which emerge they must also do so in a limited time. Design is often a matter of compromise decisions made on the basis of inadequate information…. Designers, unlike scientists, do not seem to have the right to be wrong. While we accept that a disproved theory may have helped science to advance, we rarely acknowledge the similar contribution made by mistaken designs.” – Bryan Lawson, in How Designers Think

Bigotry

“The most valuable feature of the concept of culture is the concept of difference.” – Arjun Appadurai

[On Gay Marriage] “We do not tell persons who have a legitimate claim to wait until the time is “right” and the populace is “ready” to recognize their equality and equal dignity under the law.” … “Americans who believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence, in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in the 14th Amendment, and in the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and equal dignity before the law cannot sit by while this wrong continues. This is not a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American one, and it is time that we, as Americans, embraced it.” – Ted Olson, lawyer who got George W. Bush into the White House in 2000′s Bush vs. Gore case

Branding

“No matter where you are on stage, always stay in character. Because with all those people out there, even if you’re not the center of attention, even if you don’t have one miserable line, at least one person is watching you. They’re observing you. And if you fall out of your role, then the whole damn illusion falls apart in that instant. And you’ve ruined it all.” – Joan Potter, Theater Director, Wayzata High School

Brevity

“I wrote you a long letter because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” – Pascal

Career

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. And don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.” – Steve Jobs, in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

“If I listen to the economist, I commercialize myself and spend my years living an instrumental life. If I value my freedom, then I must reclaim it sooner rather than later. My freedom is expressed by my commitments, not from my bargained agreements.” – Parker Palmer

“The one place you are absolutely destined to be taken for granted, pigeon-holed and disrespected in your career is among your co-workers and in the eyes of your employers. This is especially true if you are one who challenges accepted thinking or encourages new action. Why do you think the people who do as they are told and never challenge authority are always the ones who walk away with the Employee-of-the-Year awards? It’s because they fit the mold. They not only ‘do’ what’s expected of them, they also ‘are’ what people expect of them.

A prophet, though, has thinking too big to contain. He (or she) is disruptive. He is an agent of change and change, for all companies talk about it as a necessity, is a bad thing for power-structures. This kind of message can find a home, but almost never in the confines of a ‘hometown.’ It needs to be set free.” – Bob Knorpp, host of The BeanCast, taken from Best Marketing Career Advice From 10 Top Marketing Minds

Change

“Self expression is the new entertainment, We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, ‘Why are they doing that for free?’ We need to celebrate [this desire to contribute for free] rather than question it.” – Arianna Huffington

“Everything we resist persists.” – Carl Jung

Charity

“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.” – Voltaire

Compassion

“Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.” – Albert Schweitzer

“A human being is part of the whole called by us the Universe.
We experiences ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest –a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures, and the whole of nature in all of its beauty….
Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a path of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.” – Albert Einstein

Confidence

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” – Bruce Lee

Conformity

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs

Conviction

“A ‘no’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”- Gandhi

Creativity

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” – Albert Einstein

Curiosity

“When you are active, and you must know this so well, that the more you are active, the more you see, the more you go to see. You know, you are curious. One thing leads to another thing, and it gets deeper and deeper, too. And there’s no end to it.” – Alice Walker

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” – Voltaire

Democracy

“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve got to want it bad, because it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the ‘land of the free?’ Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the ‘land of the free.’” – Michael Douglas, The American President

Design

“Good designers copy, great designers steal.” – Pablo Picasso (See Cameron Moll’s SitePoint article for an explanation of this oft-misunderstood quote.)

“For [a product] to surprise me, it must be satisfying expectations I didn’t know I had. No focus group is going to discover those. Only a great designer can.” – Paul Graham

“A big definition of who you are as a designer: it’s the way you look at the world. I guess it’s sort of one of the curses of what you do, is that you’re constantly looking at something and thinking, ‘Well… why is it like that?’ ‘Why is it like that, and not like this?’” – Jonathan Ive, in Objectified

“Effective interfaces are visually apparent and forgiving, instilling in their users a sense of control. Users quickly see the breadth of their options, grasp how to achieve their goals, and do their work. Effective interfaces do not concern the user with the inner workings of the system. Work is carefully and continuously saved, with full option for the user to undo any activity at any time. Effective applications and services perform a maximum of work, while requiring a minimum of information from users.” – Bruce Tognazzini

“The screen mimics the sky, not the earth. It bombards the eye with light instead of waiting to repay the gift of vision. It is not simultaneously restful and lively, like a field full of flowers, or the face of a thinking human being, or a well-made typographic page. And we read the screen the way we read the sky: in quick sweeps, guessing at the weather from the changing shapes of clouds, of like astronomers, in magnified small bits, examining details.” – Robert Bringhurst, in The Elements of Typographic Style

“Design almost invariably involves compromise. … Rarely can the designer simply optimise one requirement without suffering losses elsewhere. … There are no established methods for deciding just how good or bad solutions are, and still the best test of most design is to wait and see how well it works in practice. Design solutions can never be perfect and are often more easily criticised than created, and designers must accept that they will almost invariably appear wrong in some ways to some people.” – Bryan Lawson, in How Designers Think

“It is clear from our analysis of the nature of design problems that the designer must inevitably expend considerable energy in identifying the problems. It is central to modern thinking about design that problems and solutions are seen as emerging together, rather than one following logically upon the other. … [B]oth problem and solution become clearer as the process goes on.” - Bryan Lawson, in How Designers Think

“The design was life itself, it was the day from dawn till dusk, it was the waiting during the night, it was an awareness of the world around us, of materials and lights, distances and weights, resistance, fragilities, use and consumption, birth and death…” – Ettore Sottsass

Discovery
“Instinct … is largely memory in disguise. It works quite well when it is trained, and poorly otherwise.” – Robert Bringhurst, in The Elements of Typographic Style

Entrepreneurship

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.” – N/A

“If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” – Jeff Bezos

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” – Howard Aiken

“If you are not embarrassed when you ship your product, you waited too long.” – Reid Hoffman

“If you’re not creating, you’re waiting.” – Kevin Pollak

Equality

“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde

“The American idea has no place for a class predestined to be wage earners incapable of understanding a world beyond the workbench, no place for a class which is denied the opportunity to reason its conclusions on facts which it helps to create, no place for a class which is happier because ignorant of anything beyond the daily task. And those whose sense of superiority leads them to believe in either the necessity or the desirability of such classes are themselves enemies of the American idea or ignorant of its genius.” – Alexander Heron

Fanaticism

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” – Winston Churchill

Fun

“Haiku are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator”

Intelligence

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.” – Voltaire

“In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” – Bertrand Russell (a.k.a. the Dunning-Kruger Effect)

Irrationality

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Gandhi

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” – Upton Sinclair

“As long as there is *something* being said, we’re drawn to it. Why? Because we love to debate minutiae.” – Ramit Sethi, in I Will Teach You To Be Rich

“I guess it’s natural to feel a little embarrassed when we find ourselves following our real fascinations, rather than studying the things we really ought to care about.” – David Murray, Our Big Rock Candy Mountain

“Condemnation without investigation is the highest ignorance.” – Albert Einstein

“Ignorance of certain subjects is a great part of wisdom.” – Hugo De Groot

“Isn’t it pretty to think so.” – Hemingway

“The wise are instructed by reason, men of less understanding by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.” – Cicero

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw

“People always like what they don’t know anything about.” – Sullivan’s Travels

Leadership

“People want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone.” – Michael J. Fox, The American President

Life

“Dear Lord, be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.” – Breton fisherman’s prayer

“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” – Bruce Lee

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” – Farewall message, 1974 edition, Whole Earth Catalog

“Think like a man of action; act like a man of thought.” – Henri L. Bergson

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!” – Rudyard Kipling

“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.” – Daniel Burnham, Chicago Architect (1846-1912)

Do you believe in immortality? “No. And one life is enough for me.” – Einstein

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude.” – William James

Love

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

“What makes you think that something about you has anything to do with my loving you?” Philene, Wilhelm Meister

Persistence

“There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.” – Jack Bergman

“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.” – Mother Teresa

“Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me. So I endured this wretched existence—truly wretched for so susceptible a body, which can be thrown by a sudden change from the best condition to the very worst…. Perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not; I am ready.” – Beethoven

“We routinely behave as if sometime in the future, we will have more time, mor emoney, and feel less tired or stressed. “Later” seems like a rosy time to do all the unpleasant things in life, even if putting them off means eventually having to grapple with a much bigger jungle in our yard, a tax penalty, the inability to retire comfortably, or an unsuccessful medical treatment.” – Dan Ariely, in The Upside of Irrationality

Pessimism

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” – Chinese Proverb

Politics

“Politicks is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom to-day would be folly and perhaps, ruin to-morrow. Politicks is not a science so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men’s view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed.” – Fisher Ames, 1758-1808

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro the wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating that absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. … So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?” – Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” – Plato

Power

“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites – polar opposites – so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. We’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Prejudice

“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.” – Voltaire

Religion

“If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.” – Voltaire

“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.” – Einstein

“Ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” – Einstein

“The invisible and the imaginary look very much alike.” – Delos B. McKown

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.” – Gene Roddenberry

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” – Stephen Roberts

“If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people” – House

“On any terms I want to be watching, I want to be there, I want to be around, when we reach the stars, when we take over the universe and the universes, when we become the God in whom I do not believe as yet because I do not believe he exists as yet nor will exist until we become Him.” – Max Andrews, fictional character in The Lights in the Sky are Stars, by Fredric Brown

Science

“Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden.” – Donna Haraway

“[D]esign is essentially prescriptive whereas science is predominantly descriptive. Designers do not aim to deal with questions of what is, how and why, but, rather, with what might be, could be and should be. While scientists may help us to understand the present and predict the future, designers may be seen to prescribe and to create the future, and thus their process deserves not just ethical but also moral scrutiny.” – Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think

Space

“Lights All Askew in the Heavens. Stars Not Where They seemed or Were Calculated to be, but Nobody Need Worry.” -NYTimes headline, Nov 10, 1919

“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.” – Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God

Success

“Success hides problems.” – Ed Catmull

The Supernatural

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Law #3 of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws

Technology

“The telephone was an aberation in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else’s life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone’s living room and start shouting. it was never okay. It’s less okay now. Telephone calls are rude. They are interruptive. Technology has solved this brief aberration in human behavior. We have a thing now called THE TEXT MESSAGE. It is magical, non-intrusive, optional, and, just like human speech originally was meant to be, is turn based and two way. You talk. I talk next. Then you talk. And we do it when it’s convenient for both of us.” – Rick Webb, commenting on this

Trust

“There is a point in the breathing process where you have to give up control. It is the point of release that allows exhalation. It involves trust that the next breath will come.” -A Guide to Experiential Anatomy

Truth

“I think it’s important to realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.” – Richard Dawkins

“Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.” – Emily Dickinson

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.” – Oscar Wilde

Wisdom

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.” – Plato