De Design Quotes & Sayings

Great and glorious events which dazzle the beholder are represented by politicians as the outcome of grand designs whereas they are usually products of temperaments and passions. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint. — Elsie De Wolfe

I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life. — Elsie De Wolfe

As far as preference between fall and spring collections, I have none that I prefer to design. With fall you have a lot more items, but of course I am from the Dominican Republic, so I love the warm weather. — Oscar De La Renta

If you want to design a successful human society, you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group? — Frans De Waal

We do not make very full value of the opportunities provided by technology because we prefer critical to constructive thinking, argument to design. — Edward De Bono

[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.
Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to. — Alain De Botton

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good. — Mies Van De Rohe

Simplicity, suitability and proportion. — Elsie De Wolfe

Are you pro- or anti-macassar? — Peter De Vries

For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know
without ever having constructed one ourselves
that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209) — Alain De Botton

Many believe the process of creativity is one of assembling thoughts and concepts, but highly creative people will tell you that the idea, the song, the image, was in them, and their task was to get it out, a process of discovery, not design. This — Gavin De Becker

You can analyse the past, but you need to design the future. That is the difference between suffering the future and enjoying it. — Edward De Bono

Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

God's designs regarding you, and His methods of bringing about these designs, are infinitely wise. — Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

When we spread our name by scattering it into many mouths we call that 'increasing our renown'; we wish our name to be favourably received there and that it may gain from such an increase. That is what is most pardonable in such a design. But carried to excess this malady makes many seek to be on others' lips, no matter how. Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Livy says of Manlius, that they were more desirous of a wide reputation than a good one.42 That is a common vice. We are more concerned that men should talk of us than of how they talk of us; and we are far more concerned that our name should run from mouth to mouth than under what circumstances it should do so. — Michel De Montaigne

We still seek to solve conflicts with 'judgement' instead of designing the way forwards. — Edward De Bono

One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their ... paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I always design my own hats to complete my fashion thought ... I like them slightly mad, like this huge black poppy. Right now I lift the bosom high on coats and dresses ... I am using so many high curved belts. — Oscar De La Renta

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it. — Miguel De Cervantes

I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture. — Ai Weiwei

If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you. — Edward De Bono

When I am true to my inspiration, even fight for my design, the project always turns out well. — Christian De Portzamparc

Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us. — Alain De Botton

Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors. — Jaron Lanier

If you understand the system you can design appropriate action. — Edward De Bono

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from several
pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my
own governing method, ignorance. — Michel De Montaigne

Does he do all this with evil design? No, it is part of his concept of how to retain love. — Gavin De Becker

The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being. — John Holdren

Because beauty is typically the result of a few qualities working in concert, it can take more to guarantee the appeal of a bridge or a house than strength alone. (p 205) — Alain De Botton

We cannot do better than to accept the standards of other times, and to adapt them to our uses. — Elsie De Wolfe

A good design is not a democratic consensus. — Edward De Bono

You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea. — Willem De Kooning

My business is to preach to you the beauty of suitability. — Elsie De Wolfe

When the words are fuzzy, the programmers reflexively retreat to the most precise method of articulation available: source code. Although there is nothing more precise than code, there is also nothing more permanent or resistant to change. So the situation frequently crops up where nomenclature confusion drives programmers to begin coding prematurely, and that code becomes the de facto design, regardless of its appropriateness or correctness. — Amari Cooper

If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I'd design exactly the system that we have right now," Gabor would tell me. "I'd attack people, and ostracize them." He has seen that "the more you stress people, the more they're going to use. The more you de-stress people, the less they're going to use. So to create a system where you ostracize and marginalize and criminalize people, and force them to live in poverty with disease, you are basically guaranteeing they will stay at it." "If — Johann Hari

I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood ... the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book. — Michel De Montaigne

Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way. — Frans De Waal

To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap — Alain De Botton

Suffering is a cutting edge political design. — Bruno De Oliveira

All-around 21st-century artist the great Kanye West at Design Miami/ Basel — Simon De Pury

Examples out of History, of People free and in the State of Nature, that being met together incorporated and began a Common-wealth. And if the want of such instances be an argument to prove that Government were not, nor could not be so begun, I suppose the contenders for Parernal Empire were better let it alone, than urge it against natural Liberty. For if they can give so many instances out of History, of Governments begun upon Paternal Right, I think (though at best an Argument from what has been, to what should of right be, has no great force) one might, without any great danger, yield them the cause. But if I might advise the Original of Governments, as they have begun de facto, lest they should find at the foundation of most of them, something very little favourable to the design they promote, and such a power as they contend for. — John Locke

Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

My soul was bruised and sore. For the first time ever in my life, I was agraid of what would happen. I was afraid that he was going to destroy me, and I simply could not do again what I'd just done. I could not be part of this design. I prayed I coudn't be made to do it, that I would have the strength to refuse. I felt his hands on my shoulders. "Turn and look at me," he said. And there it was again, the most seductive beauty I'd ever beheld. 'I am yours, my love. You are my only true companion.' But I couldn't speak these words to him. — Anne Rice

If all, or almost all, the plays that are popular now, imaginative works as well as historical ones, are known to be nonsense and without rhyme or reason, and despite this the mob hears them with pleasure and thinks of them and approves of them as good, when they are very far from being so, and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say they must be like this because that is just how the mob wants them, and no other way; the plays that have a design and follow the story as art demands appeal to a handful of discerning persons who understand them, while everyone else is incapable of comprehending their artistry; and since, as far as the authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite, this is what would happen to my book after I had singed my eyebrows trying to keep the precepts I have mentioned and had become the tailor who wasn't paid. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so; happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which separately and of themselves have little value, but which united with art form a graceful design. — Delphine De Girardin

More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future — Edward De Bono

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place. — Edward De Bono

They [homeless people] are constructed ideologically to be oppressed to the level of losing their humanity. It is not by chance it is a design. — Bruno De Oliveira

Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and many calculate what Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other. — Abraham De Moivre

I suppose "cartographer" is as good a description as any, but the Argosi do not draw maps of places, but rather of people... cultures.' She tapped the deck in my hand. 'You understand the meaning of the suits? ... look more closely at the individual cards and you'll see that the particular design on each card reflects part of the fundamental power structure of that society.'
pg 79 — Sebastien De Castell

Pen realized it: Sometimes there is nothing to do but surrender yourself to wonder ... You must stop measuring - over and over - the line between loving and being in love. You must offer yourself, whole, to the cobalt starfish (and the orange one and the pale pink one and the biscuit-colored one with the raised, chocolate-brown art deco design) and to the clear, clear water and to the sweep of shining sky and to the silver scattershot of leaping fish (an entire school skipping across the ocean like a stone.) — Marisa De Los Santos

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough. — Edward De Bono

Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful. — Jean De La Bruyere

A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States ... [we] must design a stable, low-consumption economy. — John Holdren

You can't take it with you. There are no pockets in a shroud. — Elsie De Wolfe

Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A thought provoking number of the world's most intelligent people have disdained any interest in decoration and design, equating contentment with discarnate and invisible matters instead. — Alain De Botton

We have neither the strength nor the opportunity to accomplish all the good and all the evil which we design. — Luc De Clapiers

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

We charm by coincidence rather than design. — Alain De Botton

The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse. — Marquis De Sade

The Olympic flag [] has a white background, with five interlaced rings in the centre: blue, yellow, black, green and red []. This design is symbolic; it represents the five continents of the world, united by Olympism, while the six colours are those that appear on all the national flags of the world at the present time. — Pierre De Coubertin

What, then, are religions if not the restraint wherewith the tyranny of the mightier sought to enslave the weaker? Motivated by that design, he dared say to him whom he claimed the right to dominate, that a God had forged the irons with which cruelty manacled him; and the latter, bestialized by his misery, indistinctly believed everything the former wished. Can religions, born of these rogueries, merit respect? — Marquis De Sade

To conform within rational limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to write according to the rule of grammar. — Elsie De Wolfe

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A man often thinks he rules himself, when all the while he is ruled and managed; and while his understanding directs one design, his affections imperceptibly draw him into another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld