Quotes about designation (1805 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The history of the castle at Wiśnicz Nowy is enlivened by many legends. Many well-known artists visited the castle in centuries past. Till now, many elements of old architecture (towers, chapel) have survived, together with some details of interior design.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

The castle of Kmita and Lubomirski at Wiśnicz Nowy, "Aura" 2, 1991-02, p. 18-20. http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-bd5a073d-07bd-4353-9edc-6bf8ea3d43c5?q=de70f1df-826d-4538-9cee-535aa9902521$5&qt=IN_PAGE

History , Past

“The Krzyżtopór castle which was built in the 17th century belongs to the most splendid Polish buildings of the defensive and palatial character. The castle was famous for its design which accounted for the principles of the division of time (4 towers, 12 large halls, 52 rooms and 365 windows).”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

Krzyżtopór - lordly fortress belonging to the Ossoliński family at Ujazd, "Aura" 7, 1989-07, p. 20-22. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-10431a86-d55f-41c2-a32b-a56f6d26570e?q=fb98c219-0d8f-4b9e-88ea-9c0f94821cd5$5&qt=IN_PAGE

Time

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Truth , Appearance

“We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 33.

Justice , Fight , Parting

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

World , Art , Perfection

“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

People , World , Feeling

“Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Life

“The distribution of troops devoted to the defence of a place includes a garrison, an occupying force, numerically as weak as possible; a reserve as strong as possible, designed for counterattacking and for providing itself, at the moment it goes into action, with a security service which will guard it from any possible surprise.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 147

Strong

“The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than from either Communism or democratic Socialism. One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole of German and Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § IV
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Forgetting , Fear , Thinking , Communication

“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

School , Way , Learning

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

People , Fools

“I am the instrument of providence, she will use me as long as I accomplish her designs, then she will break me like a glass.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

As quoted in The Linguist and the Emperor : Napoleon and Champollion's Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone (2004) by Daniel Meyerson
Attributed

“The thieves may be able to follow the design plans and produce a loom. But we are modifying and improving our looms every day. They do not have the expertise gained from the failures it took to produce the original. We need not be concerned. We need only continue as always, making our improvements.”

Kiichiro Toyoda (1894–1952) Japanese businessman

Kiichiro Toyoda in The Toyota Way, 2001: Quoted in: "Toyota quotes," New York Times, Feb. 10, 2008.
Comment by Kiichiro Toyoda after thieves had stolen the plans for a new loom from his father's workshop.

Failure

“The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.”

Massimo Vignelli (1931–2014) Italian designer

Life , Fight

“There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Moving On , Life , Children , People

“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Religion

“Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

World , Clothes

“the vase once had an extremely common use. Most probably it was used for cooking-oil. It was made by a designer of those times, when art and life went hand in hand and there was no such thing as a work of art to look at and just any old thing to use. I”

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) Italian artist and designer

Source: Design as Art

Life , Art , Time , Cooking

“So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet…”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)
Context: Electric current, after passing into the earth travels to the diametrically opposite region of the same and rebounding from there, returns to its point of departure with virtually undiminished force. The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord. To traverse the entire distance of about twenty-five thousand miles, equal to the circumference of the globe, the current requires a certain time interval, which I have approximately ascertained. In yielding this knowledge, nature has revealed one of its most precious secrets, of inestimable consequence to man. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself, had electrically designed this planet just for the purpose of enabling us to achieve wonders which, before my discovery, could not have been conceived by the wildest imagination.

“Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.”

Paul Rand (1914–1996) American graphic designer

Art

“In any form of art designed to appeal to large numbers of people,…[t]he rich man is usually 'bad', and his machinations are invariably frustrated. 'Good poor man defeats bad rich man' is an accepted formula.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (28 July 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/</sup>
As I Please (1943–1947)

People , Art

“Any corporation selling us products on the basis of anything other than utility should be revoked and shut down. Any corporation that at this time of fast-diminishing resources designs products that have in-built doomsday devices, planned obsolescence, should be shut down. All this glamour and clamor and blagging and skanking has to end.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Time

“Economists have uncovered the conditions necessary if Adam Smith’s results are to be achieved and where, in the real world, such conditions do not appear to be found, they have proposed changes which are designed to bring them about. It is what one finds in the textbooks. Harold Demsetz has said rightly that what this theory analyses is a system of extreme decentralisation. It has been a great intellectual achievement and it throws light on many aspects of the economic system. But it has not been by any means all gain.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

1990s and later, "The Institutional Structure of Production" (1992)

World , Light , Appearance , Change

“I could make Halo. It's not that I couldn't design that game. It's just that I choose not to. One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

Source http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20037961,00.html?cid=recirc-peopleRecirc

People , Game

“The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all peoples were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own particular colors, and embodies a particular facet of God's design.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

God , People , Color , Personality

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)

Problem , Change , Fight , Cooking

“Mansplaining is a sexist term designed to silence men via gender shaming.”

Markus Persson (1979) Swedish video game programmer

[Hansen, Steven, Minecraft billionaire feels oppressed by women, https://www.destructoid.com/minecraft-billionaire-feels-oppressed-by-women-363094.phtml, 12 November 2017, Destructoid, 2016-05-23]

Men , Silence

“The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the collective body of tenants, but the individual resident in isolation.”

J. G. Ballard book High-Rise

Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 1

“[Some correspondents] rightly claimed that State patronage [for artists and authors] is a better guarantee against starvation than private patronage, but seemed to me too ready to disregard the censorship that this implies. The usual line was that it is better for the artist to be a responsible member of a community than an anarchic individualist. The issue, however, is not between irresponsible "self-expression" and discipline; it is between truth and lies. Artists don't so much object to aesthetic discipline. Architects will design theatres or churches equally readily, writers will switch from the three-volume novel to the one-volume, or from the play to the film, according to the demand. But the point is that this is a political age. A writer inevitably writes—and less directly this applies to all the arts—about contemporary events, and his impulse is to tell what he believes to be the truth. But no government, no big organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India?”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid.
"As I Please" column in The Tribune (13 October 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ http://alexpeak.com/twr/ooc/#2</sup>
As I Please (1943–1947)

Truth , Age , Art , Imagination

“What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court, that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional? […] The Court must be living in another world. Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Board of County Commissioners, Wabaunsee County, Kansas, v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=U20028&friend=oyez, No. 94-1654 (1996, dissenting); decided June 28, 1996.
1990s

People , Secret , World , Justice

“Our design, not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this — from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena…”

Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Preface
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

Art , Mathematics , Nature

“The design of this Memoir is to deduce strictly from a few principles, obtained chiefly by experiment, the rationale of those electrical phenomena which are produced by the mutual contact of two or more bodies, and which have been termed galvanic; its aim is attained if by means of it the variety of facts be presented as unity to the mind.”

Georg Ohm (1789–1854) German physicist and mathematician

Introductory sentence of [Georg Simon Ohm, The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically, translated by William Francis, D. Van Nostrand Co, 1891, 11]

“I am constrained to decline the designation of any period or mode as proper for the public manifestation of this reliance. I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

Response to request from a church organization of New York, on refusing to proclaim a national day of fasting and prayer, in relation to an outbreak of cholera. Correspondence 4:447 (1832); quoted in A Subaltern's Furlough : Descriptive of Scenes in Various Parts of the United States, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia during the Summer and Autumn of 1832 (1833) by Edward Thomas Coke, Ch. 9, p. 145 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbtn:@field(DOCID+@lit(lhbtn0265adiv14))
1830s
Context: While I concur with the Synod in the efficacy of prayer, and in the hope that our country may be preserved from the attacks of pestilence "and that the judgments now abroad in the earth may be sanctified to the nations," I am constrained to decline the designation of any period or mode as proper for the public manifestation of this reliance. I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.

Religion , Feeling , Country

“Those designs are best which the enemy are entirely ignorant of till the moment of execution.”
Nulla consilia meliora sunt nisi illa, quae ignorauerit aduersarius, antequam facias.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus book De re militari

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
Context: It is much better to overcome the enemy by famine, surprise or terror than by general actions, for in the latter instance fortune has often a greater share than valour. Those designs are best which the enemy are entirely ignorant of till the moment of execution. Opportunity in war is often more to be depended on than courage. (General Maxims)

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Friedrich Hayek book The Fatal Conceit

Source: 1980s and later, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), Ch. 5: The Fatal Conceit.
Context: Whereas, in fact, specialised students, even after generations of effort, find it exceedingly difficult to explain such matters, and cannot agree on what are the causes or what will be the effects of particular events. The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.

Men , Imagination

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

Truth , Appearance , Making love

“A real change towards a better environment can only begin with better design available for everyone, everywhere. Until the government realises this and provides adequate legislation and funding, we need to do this pro bono – free for the public good.”

Jiri Lev (1979)

Source: The Australian Architects Offering Pro-Bono Design Services to Bushfire Survivors https://hivelife.com/architects-assist/.

Change

“I don’t think pro bono work [in architecture] is very common and that is because sustainable and resilient architecture is not currently viewed as a necessity. Unfortunately, it takes large scale disasters to expose the failures and negligence in design and construction.”

Jiri Lev (1979)

Source: The Australian Architects Offering Pro-Bono Design Services to Bushfire Survivors https://hivelife.com/architects-assist/.

Thinking , Failure

“The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.”

Noam Chomsky book Hopes and Prospects

Source: Hopes and Prospects

Democracy

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Men , God , Fate

“Everything is design. Everything!”

Paul Rand (1914–1996) American graphic designer

“Great designers produce pleasurable experiences.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday Things

Pleasure

“Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Wisdom , Books , Dead

“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

People , Cars

“Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.
It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

“the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

Sense

“What will be will be. No one can escape fate's design.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Fate

“How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Source: Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

Past

“The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Age , Star

“The story of how anti-Hindu laws were enacted… is long. In summary form, it consists of 1) banishing Brahmins on pain of being made prisoners on the galleys; 2) confiscating the properties of those Hindus who sent their families to neighbouring lands for fear of conversion; 3) prohibiting the performance of Hindu rites and ceremonies; 4) banning Hindu priests and preachers from doing their religious duties; 5) compelling Hindus to attend church services and listen to Christian doctrines; 6) depriving Hindus of their traditional rights and privileges in village communities; 7) forcing the baptism of Hindu orphans; and 8) ordering Hindus not to ride on horseback or in palanquins. The laws were so designed as to humiliate the Hindus in every conceivable manner… Missionary records, however, refer to many famous Hindu temples being converted into churches at these places… Even private temples in Hindu homes were prohibited and “transgressors” were severely punished…”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission. 1985.

Pain , Fear , Family , Law

“I'm convinced that you could design a language about a tenth of the size of C++ (whichever way you measure size) providing roughly what C++ does.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

[Federico Biancuzzi, Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages, https://books.google.com/books?id=yB1WwURwBUQC&pg=PA14, 21 March 2009, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", 978-0-596-55550-4, 14]

Way

“As in poetry, so in prayer, the whole subject matter should be furnished by the heart, and the understanding should be allowed only to shape and arrange the effusions of the heart in the manner best adapted to answer the end designed. From the fullness of a heart overflowing with holy affections, as from a copious fountain, we should pour forth a torrent of pious, humble, and ardently affectionate feelings; while our understandings only shape the channel and teach the gushing streams of devotion where to flow, and when to stop.”

Edward Payson (1783–1827) American religious leader

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 464.

Feeling , Understanding , Heart

“I am only about half alive—a large part of my strength is consumed in sitting up or walking. My nervous system is a shattered wreck, and I am absolutely bored & listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me. However—so many things do interest me, & interest me intensely, in science, history, philosophy, & literature; that I have never actually desired to die, or entertained any suicidal designs, as might be expected of one with so little kinship to the ordinary features of life.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Alfred Galpin (27 May 1918), published in Letters to Alfred Galpin edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 18
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , History , Literature , Suicide

“The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage, may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Speech (3 March 1926), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Coinage Bill. http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0006/S.0006.192603030003.html

Thinking

“It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Letter 22
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)

Nature , Appearance

“The legislator should keep two things constantly before his eyes:
1. The pure theory developed to its minutest details;
2. The particular condition of actual things which he designs to reform.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

“You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, 'Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.' If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

2014 interview http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/01/30/ghiblis-hayao-miyazaki-says-the-anime-industrys-problem-is-that-its-full-of-anime-fans/ with Japanese news website Golden Times, 27 January 2014. Translated by RocketNews24 on January 30, 2014.

Life , People , Girl , Thinking

“There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (December 22, 1876)

People , Spring , Business , Weather

“[T]he successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, arid management.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Source: 1970s, Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes (1973), p. 28

Success

“Designing is not a profession but an attitude.”

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) Hungarian artist

Vision in Motion by László Moholy-Nagy (Chicago, III.: Paul Theobald, 1947) p. 42.

“Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

Introduction to the 2002 Edition, p. xi.
The Design of Everyday Things (1988, 2002)

Communication , Appearance

“We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life. We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Quoted in "Leaping the Abyss" (April 2002) by Gregory Benford, in Reason Magazine http://reason.com/archives/2002/04/01/leaping-the-abyss/4

Life , God , Law , Universe

“The details are not the details. These make the design.”

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

Attributed to Charles Eames in: Garrett, Jesse James. "The Elements of User Experience." Diagram retrieved January (2004).
Alternative: The details are not the details. The details make the product.

“From a correct Marxian point of view … all measures designed to restrain, to regulate and to improve capitalism were simply "petty-bourgeois" nonsense … True socialists should not place any obstacles in the way of capitalist evolution. For only the full maturity of capitalism could bring about socialism. It is not only vain, but harmful to the interests of the proletarians to resort to such measures.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

Way

“Rest in my arms
Sleep in my bed
There's a design
To what I did and said”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Vito's Ordination Song"
Lyrics, Michigan (2003)

Sleep

“An evolutionary approach provides powerful lenses that correct for instinct blindness. It allows one to recognize what natural competences exist, it indicates that the mind is a heterogeneous collection of these competences and, most importantly, it provides positive theories of their designs. Einstein once commented that "It is the theory which decides what we can observe". An evolutionary focus is valuable for psychologists, who are studying a biological system of fantastic complexity, because it can make the intricate outlines of the mind's design stand out in sharp relief. Theories of adaptive problems can guide the search for the cognitive programs that solve them; knowing what cognitive programs exist can, in turn, guide the search for their neural basis.”

Leda Cosmides (1957) American psychologist

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, " Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html" (1997)

Search , Nature , Problem , Study

“Emotions are triggered by what we like to call emotionally competent stimuli, that is, objects or situations that can be real, like in front of you, or be in your mind when you think and you recall, and they act on brain devices that were designed by evolution.”

António Damásio (1944) neuroscientist and professor at the University of Southern California

Antonio Damasio, Brain and mind from medicine to society 1/2, Open University of Catalonia, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbacW1HVZVk

Thinking

“Humans have a more complex motivational structure and more capability to solve social dilemmas than posited in earlier rational-choice theory. Designing institutions to force (or nudge) entirely self-interested individuals to achieve better outcomes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts for governments to accomplish for much of the past half century. Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.”

Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) American political economist

Elinor Ostrom (2009) "Nobel Prize Lecture", December 8.

Motivation , Past

“At the appointed time, necessities become ripe. That is the time when the Creative Spirit (which one can also designate as the Abstract Spirit) finds an avenue to the soul, later to other souls, and causes a yearning, an inner urge.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

1910 - 1915, On the Problem of Form (1912)

Soul , Time

“I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.”

Phillip E. Johnson (1940–2019) American Law clerk

Berkley Science Review (Spring 2006), 2008-11-23 http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=10&article=evolution,
2000s

People , World , Education , Error

“Now, all State institutions, as I also before maintained, act solely on the substance of the doctrines in a greater or less degree; whilst as regards the form of their acceptance by the individual, the channels of influence are wholly closed to any political agency. The way in which religion springs up in the human heart, and the way in which it is received in each case, depend entirely on the whole manner of the man's existence--the whole system of his thoughts and sensations. But if the State were able to remodel these according to its views (a possibility which we can hardly conceive), I must have been very unfortunate in the exposition of my principles if it were necessary to re-establish the conclusion which meets this remote possibility, viz., that the State may not make man an instrument to subserve its arbitrary designs, and induce him to neglect for these his proper individual ends. And that there is no absolute necessity, such as would perhaps alone justify an exception in this instance, is apparent from that perfect independence of morality on religion which I have already sought to establish, but which will receive a stronger confirmation when I show that the preservation of a State's internal security, does not at all require that a proper and distinct direction should be given to the national morals in general.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Religion , Way , Spring , Heart

“During my controlled near-death experiences, I’ve met Sir Isaac Newton, who died back in 1727 as often as I’ve met Saint Peter. They both hang out at the Heaven end of the blue tunnel of the Afterlife. Saint Peter is there because it’s his job. Sir Isaac is there because of his insatiable curiosity about what the blue tunnel is, how the blue tunnel works.
It isn’t enough for Newton that during his eighty-five years on Earth he invented calculus, codified and quantified the laws of gravity, motion and optics, and designed the first reflecting telescope. He can’t forgive himself for having left it to Darwin to come up with the theory of evolution, to Pasteur to come up with the germ theory, and to Albert Einstein to come up with relativity. “I must have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to have come up with those myself,” he said to me. “What could have been more obvious?””

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Death , Law , Forgiveness

“I don't see how you can be saying this. Look. You want to take…you want your god to take responsibility for the huge number of collapsing stars and imploding galaxies and destroyed universes and failed solar systems that have left us in this tiny corner on the one planet in this petty solar system that can support life some of the time on some of its surface. And you want a creator who filled this earth with species, since life began 99% of which are now extinct already…and this is some design, isn't it?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2007
Source: Hannity's America, May 13, 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created

Life , God , Star , Support

“The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative, But who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of? 1 answer: between an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it. Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder; for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come in the danger of: and it is the thing, of all others, they have most need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr14.htm, Sec. 168
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

Life , Men , God , People

“But you know, it isn't designed. Love just shows up and you go, "Oh, wow, this is going to be a hayride and a half."”

Jennifer Aniston (1969) television and film actress from the United States

Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)

Love

“BASIC is to computation what QWERTY is to typing. Many teachers have learned BASIC, many books have been written about it, many computers have been built in such a way that BASIC is "hardwired" into them. In the case of the typewriter, we noted how people invent "rationalizations" to justify the status quo. In the case of BASIC, the phenomenon has gone much further, to the point where it resembles ideology formation. Complex arguments are invented to justify features of BASIC that were originally included because the primitive technology demanded them or because alternatives were not well enough known at the time the language was designed.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 1, Computers and Computer Cultures

People , Books , Way , Learning

“As they say in Discworld, we are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Relatively Einstein http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/relativelyeinstein.shtml episode 3, "Fantasy Physics" (18 January 2005); the Discworld version of this statement appears in Night Watch (2002)
General sources

“The Large Testament is a hurly-burly of cynical and sentimental reflections about life, jesting legacies to friends and enemies, and, interspersed among these many admirable ballades, both serious and absurd. With so free a design, no thought that occurred to him would need to be dismissed without expression; and he could draw at full length the portrait of his own bedevilled soul, and of the bleak and blackguardly world which was the theatre of his exploits and sufferings. If the reader can conceive something between the slap-dash inconsequence of Byron's Don Juan and the racy humorous gravity and brief noble touches that distinguish the vernacular poems of Burns, he will have formed some idea of Villon's style. To the latter writer – except in the ballades, which are quite his own, and can be paralleled from no other language known to me – he bears a particular resemblance.”

Francois Villon (1431–1463) Mediæval French poet

Robert Louis Stevenson Familiar Studies of Men and Books (London: Chatto & Windus, 1882), ch. 6.
Criticism

Life , World , Soul , Idea

“A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest.”
Sanctius his animal mentisque capacius altae Deerat adhuc et quod dominari in cetera posset: Natus homo est.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book I, 76 (as translated by John Dryden)
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

“I have never consciously separated casual users and hardcore gamers when I design a game. For the past 20 years, I have always been trying to make games so that anyone -- as many people as possible -- can enjoy them… I cannot help but say that I love my job of making games from the bottom of my heart.”

Takashi Tezuka (1960) video game designer

Source: "In Conversation: Takashi Tezuka". http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2007/id20070629_013917.htm,Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P.(2007-06-29)
Quote

Love , People , Game , Past

“The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

As quoted in Tolstoy (1988) by A. N. Wilson, p. 146

Truth

“A great democratic commonwealth should seek to produce and reward that individual distinction which results in the efficient performance of needed work, for such performance is of high value to the whole community. But hand in hand with this purpose must go the purpose which Abraham Lincoln designated as the “amelioration of mankind.” Only by an intelligent effort to realize this joint process of individual and social betterment can we keep our democracy sound.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Democracy , Intelligence , Communication , Effort

“But what we’ve also said is in order to defeat these extremist ideologies, it can’t just be military, police and security. It has to be reaching into communities that feel marginalized and making sure that they feel that they’re heard; making sure that the young people in those communities have opportunity. […] And that’s why, when I was in Kenya, for example, and I did a town hall meeting there, I emphasized what I had said to President Kenyata -- be a partner with the civil society groups. Because too often, there’s a tendency -- because what the extremist groups want to do is they want to divide. That’s what terrorism is all about. The notion is that you scare societies, further polarizes them. The government reacts by further discriminating against a particular group. That group then feels it has no political outlet peacefully to deal with their grievances. And that then -- that suppression can oftentimes accelerate even more extremism. And that’s why reaching out to civil society groups, clergy, and listening and asking, okay, what is it that we need to do in order to make sure that young people feel that they can succeed? What is it that we need to do to make sure that they feel that they’re fully a part of this country and are full citizens, and have full rights? How do we do that? Bringing them into plan and design messages and campaigns that embrace the diversity of these countries -- those are the things that are so important to do.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)

People , Feeling , Communication , Parting

“Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities.. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Source: Propaganda (1928), p.59

Men , Idea , Support , Sport

“The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah’s created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart.”

Abdus Salam (1926–1996) theoretical physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics recipient

Address to UNESCO (1979), as published in Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=084erO4KJCUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (1989), p. 251.

Law , Nature , Heart , Parting

“Seek to understand the root. — It is futile to argue as to which single leaf, which design of branch, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 11

Flowers , Understanding

“As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

War , People , Justice , Way

“They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker…”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Referring to a statement in the movie Braveheart, at alt.fan.pratchett (11 January 1999) http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2SwYaHAyOlm2EwG3%40unseen.demon.co.uk
Usenet

Freedom , Cry