Year in Quotes (volume 2)

About a year ago, I posted a collection of quotes taken from our Wiki.

iMarc's Wiki home page starts with a quotation. Any employee can change the quote. When a new quote is posted, the old one gets archived.

Here are some of the quotes we've seen over the last year:

There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. [...]

This steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.

Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, 1747

This too shall pass.

— From Jewish folklore, supposedly King Solomon charged his wise men to invent the "perfect sentence". It had to be true and appropriate in all times and in all situations.

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.

Jeffrey Zeldman

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter

Mark Twain

There is no such thing as information overload, only bad design.

Edward Tufte

I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. You don't have to use my solution, but if you want 'options', go talk to other people.

Paul Rand, via Steve Jobs

The more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Wherever you work, most of the smart people are somewhere else.

Bill Joy, arguing against centralization

Deriving frameworks from production code really is a pleasant way of arriving at something useful.

David Heinemeier Hansson, on how Rails was developed

If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

Henry Ford

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

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

Martin Fowler

Comments

Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008 / 12:20pm Nick said…

Not inspirational, but how i feel sometimes as "Client Support".

"I'm Drowning, but you think I'm waving, so you just wave back at me" ~Some indie band I wish I knew the name of.

Thursday, Jul 24, 2008 / 6:56pm jess said…

@nick that indie band totally stole those lyrics from a stevie smith poem.

Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

Tuesday, Jul 29, 2008 / 11:56am Ken A. said…

Great list of quotes. I I love the Stanhope quote, and after reading them all, this is still my favorite.

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