Folklore.org Quotes
One of the last features added to Folklore.org before it launched in January 2004 was a random quote displayed below the photo of the design team on the home page. It was fun to assemble a collection of inspirational quotes that reflect and exemplify the spirit and values of the original Macintosh team.
I thought it would be interesting to display all the quotes on a single page, so here they are below.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
“He not busy being born is busy dying.”
“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.”
“To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?”
“If everything is under control, you're going too slow.”
“Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
“There's only one rule in user interface design: Make the user happy.”
“The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet.”
“Real artists ship.”
“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”
“The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the abililty to gratify it.”
“Expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing.”
“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.”
“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
“He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”
“A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
“When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
“Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.”
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
“It's better to be a pirate than join the Navy.”
“Make it as simple as possible. But no simpler.”
“There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”
“Better is the enemy of best.”
“Systems programmers are high priests of a low cult.”
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
“The physicist's greatest tool is his wastebasket.”
“If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.”
“I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”
“To live outside the law you must be honest.”
“It's always necessary to seek for perfection. Obviously, for us, this word no longer has the same meaning. To me, it means: from one canvas to the next, always go further, further...”
“Art is a passion or it is nothing.”
“Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered pot holder.”
“The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.”
“The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.”
“An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.”
“Great software requires a fanatical devotion to beauty.”
“Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible.”
“Less is more.”
