A few days ago, I came across a collection of design-related quotes over at sysprog.net. Below, a couple of my favorites:
In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning. -Maimonides
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. -Edward V Berard
You can only put as much intelligence in a system as was in the design engineer to begin with. -Peter Orme
When one has no character, one has to apply a method. -Albert Camus
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. -Ayn Rand
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. -Fyodor Dostoevsky
If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, you are not ready to code it. -Richard Pattis
Designers must do two seemingly contradictory things at the same time: They must design for perfection, and they must design as though errors are inevitable. And they must do the second without compromising the first. -Bob Colwell
The two main design principles of the NeXT machine appear to be revenge and spite. -Don Lancaster
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. -Clement Mok
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. -Alfred North Whitehead
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. -Leonardo da Vinci
Much of the Web is like an anthill built by ants on LSD. -Jakob Nielsen
Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. -Frank Lloyd Wright
Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. -Robert Pirsig
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. -Wernher von Braun
Out of intense complexities, emerge intense simplicities. -Winston Churchill