I’ll be the first to plead guilty to having used quotes by famous (on occasion by anonymous) individuals in presentations to make a point. In my case, it’s because they inspire me. Good quotes have the ability to cut through crap and get to the root of something. They say what you often think or know through intuition but are unable to communicate with crispness.

I’ve been working with Bill Buxton lately assisting him with his opening the keynote address at MIX09. As you can imagine, someone like Bill drops sound bites very naturally. To him it’s just how he thinks and talks. I suggest you watch the recent video where @anyware & @ritzy interview Bill for their countdown to MIX09 show, and you’ll know what I mean.

At the 10m30s mark, he says something that really resonates with me because I’ve found myself repeating something similar since we started working on Descry (and even now, post-launch):

If you try to get everything right, that’s the surest path to failure

But, the quote I’ve been repeating over and over is not something Bill verbalized. Rather,it’s something I found on his site – billbuxton.com:

Ultimately,we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the "things" that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.

It’s probably the most holistic and brutally real definition of design that I’ve come across recently.

So, what are the quotes that inspire you?

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