Echoes

Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.

Instead of announcing that what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.

It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

As designers, we have a great responsibility. I believe designers should eliminate the unnecessary. That means eliminating everything that is modish because this kind of thing is only short-lived.

Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing.

The surest way to arouse and hold the reader's attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers — Homer, Dante, Shakespeare — are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.

Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away the unessential.