How do you discover a need that nobody yet knows about? This is where the product breakthroughs come through.

The hardest part of design ... is keeping features out.

Isn't one of your first exercises in learning how to communicate to write a description of how to tie your shoelaces? The point being that it's basically impossible to use text to show that

Technology may change rapidly, but people change slowly. The principals [of design] come from understanding of people. They remain true forever.

When a device as simple as a door has to come with an instruction manual—even a one-word manual—then it is a failure, poorly designed.

Also note that invariably when we design something that can be used by those with disabilities, we often make it better for everyone

I believe that robots should only have faces if they truly need them

Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.

Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made.

Knowing how people will use something is essential

Complexity is acceptable as long as it is intelligible and necessary. We want to avoid needless complications.

The mirror is the worst judge of true beauty

Do not deprive me of my age. I have earned it.

Whoever, fleeing marriage and the sorrows that women cause, does not wish to wed comes to a deadly old age.

You see much more of your children once they leave home.

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

The Earth we evolved to inhabit is turning into something more turbulent and unreliable at a pace too fast for most living things to adapt to.

Many in the modern world fell for the myth that we're living in a static, fixed, flat reality of just material things.

The only way I could get comfortable around people was to make them laugh.

I'm no Kenneth Branagh or Ben Stiller. I'm not that single-minded: 'I'm producing it, directing it, and starring in it' kind of person; that's not me.