Quotes

It’s better to tell a short story well, than a long one poorly. Found among the 37signals Manifesto, their original site. It’s loaded with gems. I was thinking about their name last week, and where it must have come from. Head there if you’d like to know. via fasturtle

I know many people who make stuff for the web, all of them very passionate about what they do. And every time I see a “FAIL” assigned to their work, it makes me sad. Yes, I know you’re trying to be funny. But I’m starting to see a trend away from the funny, and towards […]

You know you’re probably sitting too close to the monitor when you have to physically turn your head to see the other side. Amanda

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! Vroomfondel, Chapter 25

The main thing is: Don’t fear wool. Don’t save it for special occasions. Don’t look back on a life in which you were afraid to wear wool for fear of wearing it out or something. Rivendell Bicycle Works, makers of beautiful bikes bringing the message to the people that one does not need special clothes […]

In a mucked up lovely river / I cast my little fly I look at the river and smell it / And it makes me wanna cry Oh, To clean our dirty planet / Now there’s a noble wish And I’m puttin my shoulder to the wheel / Cause I wanna catch some fish Oh, […]

If you have a gun, you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone! Bill Maher

[In shaping a page] … how is one to choose? … By trusting to blind instinct? Instinct, in matters such as these, is largely memory in disguise. It works quite well when it is trained, and poorly otherwise. Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, Chapter 8

Through our insistence that any page make everything possible (search, click the third-last blog post, read everything from April, log in, buy, comment, Digg™, subscribe), we train site visitors to read as little as possible and get the hell out of there. Joe Clark, in his article “Unreadable,” from the new Scroll Magazine.

The old computing was about mastering technology; the new computing is about supporting human relationships. Ben Shneiderman. Source: IXDFTW.com

The quality of any collaborative creative endeavor tends to approach the level of taste of whoever has final cut. John Gruber, Author of Daring Fireball cf. Macworld Pulse talk, ’Auteur Theory of Design’ For some reason, this quote keeps coming back to bite me in the ass.

I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture […]

Since enhancing the prestige of farming as an occupation is critical to developing the sun-based regional agriculture we need, the White House should appoint, in addition to a White House chef, a White House farmer. This new post would be charged with implementing what could turn out to be your most symbolically resonant step in […]

For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible. Barack Obama

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. […] modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 […]