Dieter Rams Quotes

Good design is thorough, down to the last detail.

I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot?

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it.

If you work in a certain manner, you don't make mistakes.

Stay focused and don't try to do too many things at once. Care about execution quality.

Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly.

We’re surrounded by anonymous, poorly made objects. It’s tempting to think it’s because the people who use them don’t care - just like the people who make them. But what we’ve shown is that people do care. It’s not just about aesthetics. They care about things that are thoughtfully conceived and well made. We make and sell a very, very large number of (hopefully) beautiful, well-made things. our success is a victory for purity, integrity - for giving a damn.

The flip side of the coin was that even good programmers and language designers tended to do terrible extensions when they were in the heat of programming, because design is something that is best done slowly and carefully.

Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution.

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

Take care with the end as you do with the beginning

A perfectionist has to take his time.

Details create success.

No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important. For it will be by those small things that you shall be judged.

I've actually always been fussy about the work I do.

Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.

Design means being good, not just looking good.

I want people to understand that this is a very calibrated image [Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ], where point by point, very little is left to chance.

I think directing is a huge responsibility and it's not something where you can just be like, "Yeah, sure, I'll give it a go!" I think it's something you really need to focus on, and put a lot of effort and attention into.

There are always things I have to remove. I might look at a shot for five months, when somebody new to the screening room will say, 'hey, there's a modern air conditioner in that window.' It's a process.

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone.

Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.

Be circumspect in your dealings, and let the seed you plant be the offspring of prudence and care; thus fruit follows the fair blossom, as honor follows a good life.