When I have the choice to do something I don't want to do, I most often – most always – do it anyway.

The fundamental failure of most graphic, product, architectural and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good.

When I have the choice to do something I don't want to do, I most often – most always – do it anyway.

Physicist Isador Isaac Rabi, who won a Nobel Prize for inventing a technique that permitted scientists to probe the structure of atoms and molecules in the 1930s, attributed his success to the way his mother used to greet him when he came home from school each day. "Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?" she would say.

I live by two credos: If you don't ask, you don't get. And most things don't work.

Accept ignorance; pay more attention to the question than the answer; never be afraid to go in the opposite direction.

I like to question the minutia, to get to the essence of things. The minutia of life is all about design. It's about the design of how you talk to another human being; it's the design of speech; it's the design of everything we do. We need to be better at listening, and we need to aim more directly at understanding and being understood.