A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Terre des Hommes (Man and His World)
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  • Shusk

    Perhaps it is preferable to say that a designer knows he has achieved perfection by knowing when to stop creating.

  • http://twitter.com/marketingwizdom Robert Clay

    Beautiful. Fabulous. And so, so right!

  • Anonymous

    Neat quote. Hadn’t seen that before. Anybody know the source? One of his books?

    Also, side note to whoever is minding the web stuff -> Evernote Clearly can’t clip this page (does fine on “regular” blog posts), on this page all you get is the Community Leaders panel.

    • http://michaelhyatt.com Michael Hyatt

      Unfortunately, I don’t know the source.

      With regarde to Evernote, I can clip it in Chrome,  either just the quote or the whole page. What browser are you using?

      Thanks.

      • Anonymous

        Sure NP, thanks for post. It’s a great quote.

        On to the geeky stuff….. I’m using Mac running lion, running Chrome 16.0.912.63 with the Clearly 3.3324.156.156 plugin. And yes I can clip with the Evernote clipper, the Clearly plugin however doesn’t seem to like this page (and other “quote” pages on your site). The regular post all work like a charm, but for the quotes I was just getting the Community Leaders panel on the bottom. I was going grab a screen shot and now of course it works fine, so I feel like the boy who cried wolf. Can’t seem to replicate it with this or other quotes pages, so I had been doing something weird and/or I’m nuts. Either care never mind, I’ll follow up if I see it again or can flush out where it’s breaking. Thx again.

    • http://henryfiallo.wordpress.com/ Enrique Fiallo

      I believe it’s from St. Exupery’s book, Terre des Hommes (Man and His World), Chapter III, L’Avion (The Plane), published in 1939

      • http://michaelhyatt.com Michael Hyatt

        Thanks for citing the reference!

  • http://twitter.com/tom_dixon2 Tom Dixon

    Good advice for writers too!

    • http://theordainedbarista.com Barry Hill

      Tom,
      That’s EXACTLY what I was thinking. The absolute hardest part for me is WHACKING out stuff that might be written well, but doesn’t belong. William Zinsser talks a lot about that! Good stuff, Tom!

  • http://darensirbough.com/ Daren Sirbough

    Very very true! Simplicity is key

  • http://henryfiallo.wordpress.com/ Enrique Fiallo

    Great quote. One of my all time favorites. I believe this was a favorite of Steve Jobs’. He certainly applied it at Apple.

  • http://successbeginstoday.org/wordpress John Richardson

    So true! EOC (End of comment. Nothing left to remove)

  • http://joeandancy.com/ Joe Abraham

    Designing in its perfect sense!

  • http://uma-maheswaran.blogspot.com/ Uma Maheswaran S

    Matchless. That’s excellence par perfection. Such tribes are a rare commodity today.

  • http://www.jeffrandleman.com Jeff Randleman

    Excellent quote!

  • http://bentheredothat.com Ben Patterson

    Like it! That’s challenging to recognize.

  • Chrislangstonnz

    Hi Michael.

    I typed ‘design’ in the search menu in the hope of finsing out who you used to design your website? Simply because its inspiring.
    I’m pretty sure I saw a affiliate , advert link once but have not seen it since. Plus you did mention in one of your podcasts which I listen to but can’t find which one? Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

    • http://michaelhyatt.com/ Michael Hyatt

      I actually did the design myself. However, I had a web developer do all the programming. Stay tuned: we are about to offer a new theme built on my design. Thanks.