Edward Tufte Quotes

#1. The world is generally multivariate

Edward Tufte

#2. There are many true statements about complex topics that are too long to fit on a PowerPoint slide.

Edward Tufte

#3. If the statistics are boring, you've got the wrong numbers.

Edward Tufte

#4. Here's the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, instead fix the design.

Edward Tufte

#5. Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding.

Edward Tufte

#6. My father worked for governments all his life as an engineer and public works director.

Edward Tufte

#7. Clutter is not a property of information. Clutter is a failure of design.

Edward Tufte

#8. The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing.

Edward Tufte

#9. The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensiona l;
the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent
the rich visual world of experience and
measurement on mere flatland?

Edward Tufte

#10. Good design is clear thinking made visible, bad design is stupidity made visible

Edward Tufte

#11. Beautiful Evidence is about the theory and practice of analytical design.

Edward Tufte

#12. I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.

Edward Tufte

#13. I was writing a chapter of Beautiful Evidence on the subject of the sculptural pedestal, which led to my thinking about what's up on the pedestal - the great leader.

Edward Tufte

#14. The speculative part of my work is that these particular cognitive tasks - ways of thinking analytically - are tied to nature's laws.

Edward Tufte

#15. Design isn't crafting a beautiful, textured button with breathtaking animation. It's figuring out if there's a way to get rid of the button altogether.

Edward Tufte

#16. The best graphics are about the useful and important, about life and death, about the universe. Beautiful graphics do not traffic with the trivial.

Edward Tufte

#17. Public discussions are part of what it takes to make changes in the trillions of graphics published each year.

Edward Tufte

#18. Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information.

Edward Tufte

#19. I think it is important for software to avoiding imposing a cognitive style on workers and their work.

Edward Tufte

#20. The world is much more interesting than any one discipline.

Edward Tufte

#21. There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.

Edward Tufte

#22. What gets left out is the narrative between the bullets, which would tell us who's going to do what and how we're going to achieve the generic goals on the list.

Edward Tufte

#23. PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play - very loud, very slow, and very simple.

Edward Tufte

#24. If your words aren't truthful, the finest optically letter-spaced typography won't help,

Edward Tufte

#25. The minimum we should hope for with any display technology is that it should do no harm.

Edward Tufte

#26. Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers 'users'

Edward Tufte

#27. What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, revelation of the complex.

Edward Tufte

#28. My idea here is that, inasmuch as certain cognitive tasks and principles are tied to nature's laws, these tasks and principles are indifferent to language, culture, gender, or the particular mode of information that is provided.

Edward Tufte

#29. Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. If the standard is lousy, then develop another standard.

Edward Tufte

#30. If you like overheads, you'll love PowerPoint.

Edward Tufte

#31. Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective.

Edward Tufte

#32. The point of the essay is to change things.

Edward Tufte

#33. A curious consequence is that I have become a minor celebrity.

Edward Tufte

#34. A metaphor for good information design is a map. Hold any diagram against a map and see how it compares.

Edward Tufte

#35. Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.

Edward Tufte

#36. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.

Edward Tufte

#37. I am certainly not an intellectual relativist, nor a moral relativist.

Edward Tufte

#38. If you're told what to look for, you can't see anything else.

Edward Tufte

#39. The idea of trying to create things that last - forever knowledge - has guided my work for a long time now.

Edward Tufte

#40. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant.

Edward Tufte

#41. The leading edge in evidence presentation is in science; the leading edge in beauty is in high art.

Edward Tufte

#42. It is straightforward for me to be ethical, responsible, and kind-hearted because I have the resources to support that.

Edward Tufte

#43. The goal is to provide analytical tools that will last students a lifetime.

Edward Tufte

#44. In general, I think audiences are a lot smarter than people think. So, it's not "know your audience", it's "respect your audience, and really know your content".

Edward Tufte

#45. The idea is that the content is the interface, the information is the interface, not computer-administrative debris.

Edward Tufte

#46. A practical part of my teaching is to provide demonstrative, hands-on experiences.

Edward Tufte

#47. I do believe that there are some universal cognitive tasks that are deep and profound - indeed, so deep and profound that it is worthwhile to understand them in order to design our displays in accord with those tasks.

Edward Tufte

#48. What this means is that we shouldn't abbreviate the truth but rather get a new method of presentation.

Edward Tufte

#49. We've drifted into this presentation mode without realizing the cost to the content and the audience in the process.

Edward Tufte

#50. That is to say, nature's laws are causal; they reveal themselves by comparison and difference, and they operate at every multivariate space/time point.

Edward Tufte

#51. The most common user action on a Web site is to flee.

Edward Tufte

#52. An open mind but not an empty head.

Edward Tufte

#53. Clutter is not an attribute of information, clutter is a failure of design ... fix the design rather than stripping all the detail out of the map.

Edward Tufte

#54. The essential test of design is how well it assists the understanding of the content, not how stylish it is.

Edward Tufte

#55. There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.

Edward Tufte