Top 15 Philippe Starck Quotes

I manage by absence. I go to the office two, three days a month, and those are the worst days for me. So the people on my team do what they want, when they want, but the results have to be perfect, crystal perfect. I cannot accept laziness or something that is not intelligent or any type of delay. If we say we will deliver a project on the 20th at 5 PM, on the 20th at 5 PM we shall blow the minds of the people we’re presenting to.

I am sort of a modern monk. My wife and I have a collection of cabins in the middle of nowhere, and we stay out of everything. We don’t go to dinners. We don’t go to cocktails. We don’t go to movies. We don’t watch TV. I don’t use my energy on other people. I just work and read. I live with myself in front of my white page. Of course, for much of the year I have to travel, speak to journalists, engineers, things like that, and it’s the worst. But from the 15th of June to the 15th of September, I live completely secluded, locked in one of my houses, working from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, or making my own biorhythm: work three hours, sleep 45 minutes, work three hours, sleep 45 minutes, for 24 hours, without eating. It’s a little sick. But I’m like Dr. Faust. I signed a contract with the devil to sell my life for creativity.

God is the answer when we don't know the answer.

Nobody is obliged to be genious but everybody is obliged to participate.

In perhaps 50 years, 60 years, we can finish completely this civilization, and offer to our children the possibility to invent a new story, a new poetry, a new romanticism.”

[At Thomson] the other important thing I did was that I outlawed the word "consumer" in all company meetings, and insisted it be replaced by the words "my friend", "my wife", "my daughter", "my mother", or "myself." It doesn't sound the same at all, if you say: "It doesn't matter, it's shit, but the consumers will make do with it," or if you start over again and say: "It's shit, but it doesn't matter, my daughter will make do with it. All of a sudden, you can’t get away with it anymore. There is an enormous task to be done with this kind of symbolic repositioning.

[M]y main task when I was artistic director at Thomson for four years: to make the company virtuous. Not because there was a desire there to do evil, but because they had simply forgotten their purpose in life - to be of service, to use their skills to be of service. It is essential to try to play the role of a friendly "enemy within". That is, to catch the interest of these big companies so that they make money available, and research facilities, and distribution networks, for this return to what is the origin of all their activities - to serve others. It even means changing the words they use. One of the things I did at Thomson was to change their name. Thomson used to be called TCE, Thomson Consumer Electronic, and I asked them: who wants to be a "consumer of electronics?"

I outlawed the word 'user' in all company meetings, and insisted it be replaced by the words 'my friend', 'my wife', 'my daughter', 'my mother' or 'myself'. It doesn't sound the same at all, if you say: 'It doesn't matter, it's shit, but the user will make do with it', or if you start over and say; 'It's shit, but it doesn't matter, my daughter will make do with it.' All of a sudden, you can't get away with it anymore. All of a sudden, you can't get away with it anymore. There is an enormous task to be done with this kind of symbolic repositioning.

Today, the problem is not to produce more so you can sell more. The fundamental question is that of the product's right to exist. And it is the designer's right and duty, in the first place, to question the legitimacy of the product, and that is how he too comes to exist. Depending on what answer he comes up with, one of the most positive things a designer can do is refuse to do anything,

I'm trying to move towards making objects which are honest, objects for non-consumers, for "modern rebels". Look, there are already millions of excellent chairs which are very comfortable, lamps which provide light, and so on. Is it necessary to create any more? The only question is: what will it bring to the human being who is going to use it? The urgent thing today is not to create a car or a chair which is more beautiful than another; what is urgent is for us all to fight with every means at our disposal against the fact that something is becoming extinct: love.

From a structural point of view, design is totally useless... I tried to give my products a little sense and energy. But even when I gave the best of myself, it was absurd.

D'un point de vue structurel, le design est totalement inutile... J'ai essayé de donner à mes produits un peu de sens et d'énergie. Mais même quand j'ai donné le meilleur de moi-même, c'était absurde.

I am just a copier, an impostor. I wait, I read magazines. After a while my brains send me a product... I am my brain's publisher.

You must have your own responsibility, your own consciousness.

My idea is to bring happiness, respect, vision. poetry, surrealism and magic [to design]. We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept'.