You’re doing the one thing you want to do and you do it well, and you know you do it well, and you’re happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at a drawing table, turning on the radio. And I think, “what a transcendent life this is that I’m doing everything I want to do.”

I think what I’ve offered was different. But not because I drew better than anybody, or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody. And in the discussion of children, and the lives of children, and the fantasies of children, and the language of children, I said anything I wanted, because I don’t believe in children. I don’t believe in childhood. I don’t believe there’s a demarcation of “you mustn’t tell them this, you mustn’t tell them that.” You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it’s true. If it’s true, you tell them.

In his A Philosophy of Restraint talk at An Event Apart in Seattle, WA 2012 Simon Collison outlined his design philosophy and how he applies it to Web projects. Here's my notes from his talk:

The moral sense is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity, reframing practical problems as moral crusades.