"Best is enemy of the good" (Russian idiom/saying)

Solution 1:

This is attributed to Voltaire as ‘Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien’, and occurs in English as 'The best is the enemy of the good.'

However, there appears to be a preference for ‘The perfect is the enemy of the good’ in American English. Of the 36 records of ‘the enemy of the good’ in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, 22 are preceded by ‘the perfect’ (and, in one instance, ‘perfection’). 10 are preceded by ‘the best’ and 4 by ‘the better’. All four records in the British National Corpus are preceded by ‘the best’. It may be that the expression arose independently in the United States, but that in the UK it was a conscious translation of the French.

Solution 2:

In English it's normally translated as:

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Edit:

A related sentiment with a very different tone is:

Don't worry be crappy.

This play on the song title "Don't Worry Be Happy" though only applies to cases where incremental improvement is possible - a subset of the cases where Voltaire's saying applies. The idea is that releasing something when it still has even clear flaws can in the long term lead to better results (due to feedback, additional funding on the back of the first version, or interest from open-source contributors) than if you waited until that first version was much better.

I've seen people use the first quote to justify the second.

Solution 3:

I've also heard this stated as

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.