"Most people only got to the top after
scraping along at the bottom. Failure is very disagreeable, but the bitter taste
of it is often the finest spur to claw your way to success."
Charles Saatchi, after discussing: Henry Ford, Sochiro Honda, Bill Gates, Akiro
Morita, Colonel Sanders, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Stephen
King, Elvis Presley... who were all considered "failures", sometimes many time
over...
"It is amazing how complete the delusion is
that beauty is goodness" Leo Tolstoy
“Fundamentally, sustainable development is a
notion of discipline. It means humanity must ensure that meeting present needs
does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.“
Gro Harlem Brundtland
"The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term...
if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect". Frank
Lloyd Wright
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom", William Blake
"Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator", "Travel light and you can sing in the
robber's face" Juvenal (ca. 50 - 130 AD)
"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves, and we travel, next to find
ourselves."George Santyana, The Philosophy of Travel
"There are also, in every civilization, real places which are something like
counter-sites. I shall call them heterotopias.""....."The heterotopia is capable
of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites, that are in
themselves incompatible."....."The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In
civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of
adventure, and the police take the place of pirates."
Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces (1967)
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from
the successful one is a lot of hard work. Stephen King
Action is the foundational key to all success. Pablo Picasso
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should be. Now put foundations under them.” Henry David Thoreau
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” Lily Tomlin
“Know how to choose. Most things in life depend on it. You need good taste and
an upright judgement; intelligence and application are not enough. There is no
perfection without discernment and selection.” Baltasar Gracian
“You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle
three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle five. In
that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease and mastery, and you
create a feeling of strength in reserve.” Pablo Picasso
"You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing the small things,
so that all the small things go in the right direction.” Alvin Toffler
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Oscar Wilde
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without
a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast. Leonardo da Vinci
Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. Salvador Dali
If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my
paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it. Andy
Warhol
“Future generation is the most important thing” Confucius
“treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to
you by your children” Kenyan Proverb
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced"
Kierkegaard
“sustainable development is a dynamic process which enables all people to
realise their potential, and to improve their quality of life, in ways which
simultaneously protect and enhance the Earth's life support systems.”
(Forum for the Future Annual Report 2000).
“Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it
arises out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further
developments.”
Lewis Mumford
“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. ”
Albert Einstein
There are two posible routes to affluence. Either produce much, or desire
little. Anon.
if everyone on the world enjoyed the same level of natural resource consumption
as a typical UK citizen, we would need three planets to support us. This is
clearly unsustainable. www.bioregional.com
"Uncommon men require no common trust; give him but scope and he will set the
bounds" Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)
Commodities, including parcels of time, only accrue value if and when they are
rendered scarce. Time scarcity has been a basic principle of industrial life.
Andrew Ross
The wise man doesn’t give the right answers - he poses the right questions.
Claude Levi Strauss
Enchantment, a useless thing, but as inidispensible as bread. There are two
reasons for good architecture in a hospital, school or public space. One is its
effect on outcomes: patients get well faster, exam results improve, crime rates
drop. The other is its value in itself, like the value of music and art. A
patient, a child and a citizen are entitled to beauty dignity and richness in
their surroundings. Gio Ponti
A 17th-century painting can be “modern” because the living eye finds it fresh
and new. A “modern” painting can be outdated because it was a product of the
moment and not of time. Mayra Mannes
The invention of printing radically changed ways of thinking - not just how
things are communicated, but what can be thought. Derrick de Kerckhove
Do not fear mistakes. There are none. Miles Davis
You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to
add, but when you have nothing more to take away. Antoine de Saint Exupery
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the
old ones. John Cage
He who would travel happily must travel lightly. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I call architecture “petrified music.” Really there is something in this; the
tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music. Goethe
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at
the right time and the instrument plays itself. Johan Sebastian Bach
If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the
Wastepaper Age. Jacques Barzun
The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new
eyes. Marcel Proust
Our society lacks a feedback loop for controlling technology: a way to gauge
intended effects from actual effects later on. Kevin Kelly
Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you. Elias Canetti
lums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are
incubators of apathy and delirium. Cyril Connolly
Usability methods are like sandpapering a chair. If you are making a chair, the
sandpaper can make it smoother. But no amount of sandpaper wil turn a chair into
a table. Alan Cooper
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through
daring, through obeying the blind urge.
Henry Miller
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. Mario
Andretti
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn
nothing. Henry Miller
Begin the next. Slogan on cement truck in Tokyo
In 1994, 120 million people migrated legally, or illegally, from one country to
another. That's two per cent of them world's population. International
Organization for Migration
Scenic games will be responsible for the death of the soul.Saint Augustine
An ox is still an ox, even if you drive it to Vienna. Hungarian proverb
Do less, with less. Viridian Design Manifesto
Some people say complexity is 'out of control'. But not knowing how to reach a
destination is one thing — having no destination at all is another, more
wretched, thing. John Thackara
For tribal man space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is
time that occupies the same role. Marshall Mc Luhan
We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where
feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in
the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless
life that issues forth at the other end. Lewis Mumford
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. Franz Kafka
Don’t follow trends - start trends. Frank Capra
Through play, the child is liberated from action, from the constrants of the
real, and moves in the direction of abstract thought. Tony Graham
The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the
unreasonable silence of the world. Albert Camus
In 1970, Los Angeles became the first place where the total acreage used for
roads and parking exceeded the amount of space given over to habitation.Victor
Papanek
My despondency index indexes the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the suicide
rate at the Golden Gate Bridge, and gives you a moving average of what's going
on.
Natalie Jeremijenko
Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it
arises out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life’s further developments.
Lewis Mumford
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without
benefit of experience.
Henry Miller
A wise man changes his mind; a fool never will.
Spanish Proverb
If you want to build a ship, teach the men to yearn for the vast and endless
sea.
Saint Exupery
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society”
Mark Twain
"The brute covers himself, the rich man and the fop adorn themselves, the
elegant man dresses!"
Honore de Balzac
To make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible
time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the
disadvantage of anyone. - Buckminster Fuller
We need a new environmental consciousness on a
global basis. To do this, we need to educate people. - Mikhail Gorbachev
We share the earth not only with our fellow human beings, but with all the other
creatures. - The Dalai Lama
Fundamentally, sustainable development is a notion of discipline. It means
humanity must ensure that meeting present needs does not compromise the ability
of future generations to meet their needs. - Gro Harlem Brundtland
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life
on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. - Albert Einstein
We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to. - Terri
Swearingen
Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly
free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant. - Aldous
Huxley
The best friend of earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully
and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth. - Frank
Lloyd Wright
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can
still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. -
Galileo
You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled. -
Tahanie
Little flower, but if I could understand, what you are, root and all in all, I
should know what God and man is. - Tennyson
We are seeing the birth of a new perspective of the world, where ecology and
economics are two sides of the same coin. - Leif Johansson
We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but
also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature
and have made us. - E.F. Schumacher
Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness'. - Luther Standing Bear
If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.
- Chinese Proverb
The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the
alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25,
50 or perhaps 100 years. - Jacques Cousteau
Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. - Hippocrates
If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it
rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wastefull. A far better way would
be to avail ourselves of the sun's rays. - Nikola Tesla
We must go through a natural revolution if we are to survive on earth. We need
to change people's perceptions. If there's no environment, there's no human
race. We are in a state of global denial. - Ted Turner
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its
animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. - Marshall McLuhan
We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic
logic of short-term thinking. - Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been
poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that
money cannot be eaten. - Cree Indian Prophecy
The continued poverty of the majority of the planet’s inhabitants and excessive
consumption by the minority are the two major causes of environmental
degradation. - UN Environment Program
A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain
it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can
only be called violent. - E. F. Schumacher
Everyone who considers themselves a realist will be forced to justify their
behavior in light of their contribution toward the preservation of the
environment. - Ernst von Weizacker
For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a
higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the 'more
with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity
now has the option of becoming enduringly successful. - Buckminster Fuller
The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is
compassionate, prosperous and enduring and thus more intelligent, even
competitive. - Paul Hawken
We have forgotten who we are, we have lost our sense of wonder and
connectedness, we have degraded the earth and our fellow creatures, and we have
nowhere else to go . . . - Earth Charter
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be
undertaken with painstaking excellence. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we
don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that. - Thomas
Edison
The boundless blue-sky, the ocean which gives us breath and protects us from the
endless black and death, is but an infinitesimally thin film. - Vladimir
Shatalov - Cosmonaut
The only people in the suburbs who like what's happening are the developers, who
are getting rich. - Myron Orfield
Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment. - Rene Dubos
Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe
the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. - Carl Sagan
That each day I may walk unceasingly on the banks of my water, that my soul may
repose on the branches of the trees which I planted. - Egyptian tomb inscription
If you want to see an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror. - John
Young, former Apollo astronaut
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them -
Albert Einstein
Human history becomes more a race between education and catastrophe. - H. G.
Wells
The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the
landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built. - Frank
Lloyd Wright
The time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they now
look upon the murder of men. - Leonardo Da Vinci
Our world has enough for each person's need, but not for his greed. - Mahatma
Gandhi
We all moan and groan about the loss of the quality of life through the
destruction of our ecology, and yet each one of us, in our own little
comfortable ways, contributes daily to that destruction. It's time now to awaken
in each one of us the respect and attention our beloved mother deserves. - Ed
Asner
The world's deteriorating ecology poses as great a danger to mankind today as
did the nuclear standoff between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War.
- Mikhail Gorbachev
Out of clutter ... find simplicity. From discord . . . find harmony. In the
middle of difficulty lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein
Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the people of the earth. Man did not weave
the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. - Chief Seattle
Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to
protect man.- Stewart Udall
The ecological crisis is doing what no other crisis in history has ever done --
challenging us to a realization of a new humanity. - Jean Houston
We are each as much a part of the environment as a tree is. The ecosphere is an
interconnected web (like the Internet).- Matt Howes
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called
scientific knowledge. - Thomas Edison
A house is a machine for living in. Le Corbusier
A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a
beautiful catastrophe. Le Corbusier
Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in
the light. Le Corbusier
I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.
Le Corbusier
Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as
they need bread or a place to sleep. Le Corbusier
The home should be the treasure chest of living. Le Corbusier
The most beautiful bridge in the world. so pure, so resolute, so regular that
here, finally, steel architecture seems to laugh. Le Corbusier
Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan - that vertical city with unimaginable
diamonds. Le Corbusier
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why
Chippendale is famous. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
God is in the details. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Less is more. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Simply by not owning three medium-sized castles in Tuscany I have saved enough
money in the last forty years on insurance premiums alone to buy a medium-sized
castle in Tuscany. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable
means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.
Louis Kahn
Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column
became. Louis Kahn
Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of
architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does
have that mind, does have that soul. Louis Kahn
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes
hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack
of respect for humans too. - Luther Standing Bear
"Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the
air.
"You name them - work, family, health, friends and spirit - and you're keeping
all of these in the air.
"You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will
bounce back.
"But the other four balls - family, health, friends and spirit - are made of
glass.
"If you drop these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged,
or even shattered.
"They will never be the same." Bryan Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look
something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
_
52 would be female
48 would be male
_
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
_
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
_
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
_
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would befrom
the United States.
_
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for
acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder...
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed
than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of
imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ...you are ahead
of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment,
arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion
people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof
overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish
someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very
rare, even in the United States and Canada.
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that
someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two
billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
