Quotes about Design

As I look back upon my life, I see that every part of it was a preparation for the next. The most trivial of incidents fits into the larger pattern like a mosaic in a preconceived design.

Life is an intricate pattern of simple designs; we see the intricacy, but once awareness is raised, we can then see simplicity in all things! Start with nature - get outside and embrace it today!

Cheryl Batoon

I know what the world exists for, but I know not how it came into existence. I see the design, but not the designer. I understand the question, but not the questioner.

Some things weren't designed to understand.

Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle.

Commerce on the other hand is relatively quick
essentially creative, highly effective and efficient
and fundamentally honest
because we can't exchange value for very long
if we don't trust each other
So we use the tools of commerce primarily for our work
but the question we bring to it is
"How do we love all the children of all species for all time?"
So we start our designs with that question
Because what we realise today is that modern culture
appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy
If we come here and say well I didn't intend to to cause
global warming on my way here-Its not part of my plan
Then we realise that it's part of our De facto plan
Because it's the thing that's happening
because we have no other plan

So if you don't have an end game of something delightful
then you're just moving chess peices around
if you don't know you've taken the king

So perhaps we can develop
a strategy of change that involves humility

So as Kevin Kelly pointed out
There is no end game, there's an infinite game
And we're playing in that infinite game
and so we call it Cradle to Cradle
Our Goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world,
with clean air, water, soil and power
-economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed-Period!
Which part of this don't you like?

Well I think
as designers
we realize that design is a signal of intention
but it also has to occur
within a world
and we have to understand that world
in order to imbue our designs
with inherent intelligence
so when we look back
at the basic state of affairs
in which we design
we, in a way, need to go
to the primordial condition
to understand the operating system
and the frame conditions
of the planet
and the exiting part of that
is the good news that's there
because the news is the news of
abundance
and not the news of limits
and I think as our culture
tortures itself now
with tyrranies
and concerns over limits
and fear
we can add this other dimension of abundance
that is coherent
driven by the sun
and start to imagine what that would be like
to share

...you have to design with positive principles and positive goals. Modern industrial culture doesn’t seem to have principles, except something like: “If brute force isn’t working, you are not using enough of it.” While its goals are unclear, its de facto goal appears to be to create ecological and human tragedy. If you play a game, you have to have a clear goal; in chess, you’re going to take a king. So we have an end game in mind because without this strategy becomes meaningless. What we seek is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean water, air, soil and power, that is economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

DESIGN is EVERYTHING

How do we love all the children of all species for all time?3

The hardest thing in the world is to be good and clear when creating anything. It’s the hardest thing in the world. It’s really easy to be obscure and elliptical and so fucking hard to be good and clear. It breaks people. Because you don’t often get encouragement to do that, to be good and clear.

"Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious,
and adding the meaningful."

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will. Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

Luck is the residue of design.

You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.

It is incontestable that the Constitution established a system of "dual sovereignty.". . . Although the States surrendered many of their powers to the new Federal Government, they retained a residuary and inviolable sovereignty. . . . The Framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States. The great innovation of this design was that our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.

The mere possession of a gun is, in itself, an urge to kill, not only by design, but by accident, by madness, by fright, by bravado.

The engineer's first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem really is.

It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.

The more contemplative gardener, seeing the garden as a whole, the design of it, and its nature as a still place of delight and refreshment, will wait and hope for the moment when it seems to achieve perfection. Awareness of when such moments are most likely helps to make them happen; they will not be entirely accidental but anticipated; everything will be planned to encourage them.

All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic herbals for ceramic cats.

It is a serious mistake to judge God within the narrow limits of our own understanding and abilities. God has created the worlds without number and is able to hold them all in perfect control. But even the greatest worlds are not the most prized of God's creations. The welfare of his children is far more important, and he has said that the greatest of all his gifts is the eternal life that he bestows upon us. We know that death is good. Certainly we would not dare to say that any procedure or design of God was superfluous or whimsical. On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence, scriptural and otherwise that death is an inescapable necessity in God's plan for human redemption.

Praise and Prayer PRAISE is devotion fit for mighty minds, The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice; Where Heaven divided faiths united finds: But Prayer in various discord upward flies. For Prayer the ocean is where diversely Men steer their course, each to a sev'ral coast; Where all our interests so discordant be That half beg winds by which the rest are lost. By Penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven; In Praise we nobly give what God may take, And are, without a beggar's blush, forgiven.

On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence - I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. The sidewalks were wider than any causeway; the street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed and it seemed . . . to throb at the last limit of endurance.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Lofty designs must close in like effects.

The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature.

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before.

A really great man is known by three signs - generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.