William McDonough Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of William McDonough's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Designer William McDonough's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 53 quotes on this page collected since February 21, 1951! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
All quotes by William McDonough: Abundance Architecture Business Design Earth Energy Nature Water more...
  • I just think it is so delightful to see people, let their elbows free. I think the exuberance of it all is really exciting to me. It's a signal of the abundance of diversity and creative expression.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • We achieved our mission to the moon. Let's look home from that lofty perch and reimagine our mission on Earth - that is what we need to do here. Together, we can upcycle everything. The world will be better for our positive visions and actions.

  • If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.

    "William McDonough: Godfather of Green". WNYC Studio 360, March 18, 2008.
  • Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.

    William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.16, Macmillan
  • To eliminate the concept of waste means to design things-products, packaging, and systems-from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist.

  • All these corporate reports say they want zero carbon. Well that is ridiculous, because you are not telling us what you are, you are telling us what you are not.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • It's going to sound strange probably. But I really like Frank Gehry's works.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • If design is the first signal of human intention.

    "Seven Steps to Doing Good Business". www.inc.com. November 1, 1993.
  • Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.

  • I'd rather have that dialogue right now than only the other one, which is starting at such a basic level, that we start rearranging stuff on the Titanic, trying to be less bad with ordinary stuff.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • I think as designers we realize 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.

  • The surest way to heal an eco-system is to connect it to more of itself.

  • You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.

  • I can't imagine something being beautiful at this point in history if it's destroying the planet or causing children to get sick. How can anything be beautiful if it's not ecologically intelligent at this point?

    "William McDonough: Godfather of Green". WNYC Studio 360, March 18, 2008.
  • Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.

    "God Is Green: Why ‘Less Bad’ Is Not Good" by Cathleen Falsani, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 2, 2010.
  • Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.

  • It would be nice if all that exuberance and abundance was connected to a deep ethos of planetary responsibility.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • We have carbon in the atmosphere. That is a material in the wrong place problem. It's just like what I said about the lead. Lead in the biosphere is not good. Carbon in the atmosphere (over natural levels) is a problem.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • Modern culture appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy. If we come here and say, I didn't intend to cause global warning, it's not part of my plan, then we realize it's part of our defacto plan because it's the thing that's happening because we have no other plan.

  • In the end, the question is not, how do we use nature to serve our interests? It's how can we use humans to serve nature's interest?'

  • The problem carbon is that everyone thinks we have an energy problem, we don't. We have plenty of energy. We have a carbon problem. Carbon is a material, so we have a material problem, not an energy problem.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem

  • We are proposing buildings that, like trees, are net energy exporters, produce more energy than they consume, accrue and store solar energy, and purify their own waste, water and release it slowly in a purer form.

  • If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.

  • Honor commerce as the engine of change.

    William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.150, Macmillan
  • Peter Drucker has pointed out that it is a manager's job to "do things right." It is an executive's job to make sure "the right things" get done. Even the most rigorous eco-efficient business paradigm does not challenge basic practices and methods: a shoe, building, factory, car, or shampoo can remain fundamentally ill-designed even as the materials and processes involved in its manufacture become more "efficient."

    William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.76, Macmillan
  • 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.

  • We realized we don't have an invention, that's why we gave it away.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
  • Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place

  • Carbon in your body - that's good thing. In a tree, it's good. In the atmosphere, it's a bad. Nature wants to sequester carbon in biota. And when we burn it, we release it. It's the wrong system.

    Source: www.triplepundit.com
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 53 quotes from the Designer William McDonough, starting from February 21, 1951! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    William McDonough quotes about: Abundance Architecture Business Design Earth Energy Nature Water