Frei Otto Quotes

#1. If we could get people to think about Jesus, we reasoned, Jesus was more than able to reveal himself to them.

Judah Smith

#2. Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.

Henry David Thoreau

#3. Why should we build very large spaces when they are not necessary? We can design halls spanning several kilometres and covering a whole city, but we have to ask, what does it really make? What does society really need?

Frei Otto

#4. Everything man is doing in architecture is to try to go against nature. Of course we have to understand nature to know how far we have to go against nature. The secret, I think, of the future is not doing too much. All architects have the tendency to do too much.

Frei Otto

#5. I have never been satisfied with a piece of work I have been actively involved in, and would never want to be.

Frei Otto

#6. I never met the second happiest man, or the first happiest man, so I can't judge where I fall into that category.

Jamie Farr

#7. We have big, big problems - flooding, earthquake, and many foolish things which now people are doing - I mean, these self-made catastrophes. We are able to give to every man on the street the possibilities to help himself. And to fight for this was one of my duties.

Frei Otto

#8. To build means to make architecture real on the borders of knowledge.

Frei Otto

#9. I have built little. But, I have built many castles in the air.

Frei Otto

#10. Buildings are 'humane' only when they promote peaceful human co-existence.

Frei Otto

#11. Everyone knew that once a woman was 30, she might as well be dead.

Alexandra Ripley

#12. My hope is that light, flexible architecture might bring about a new and open society.

Frei Otto

#13. I have only one dream. It is the oldest of humanity, of man, in time. It is paradise. I would like to give paradise to everyone.

Frei Otto

#14. Just being alive feels so arduous that all I want to do is climb under the covers and sleep.

Lauren DeStefano

#15. Any man's death diminishes us, but when an artist passes away, we lose not just an island but an entire archipelago.

Michael Dirda

#16. My architecture is the architecture of survival.

Frei Otto

#17. The sheer act of listening speaks volumes that even a great speech can't communicate.

John C. Maxwell

#18. My architectural drive was to design new types of buildings to help poor people, especially following natural disasters and catastrophes ... I will use whatever time is left to me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity.

Frei Otto