You know why this floor is like this? Because the offices down below, by code, have to have a certain amount of light. And the only way we could get it and to have this balcony was to make it a glass floor.
– Frank Gehry, from Sketches of Frank Gehry
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A great number of people come to me hoping they can change themselves and settle their anxieties, their problems in their marriage and whatever. They want to know how to handle life better. When an artist comes to me, he wants to know how to change the world.
– Milton Wesler, Frank Gehry’s therapist, from Sketches of Frank Gehry
You look at the charioteer, that sculpture in Delphi. It’s a Roman sculpture. And it says artist unknown. And it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture.
Think about that.
When I saw it I started crying. Because of how powerful it is that the guy doesn’t have his name, you know, that it grew out of a moment in time when there was a consensus… and that happened. That’s antithetical to democracy, I think.
And I’m hoping that, out of democracy, comes an expression that is… the consensus is democracy. How does that express itself? It expresses itself chaotically. And that chaos – we’re starting to feel – is beautiful.
– Frank Gehry, from Sketches of Frank Gehry
When I see something negative [critical reviews] I usually try it on, like you’re trying on a pair of jeans. I try it on for size. I wear it. I think, maybe there’s something here. I look at it. And then, I must get something out of it, because I’m sure I… but I don’t digest it intellectually. I don’t take it in as “Oh, I’ve got to do this” or “I’ve got to do thatâ€
– Frank Gehry, from Sketches of Frank Gehry
It was suggested that I look up a book called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. In my search, I found this video of him explaining his theory. He says that more choice results in less satisfaction and jokes that the key to happiness is low expectations. In another lecture, he referenced a Harvard Center for Business and Government paper titled The Laws of Libertarian Paternalism.
They seem to suggest that the present-day explosion of unbridled choice is frustrating the pursuit of happiness. I haven’t studied the paper yet, but it sounds like they’re saying that the role of corporations, advisors, and government is not to promote or restrict choice, but to offer recommendations to assist those (which is almost everyone) who do not take the time or have the patience to sift through all the options and make a decision, and so are more likely to simply not make a decision — when not making a decision is to their own detriment, that those in leadership roles have a responsibility to help make those choices less daunting.
I expect this has huge insights on how people make choices during elections and complex exercises such as community planning.
If you know something, you know it; if you don’t, you don’t. You can’t know it better or worse. Where you can demonstrate your competence is in using knowledge.
– page 238
All you get from coercion is resistance, no matter where it is used.
– page 246
These are our choices when we want to stop [feeling hurt]:
(1) change what we want,
(2) change what we are doing, or
(3) change both.
– page 71
The problem is that our [subconscious ideal] worlds do not recognize the impossibility of any picture we put into it.
– page 150
Most of us fear being creative because we are afraid that something new will be criticized.
– page 175
If everyone could learn that what is right for me does not make it right for anyone else, the world would be a much happier place.
– Glasser, page 53 of Choice Theory
One way all of us tend to define reality, or the real world, is to base it on what a lot of people say it is as long as they agree with us.
– Glasser, page 46 of Choice Theory
if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.
[...]
There isn’t enough money to go around, and to try to help everyone a little bit—to observe the principle of universality—isn’t as cost-effective as helping a few people a lot. Being fair, in this case, means providing shelters and soup kitchens, and shelters and soup kitchens don’t solve the problem of homelessness. Our usual moral intuitions are little use, then, when it comes to a few hard cases. Power-law problems leave us with an unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both.
– Malcolm Gladwell, Million Dollar Murray, New Yorker, February 2006