A Quote by Jamais Cascio

The idea of sustainability can imply there is one perfect, unchanging future, if only we could work out how to get there. Resilience might be more useful, in that it assumes a dynamic environment and that perfection is impossible. You need to design systems to accommodate failure rather than eliminate it. By trying to be perfect, many visions of sustainability are quite brittle

Jamais Cascio

Quote Topics

Accommodate Could Design Dynamic Eliminate Environment Failure Future Get How Idea Imply Impossible Many Might More Need Only Out Perfect Perfection Quite Rather Resilience Sustainability Systems Than Trying Trying To Be Perfect Unchanging Useful Visions Work Work Out

Quote Author

Jamais Cascio
American - Writer

In many ways, the idea of resilience is a more useful concept than the idea of sustainability.

Rob Hopkins

Sustainability has become a religion in architecture - not that there's anything wrong with it - but I think it has to work both ways. Everyone thinks architecture has to be subservient to sustainability, but what if we thought in the other direction, like, what can sustainability do to make architecture more exciting?

Vito Acconci

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.

Paul Hawken

I work for perfection, for perfection's sake. I don't care what the external reasons are. And it's much more like a ballerina on opening night. You've done what you've got to do. When you go out, the purpose is to turn a perfect turn. You are not thinking about the future of the company, you are not thinking about your future, you're not thinking about the critics, it is you and the perfect turn.

Story Musgrave

Often, sustainability is discussed only in the context of energy. Energy sustainability is essential - but the word has a much broader meaning. It means long-term thinking about how we manage our businesses, invest in social spending, and plan for the future. This requires vision and leadership, and it requires citizen engagement.

Joe Kaeser

YouTube has a hundred engineers who are trying to get the perfect next video to play automatically. And their techniques are only going to get more and more perfect over time, and we will have to resist the perfect.

Tristan Harris

Everyone is comparing lives on social media and wants the perfect body, perfect image, perfect outfit, perfect life - we're striving for this perfection, and it's so unhealthy because there's no such thing as perfection.

Emily Atack

But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.

Rem Koolhaas

Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, 'Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf.' Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Language designers want to design the perfect language. They want to be able to say, 'My language is perfect. It can do everything.' But it's just plain impossible to design a perfect language, because there are two ways to look at a language. One way is by looking at what can be done with that language. The other is by looking at how we feel using that language-how we feel while programming.

Yukihiro Matsumoto

Resilience, timing, adaptation - these are the three pillars upon which the emergent properties of interacting systems rest. When the systems are the economy and the environment, understanding of the relationships among these concepts is crucial. This volume does a better job of explaining how to manage both money and nature to ensure humanity's long-term future than any other work I know of. Read and reflect.

John L. Casti

Don't go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as creativity, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability - whether they are easily measured or not.

Kenneth E. Boulding

It’s called the pursuit of perfection. The pursuit is the idea that you’ll never be perfect in gymnastics but you can continue to pursue it as long as you’re doing it. I don’t think it’s possible to be perfect in gymnastics. It’s just one of those sports that you’re always trying to improve and pursue that perfection.

Jonathan Horton

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

Craig Venter

How can we say nobody's perfect if there is no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there really is a right and wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type? Moral perfection? Aesthetic? Physiological? Mental?