Quotes from William McDonough

Swiss textile mill Röhner. We

Honor commerce as the engine of change.

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.

I suggest we take our heads out of the tar sands and look up to see the sun. We don't own it, but it provides us all with great, endless value. So, too, the wind. These free, renewable sources of 'energy currency' are perfect partners to what we own together.

I am very focused on large-scale deployments of renewable power and how we're going to get this done. Imagine our military bases covered with solar thermal collectors that could generate steam and electricity.

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

I am working right at both the levels- with the most wealthy clients in the world, but also the poorest. I spend half my time designing for people that have nothing.

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

If you continue to act like an artist as you get older, you'll increasingly feel pressure. People will question your actions.

I see that idea that we need a new form as something critical. I mean, we do need to invent and not be benchmarking all the time. That's important to me.

We get jealous not because we're evil, but because we have little artists pent up inside us.

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.

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.

The problem I have with carbon as a bad thing issue, is that people go out and say they want to be zero carbon. You see it everywhere.

Art is about going a little nuts... Kids do art for fun. It's playing.

Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place

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.

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.

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

Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.

Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions.