Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?'

Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.

Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.

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

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.

It was a war, and in a war there are always casualties. Never winners, but always plenty of casualties.

A wise man never refuses anything to necessity.

All art is a kind of confession more or less oblique. All artists if they are to survive are forced at last to tell the whole story to vomit the anguish up.

The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.

The measure of love is to love without measure. - attributed to Saint Augustine

Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.

We set out to become a band for our time. But sometimes if you do a good-enough job, you become a band for all time.

It's easier to hide your light under a bushel than to keep your shady side dark.

If God came to save the world, why are so many of His professed followers intent on damning it?

I used to get a lot of letters from prisoners. It used to get on my nerves. Especially family members. Everybody's innocent.