19 Quotes by William H. Whyte

It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.

So-called ‘undesirables’ are not the problem. It is the measures taken to combat them that is the problem.

Nonconformity is an empty goal, and rebellion against prevailing opinion merely because it is prevailing should no more be praised than acquiescence to it. Indeed, it is often a mask for cowardice, and few are more pathetic than those who flaunt outer differences to expiate their inner surrender.

People very rarely think in groups; they talk together, they exchange information, they adjudicate, they make compromises. But they do not think; they do not create.

Trees are contagious; as soon as one neighborhood or street is planted, citizen pressure builds up for action from the next street.

The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society – and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.

It’s not right to put water before people and then keep them away from it.

The onlooker had better wipe the sympathy off his face. What he has seen is a revolution, not the home of little cogs and drones. What he has seen is the dormitory of the next managerial class.

In further institutionalizing the great power of the majority, we are making the individual come to distrust himself. We are giving him a rationalization for the unconscious urging to find an authority that would resolve the burdens of free choice. We are tempting him to reinterpret the group pressures as a release, authority as freedom, and that this quest assumes a moral guise makes it only the more poignant.