Christopher Alexander Quotes

We must do more to protect our neighborhoods and give integrity to our community plans.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

Trends are not real; they are for the consumer, and once we can get enough of us to free ourselves from it and realize that it's not about strong-arming our way through, it's about understanding that we are so needed for the balance of this planet, then I think we can start having changes.

We have to support the well-being of society.

We need – more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes – to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.

I like to play my game. I don't want to do anything out of control, out of nature.

I heard that Hubballi-Dharwad is going to be a Smart City. But it should ensure the sense of community and love is not lost.

When you're dealing with a small community, every person counts.

A good society is characterised not just by liberty but by mutual respect and responsibility. When this breaks down it takes a lot more than police officers to put things right.

Portland is a place where everyone closes their eyes and crosses their fingers and hopes for a better community. They keep it small and local, and usually they think if they just make great coffee, it's the best thing for the neighborhood.

We have always a roll to play in any community, and we have to do it - it's being part of a society.

Collective action remains the best way of renewing the march towards the great trinity of liberty, equality, and solidarity.

I believe society and football are all the time together, and will come to a new harmony.

Freedom and relationship are polar opposites - they both exist on the same continuum. You DO want a relationship - and you DO want freedom - what you really want is BALANCE, you want wholeness.

In harmony with the Tao, the sky is clear and spacious, the earth is solid and full, all creature flourish together, content with the way they are, endlessly repeating themselves, endlessly renewed. When man interferes with the Tao, the sky becomes filthy, the earth becomes depleted, the equilibrium crumbles, creatures become extinct. The Master views the parts with compassion, because he understands the whole. His constant practice is humility. He doesn't glitter like a jewel but lets himself be shaped by the Tao, as rugged and common as stone.

The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.

All the fish needs is to get lost in the water. All man needs is to get lost in Tao.

To pay attention to the actual core of the movement - that would be pretty hard. Can you concentrate for example on either the policy issues or the creation of functioning democratic communities of mutual support and say, well, that's what's lacking in our country that's why we don't have a functioning democracy - a community of real participation. That's really important. And that always gets smashed.

The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao.

Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone

Let there be spaces in your togetherness...just as strings of a lute dance alone though they quiver with the same music.

What we do as a community, as a society, for each other, matters as much as what we do for ourselves. It sounds a little trite, but there's a powerful amount of truth in that, I think.

Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

When I'm with Purple, I'm totally with Purple; when I'm doing my thing, I'm totally doing my own thing.

All things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure.