Jane Jacobs Quotes

New ideas often need old buildings.

Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Changes in the traditional way of building are only permitted if they are an improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be hundreds of years old has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie that walks by our side.

When you have such a huge past, a big background as we have, you can play off that - a lot of people do. But we felt we wouldn't have a legitimate future unless we put something new together.

I think you always have to be innovating and adapting and improving. You can't stay the same.

What makes our world so fascinating is that continuously there are novel and creative ideas spurring people to leave old ways and try something new.

To endeavor to rehabilitate the sabbath of our forefathers is as foolish as to try to make people go back into log houses and cook in a fire-place. Some persons can never realize that the world grows; that what was a help to one age becomes a hindrance to another; that time corrects the mistakes of men and that respect and reverence for our ancestors does not necessarily require us to adopt their clothes or their habits.

I love seeing the new generation take something that we've done and reinvent it for a whole new time.

You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.

We should not fear what is new, but we should not throw out that which is in the past but is still valuable.

It's good to be progressive, but don't shun the good things about tradition.

To me, the funnest part of wrestling is evolving. If you stay the same all the time, you're eventually going to be left behind.

Our roots are clinging, we shouldn't knock down so many old 'buildings.'

Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year

New ideas must use old buildings

The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them.

Working with (new collaborators) and letting people in to try new melodies and new lyrical ideas was very hard.

If you ever have a new idea, and it's really new, you have to expect that it won't be widely accepted immediately. It's a long hard process.

If there's a new idea, a new invention, or a new gas, or a new whatever you know, It should be brought at least into the open instead of carrying these same old burdens around with you.

But you have to live in the present. You have to take the old and make it new -- that's my point.

Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind--no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be--there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.