Niklaus Wirth Quotes

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

I was always pretty good at designing things.

It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis.

I always look on imagination as one of the most powerful things we can cultivate in young people. If they have a good, active imagination, they can cope with life better; they are... able to imagine possibilities and to think around problems.

I credit my mom with inspiring in me a love of design, matched by her creative problem-solving abilities. This is a woman who could find an old, discarded piece of furniture, bring it home and turn it into something fabulous.

I know a lot of people who are very good at their craft who have learned - people behind the camera - who really have a lot to offer because they know what they're doing, they know what to do, they've made their mistakes.

Do you have hands? Excellent. That's a good start. Can you hold a pencil? Great. If you have a sketchbook, open it and start by making a line, a mark, wherever. Doodle.

It was always that detail that drove me. Ever since I was a little kid, I used to get into the nitty gritty... when I was drawing army tanks or monsters, I'd do every nut and rivet, and I'd do every scale on the dragon's back. It was just the way I was built.

What I try to do is the art of building, and the art of building is the art of construction; it is not only about forms and shapes and images.

You think about the beauty and what you want to transmit. If I think about designing, I can't design.

I work on fittings, mostly. You know, I sketch less and less in my work. I sketch for the show sometimes, but then it becomes more conceptual. But when I don't sketch, it becomes more pragmatic.

I fervently believe in research as a necessity for good design, and I teach it that way.

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood.

My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.

Imagination is as good as many voyages - and how much cheaper!

This is what I like about being a designer: You can't really get it until you see it.

A good designer has a lot in common with a good researcher. Both hunt for excellence and perfection. And you have to really focus on the details, and you don't really know what the final result will be before you have it.

Ever since I was young I loved making things and being part of the design process.

It's my job to know what's available from every retailer, catalog, website, antiques mall, and craftsperson. A good designer or decorator has to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge.

Everyday people are not very good designers.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Being a good observer is a great tool to have as a writer, just taking the world in.

I love creating and being able to see an idea come to fruition. I love making beautiful things.

Design, art, and science are all a melange.