"I can't do everything obviously although sometimes I know that all of us wish that we could"
About this Quote
The line admits a tug-of-war between boundless aspiration and human limits. It is generous in tone, almost apologetic, and it hints at a universal hunger to be omnipotent. Wanting to do everything is another way of wanting to matter completely. Accepting that we cannot is the first move toward real craft, because craft depends on choosing, editing, and letting go.
For Minoru Yamasaki, that tension ran through a career of outsized commissions and public scrutiny. He became famous for the original World Trade Center, a project that demanded grand scale, strict budgets, and rigorous engineering. He also became infamous for Pruitt-Igoe, the public housing complex whose demolition came to symbolize the limits of modernist planning. Both cases expose the impossibility of doing everything at once. A building cannot be simultaneously maximally expressive, economical, safe, flexible, universally beloved, and a cure for social ills. Tradeoffs are the marrow of design.
Yamasaki often spoke about creating places of calm and human scale within vast systems. That aim itself recognizes constraint: serenity needs restraint, repetition, and clarity. The twin towers, with their minimalist facades and narrow windows, reflected choices driven by structure, cost, and security as much as by aesthetics. Pruitt-Igoe revealed an even harder truth: architecture cannot fix what policy, economics, and society refuse to address. The desire to do everything becomes a burden when it breeds guilt, overreach, or the illusion that a single designer can carry the whole.
There is humility here, but also direction. If you cannot do everything, you must decide what matters most and build around it. Collaboration becomes essential, priorities become sharper, and success is measured not by totality but by clarity of intention. The wish to do everything is a sign of care; the refusal to pretend it is possible is a sign of wisdom.
For Minoru Yamasaki, that tension ran through a career of outsized commissions and public scrutiny. He became famous for the original World Trade Center, a project that demanded grand scale, strict budgets, and rigorous engineering. He also became infamous for Pruitt-Igoe, the public housing complex whose demolition came to symbolize the limits of modernist planning. Both cases expose the impossibility of doing everything at once. A building cannot be simultaneously maximally expressive, economical, safe, flexible, universally beloved, and a cure for social ills. Tradeoffs are the marrow of design.
Yamasaki often spoke about creating places of calm and human scale within vast systems. That aim itself recognizes constraint: serenity needs restraint, repetition, and clarity. The twin towers, with their minimalist facades and narrow windows, reflected choices driven by structure, cost, and security as much as by aesthetics. Pruitt-Igoe revealed an even harder truth: architecture cannot fix what policy, economics, and society refuse to address. The desire to do everything becomes a burden when it breeds guilt, overreach, or the illusion that a single designer can carry the whole.
There is humility here, but also direction. If you cannot do everything, you must decide what matters most and build around it. Collaboration becomes essential, priorities become sharper, and success is measured not by totality but by clarity of intention. The wish to do everything is a sign of care; the refusal to pretend it is possible is a sign of wisdom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
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