"Whatever ought to be, can be"
About this Quote
A developer’s mantra disguised as a moral claim, “Whatever ought to be, can be” turns ethics into a project plan. Coming from James Rouse - the businessman who helped pioneer the modern shopping mall and festival marketplace - the line reads less like airy optimism and more like managerial theology: if the goal is worthy, the obstacles are just logistics, financing, and design.
The intent is galvanizing. Rouse collapses the gap between the normative (“ought”) and the practical (“can”), refusing to let “That’s unrealistic” end the conversation. It’s a sentence built to recruit: donors, city officials, skeptical neighbors, even a tired internal team. The subtext is subtle but potent: legitimacy is a form of power. If something is truly justified, resources and ingenuity will follow, and if they don’t, maybe the commitment wasn’t real.
That’s also where the quote gets slippery. It smuggles in a market-flavored faith that human systems are malleable and that willpower (or capital) can outmuscle politics, history, and unintended consequences. In the late-20th-century American context - urban renewal, postwar affluence, the rise of private-sector “solutions” to public problems - Rouse’s statement flatters the era’s belief that smart development could heal civic fractures. It’s inspiring because it dares you to treat “ought” as enforceable. It’s haunting because it implies that failures are moral failures: if the good didn’t happen, someone simply didn’t want it hard enough.
The intent is galvanizing. Rouse collapses the gap between the normative (“ought”) and the practical (“can”), refusing to let “That’s unrealistic” end the conversation. It’s a sentence built to recruit: donors, city officials, skeptical neighbors, even a tired internal team. The subtext is subtle but potent: legitimacy is a form of power. If something is truly justified, resources and ingenuity will follow, and if they don’t, maybe the commitment wasn’t real.
That’s also where the quote gets slippery. It smuggles in a market-flavored faith that human systems are malleable and that willpower (or capital) can outmuscle politics, history, and unintended consequences. In the late-20th-century American context - urban renewal, postwar affluence, the rise of private-sector “solutions” to public problems - Rouse’s statement flatters the era’s belief that smart development could heal civic fractures. It’s inspiring because it dares you to treat “ought” as enforceable. It’s haunting because it implies that failures are moral failures: if the good didn’t happen, someone simply didn’t want it hard enough.
Quote Details
| Topic | Optimism |
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