“Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in process of construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.”

Vol. II, Ch. XII, p. 237.
(Buch II) (1893)

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Karl Marx290

German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and … 1818–1883

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Weinberg attributed with the quote in: Murali Chemuturi (2010) Mastering Software Quality Assurance: Best Practices, Tools and Technique for Software Developers. p. ix

“A great new edifice is not built overnight. It was 11 years from the Declaration of Independence to the writing of the Constitution. The construction of workable federal institutions required still another generation. The greatest works of our Nation's founders lay not in documents and in declarations, but in creative, determined action. The building of the new house of Europe has followed the same practical, purposeful course. Building the Atlantic partnership now will not be easily or cheaply finished.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

“You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Interview with Inc. Magazine for its "The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award" (1 April 1989) http://www.inc.com/magazine/19890401/5602.html <br class="br">1980s <br class="br">Variant: You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

“One phone call from anyone in his office could have got us admission in an elite school in Delhi. We were admitted instead in the Delhi Kannada School at Khan Market. Clearly, grandfather did not want us to pick up any notion that we belonged to the privileged class. Our fellow students here were mostly children of Kannadigas working in offices in Delhi.”

Basappa Danappa Jatti (1912–2002) Indian politician

Simple man with a lofty office

“It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

German Requiem, line 1 (1980).

“Man is the animal with a soul who thinks and builds; his penetrating insights into the laws of nature are there for any child to learn, and his impressive mastery of the materials of the earth stands ready to be imitated by anyone, but the home he has built for his own kind is still a lonely and impoverished place for many people. There is nothing about that loneliness that wisdom cannot change; there is nothing in that poverty that strength cannot overcome. Separated from each other, the thinker is a stranger in his own house, and the builder is a beggar at his own door. Together, they can bring the warmth of love and the helpfulness of power into the daily market place of living, taking a human position that is eternal and without compromise. In the midst of the obvious and the commonplace, and only in this birthplace of human contentment and happiness, the thinker and builder can leave the monastic cell and relinquish barracks mobility to claim the world in the name of human beings. When they do so, man can expect a human harvest equal to his dreams, and measured to the nobility of his posture.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Psychoanalysis and Civilization