Understanding Is Love

UnderstandingIsLove

"Believe me, when you understand something you will not copy it. A copy cat is a copy cat because he does not understand. Understanding is love. If you don't understand, you don't love."

--from an address by FrankLloydWright, Florida Southern College, Lakeland, FL, March 3, 1950

I saw this quote on a visit to Florida several years ago, copied it down, and promptly lost it. It was worth enough to me to go a couple of hours out of my way, on my most recent trip down there, to get the quote again. (I have a very understanding spouse.) I have the full text of the speech, which I've finally gotten up:

http://www.geocities.com/psrchisholm/wright-fsc.html

The quote above is the fifth paragraph. I take no resposibility for the punctuation (which I copied exactly from the speech transcript), nor for Wright's opinions.

FrankLloydWright seems here to be making a point much like ChristopherAlexander or JimCoplien: If you have a good generative pattern, you have something more powerful than a cookie cutter. If you understand something, you won't copy it; you'll copy the essence of what makes it good.

See also ElvisImitators.

--PaulChisholm

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. (AntoineDeSaintExupery)

-- I hope the translation is OK --- MartineDevos

I've always liked Michaelangelo's comment on copying: "Where I steal, there I leave my knife." I read this as "If you're going to copy, do it better; make the original look pale by comparison." (The quotation's not in Bartlett's or the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, so perhaps it's apocryphal. I still like it.) -- BetsyHanesPerry

Google @2003 knows of http://www.geocities.com/serpyllum/fic/2002_01_13_archive.html

Actually it dovetails beautifully with ProgressCausesLove.

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