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"The war, as I felt it and a lot of my compatriots felt it, was a creative act."
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"The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are... All men die, and most men miserably. That two soldiers on opposite sides, each believing his own country to be in the right, each at the moment when his selfishness is most in abeyance and his will to sacrifice in the ascendant, should kill [each] other in plain battle seems to me by no means one of the most terrible things in this terrible world."

"Words of war, on a piece of paper. Where peace is torn off, crumbled and toss in the waste basket."

"In raining bullets on those silent faces, already turned away from this world, you think you are disfiguring the face of our truth."

"What is the first thing we did when we took control of Iraq? Protect the oil fields. Remember the administration quote about how the oil would pay for the war."

"Those people who want to express their religious beliefs on public property should enjoy the same rights that we provide to those protesting the war in Iraq."

"In the matter of war, ask this question to yourself and to your own fellow country men: Have you ever seen any politician in your country without legs, without arms, without eyes after war? No! You can't see such a thing because honourless politicians always stay in the safe ports while they send others to the zone of death!"

"In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion."

"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.... Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added."
Explore more quotes by Lawrence Halprin


"Because one of the benefits of getting older, I guess-there are very few benefits, really - most of them are a pain in the butt. People depend on me more; they believe in me more, they think I'm good."


"One of the things I thought a lot about was how can we get the views, for instance, the main plaza, you look up to Telegraph Hill from there and therefore it would be a disaster to close that view off."


"I always say to young people when they ask me how I work, I always say to them, the only time you've ever going to do something good is if you have a good client. And by good I mean all kinds of things."


"Because the quality of living with nature and allowing it to manifest itself is different than the quality of living in a city, especially a dense city."


"Let me just say something that I forgot, I also hoped and this was very true in the beginning - that this would also be a place that people would be able to walk in to the fountain and use it in a nice way of reading and examining the quotations on the blocks."


"I suppose and I hope that the young guys who are out there losing their lives at least feel the same way I did. I shouldn't think about this very much because I'm almost weeping when I think about it."


"Then I sit down, work at it, because now I have a convincing feeling about what that place wants to be, you see? And it's not just me. Me and my talent comes in taking that consensus and then making something wonderful out of it - a work of art."


"And you finally get to a consensus, where you get a sense of what really ought to be done, and then they give it to me and then I draw it. I mean draw it in the sense, the philosophical sense."


"One is, that they will feel about you that you're going to make something wonderful for them. And they help you by expressing themselves. Not telling you how to do it, but encouraging you and accepting your vision and working with you on that kind of a level."
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