Each person feels that he is an 'expert' in one or two fields and just the 'public' in all the others. But you know, probably, from experience that no one is really able to appreciate any display of ability in any field if he himself has not, to a certain degree, taken part in its problems and difficulties at some time.
Interpretation
True expertise requires personal experience in a field; without it, appreciation is limited.
Walter Gropius emphasizes that individuals often consider themselves experts in certain fields while remaining outsiders in others. However, the ability to genuinely appreciate someone's skills or contributions in a particular area requires personal involvement or experience with the challenges and intricacies associated with that field. This perspective highlights the importance of empathy and understanding gained through personal engagement.
In practice
In a workshop about leadership, this quote can illustrate the importance of personal experience in understanding the challenges of leadership roles.
The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! ... Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all get back to craft! ... The artist is a heightened manifestation of the craftsman. ... Let us form ... a new guild of craftsmen without the class divisions that set out to raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! ... Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.
The utilization of flat roofs as 'grounds' offers us a means of re-acclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; for the plots from which she has been evicted to make room for buildings can be given back to her up aloft.
Architecture begins where engineering ends.
Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts.
Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.
Confidence-building is not something that can go on forever. If it goes on forever then it becomes counterproductive.
The life so short, the crafts so long to learn.
It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
The Book of Proverbs deals very hard blows against sluggards, and Christian ministers do well frequently to denounce the great sin of idleness, which is the mother of a huge family of sins.
Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
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