Dan Phillips Quotes

"Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with."

"People have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years: using whatever is available to build shelter. If you ponder what could be used, then building materials are everywhere."

"It doesn't matter if you don't have a complete set of anything because repetition creates pattern, repetition creates pattern, repetition creates pattern."

"Tile is going to the landfill by the metric ton. All we have to do it gather it up, glue it down to the floor and grout it. Then you have a tile floor, and not just any tile floor: it's a mosaic of your own choosing."

"Where do you get lumpy tiles? Well, of course, you don't. But I get a lot of toilets, and so you just dispatch a toilet with a hammer, and then you have lumpy tiles."

"Look at kids playing with blocks. I think it's in everyone's DNA to want to be a builder."

"I think mobile homes are a blight on the planet. Attractive, affordable housing is possible, and I'm out to prove it."

"I decided to set out to prove that you could make a reasonable living building for the poor using recycled materials and only hiring unskilled labor."

"I was a dancer of no repute. But dance taught me a lot. You walk into a dance studio knowing you have to walk out with a dance. You improvise."

"For centuries, building materials were free. You want to build a house, you cut down some trees. But we haven't been thinking about the cost to the planet."

"We have cultural expectations that everyone needs a dining room, yet they're only used three times a year. But if I put a bone handle on the door of an upper-end brick home, I'm making an outlandish statement."

"I had always suspected that one could build an entire house from what went into the landfill, and, sure enough, it's true."

"Building codes are a good thing. People who throw rocks at inspectors are being naive. It's a lot like police officers; we want them around unless they stop us for a ticket. It's the same with inspectors."

"Back when I was restoring art and antiques, finding ivory was very difficult because it's illegal, and the only difference between bone and ivory is that bone is free and not illegal."

"You can put someone in a new home, but you can't give them a new mindset."