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About this quote

What does it mean?
Doctors can hide errors after the fact while architects must warn clients about future maintenance issues.
In plain terms
Doctors hide mistakes but architects warn clients to deal with them later.
What can you take from it?
Professions vary in how visible or remediable their errors become.

Where it applies

  • professional ethics
  • construction
  • medicine

Putting it to work

  • designing for durability
  • transparent communication

Questions to consider

  • Who bears more responsibility for long-term outcomes?
  • Can mistakes ever truly be buried?

Another view

The comparison oversimplifies the ethical burdens of each profession.

More from Frank Lloyd Wright

  1. So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal.

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  2. I doubt if there is anything in the world uglier than a Midwestern city.

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  3. No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.

    Permalink to quote #4

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