Quotes by Architects

I believe I’m very normal. I’m hyper-normal. I’m more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric.I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I’m less, rather than more, intelligent than other people.By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life.
Richard Saul Wurman
I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
The most common definition of [the word information] is: "the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came in vogue to use 'information' as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. 'Information' became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn't necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged its liberal deployment. It has become the single most important word of our decade, the suspense of our lives and our work.
Richard Saul Wurman
The most common definition [of the word information] is: "the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came in vogue to use 'information' as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. 'Information' became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn't necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged its liberal deployment. It has become the single most important word of our decade, the suspense of our lives and our work.
Richard Saul Wurman
I delve into the mysterious and counterintuitive world of helmets and high-visibility gear later in the book. But it's worth immediately noting this: while they're not inherently bad, they're less a safety device for cycling than a symptom of a road network where no cyclist can truly feel safe.
Peter Walker
One is too precious about the past, the other too hungry for the future. One arm being dragged into the past by the ethics of historic preservation, the other being yanked towards a hopeful (bigger, brighter, better) future.
Winy Maas
It is not an individual act, architecture. You have to consider your client. Only out of that can you produce great architecture. You cannot work in the abstract.
I.M. Pei
Life is architecture and architecture is the mirror of life.
I.M. Pei
Let's do it right. This is for the ages.
I.M. Pei
You cannot defend your design without knowing what you're designing for.
I.M. Pei
How much pain they have cost us the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
Never turn down a job because you think it's too small you never know where it may lead.
Julia Morgan
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.
Thomas Jefferson
War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
Thomas Jefferson
Either war is obsolete or men are.
Buckminster Fuller
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Thomas Jefferson
The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
Thomas Jefferson
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself as public property.
Thomas Jefferson
Trifles make perfection - and perfection is no trifle.
Michelangelo
The present moment is creative creating with an unheard-of intensity.
Le Corbusier
I like the dreams for the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
When the past has taught us that we have more within us than we have ever used our prayer is a cry to the divine to come to us and fill us with its power.
Rudolph Steiner
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
Television is chewing gum for the eyes.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Drinking water neither makes a man sick nor in debt nor his wife a widow.
John Neale
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
I know the price of success: dedication hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Success is that old ABC-Ability Breaks and Courage.
Charles Luckman
Success is that old ABC- ability breaks and courage.
Charles Luckman
Peace commerce and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none.
Thomas Jefferson
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Thomas Jefferson
For God's sake let us freely hear both sides!
Thomas Jefferson
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
Faith in oneself ... is the best and safest course.
Michelangelo
Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting.
Buckminster Fuller
Technology - the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.
Max Frisch
Dare to be naive.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Equal rights for all special privileges for none.
Thomas Jefferson
The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
Thomas Jefferson
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Thomas Jefferson
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Thomas Jefferson
A republican government is slow to move yet when once in motion its momentum becomes irresistible.
Thomas Jefferson
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Thomas Jefferson
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
Nor it is an objection to say that we must understand a prayer if it is to have its true effect. That simply is not the case. Who understands the wisdom of a flower? Yet we can take pleasure in it.
Rudolph Steiner
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
Thomas Jefferson
The thing always happens that you really believe in and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright
If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few by resignation none.
Thomas Jefferson
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on office a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Thomas Jefferson
Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle.
Michelangelo
The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
If I could not go to Heaven but with a party I would not go there at all.
Thomas Jefferson
The want of a thing is perplexing enough but the possession of it is intolerable.
John Vanbrugh
I steer my bark with hope in my heart leaving fear astern.
Thomas Jefferson
It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.
Thomas Jefferson
No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any.
Thomas Jefferson