Quotes by Architects - Page 3

The most important thing about Spaceship Earth - an instruction book didn't come with it.
Buckminster Fuller
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
The British love permanence more than they love beauty.
Hugh Casson
The habit of using ardent spirits by men in office has occasioned more injury to the public and more trouble to me than all other causes. Were I to commence my administration again the first question I would ask respecting a candidate for office would be Does he use ardent spirits?
Thomas Jefferson
Genius is eternal patience.
Michelangelo
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson
The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction book didn't come with it.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Custom is the law of fools.
Sir John Vanbrugh
I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled 'til I set him free.
Michelangelo
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we have been ignorant of their value.
Buckminster Fuller
No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson
I am mortified to be told that in the United States of America the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson
The habitant is the true Canadian for he has no other country.
Ramsay Traquair
I succeed him no one could replace him.
Thomas Jefferson
No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame its parts their functions and actions.
Thomas Jefferson
Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
Michelangelo
Beauty - the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.
Leon Battista Alberti
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
All authority belongs to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
Michelangelo
When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David."
Michelangelo
Early in life I had to choose between arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.
Frank Lloyd Wright
No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.
Frank Lloyd Wright
How can we expect our students to become bold and fearless in thought and action if we encase them in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which has long since disappeared?
Walter Gropius
The house does not frame the view: it projects the beholder into it.
Harwell Hamilton Harris
Architecture is space structured to serve man and to move him.
Etienne Gaboury
Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly but take every building to pieces and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms getting back to first principles.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room a room in a house a house in an environment an environment in a city plan.
Eero Saarinen
A house is a machine for living.
Buckminster Fuller
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Genius is personal decided by fate but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.
Le Corbusier
Form ever follows function.
Louis H. Sullivan
Buildings should be good neighbours.
Paul Thiry
Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Life is rich always changing always challenging and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood concrete glass and steel of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space.
Arthur Erickson
Good architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystallized in space that elevates our spirits beyond the limitation of time.
Tao Ho
Architecture (is) a theatre stage setting where the leading actors are the people and to dramatically direct the dialogue between these people and space is the technique of designing.
Kisho Kurokawa
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
Mies Van Der Rohe
When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains ask yourself the question: Not what style but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity vulgarity anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.
Louis H. Sullivan
Society needs a good image of itself. That is the job of the architect.
Walter Gropius
Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.
Mies Van Der Rohe
Develop an infallible technique and then place yourself at the mercy of inspiration.
Ralph Rapson
To be an architect is to possess an individual voice speaking a generally understood language of form.
Robert A. M. Stern
The materials of city planning are sky space trees steel and cement in that order and in that hierarchy.
Le Corbusier
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo
Don't fight forces use them.
Buckminster Fuller
Advertisements contain the only truth to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson
When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through it is best to meet it with firmness and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil while fretting and fuming only increase your own torments.
Thomas Jefferson
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
Thomas Jefferson
I am often asked a stock question: 'Have you actually read all those books?' To this I have my answer ready: 'Is there anybody who has read all the books in his library?' That would be like claiming to enjoy the incredible luxury and good fortune of being able to accomplish everything in this life that one would wish.
Konstantinos Staikos
AHA!" interrupted Officer Shrift, making another note in his little book. "Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
Norton Juster
There are rich counsels in the trees.
Herbert P. Horne
Enlighten the people, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
If you want to call it quits, just tell me. Man up and say it to my face. Don’t just skulk around.
J.M. Richards
This sentence consists of eleven words, twenty-three syllables and seventy-four letters.
Charles Pearson
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.
Thomas Jefferson
A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims.
Leon Krier