Frank lloyd wright quotes

Good taste is not a substitute for knowledge

Television is bubble-gum for the mind.

I prefer honest arrogance to hypocritical modesty.

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, then you will soon find yourself without it.

The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seems as part of the other. Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity the imply have at last come home.

A building is not just a place to be but a way to be.

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. The size of the project means little in art, beyond the money matter. It is the quality of the character that really counts.

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order.

No stream rises higher than its source

Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet.

The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.

Nature is the inspiration for all ornamentation

Building becomes architecture only when the mind of man consciously takes it and tries with all his resources to make it beautiful, to put concordance, sympathy with nature, and all that into it. Then you have architecture.

Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.

A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.

When I see architecture that moves me, I hear music in my inner ear

I find that government can be a kind of gangsterism and is in Russia. And is likely to be in America if we don't take care of ourselves pretty carefully.

To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

The room within is the great fact about the building.

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials.

As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.

Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm.

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth

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.

Each material has its own message.

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

If it sells, it's art.

A vital difference between the professional man and a man of business is that money making to the professional man should, by virtue of his assumption, be incidental; to the businessman it is primary. Money has its limitations; while it may buy quantity, there is something beyond it and that is quality.

To me, young has no meaning. It's something you can do nothing about, nothing at all. But youth is a quality. And if you have it, you never lose it.

Freedom is from within.

"I don't know whether you are a saint or a fool" said my lawyer. I replied "Is there a difference?"

Entering into the spirit of this interior, you will discover the best possible atmosphere in which to show fine paintings or listen to music. It is this atmosphere that seems to me most lacking in our art galleries, museums, music halls and theaters.

One war only breeds another.

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional.

The space within becomes the reality of the building.

I attend the greatest of all Churches. I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

Less is only more where more is no good.

'Think in simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole to its parts in simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

Simplicity and Repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.

More and more, so it seems to me, light is the beautifier of the building.

Youth is not an age thing. It's a quality. Once you've had it, you never lose it.

The truth is more important than the facts.

Architecture is the frame of human existence. We must dedicate this existence more to beauty. For if poetic principle has deserted us, how long are we going to last?

It's easier to make changes with a pencil than a wrecking bar.

A civilization is only a way of life. A culture is the way of making that way of life beautiful. So culture is your office here in America, and as no stream can rise higher than its source, so you can give no more or better to architecture than you are. So why not go to work on yourselves, to make yourselves, in quality, what you would have your buildings be?

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.

Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

No house should ever be on any hill... It should be of the hill.

Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him.

The longer I lived, the more beautiful life became - despite my personal tragedies, the fire, despite my third wife and her dreadful taste. My dear Olgivanna, she insisted on replacing the lovely canvas and wooden trusses at Taliesin West with steel supports and pink frosted glass. Well, I was too old to care by then. What I decided early on was this: If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

The best thing to do is go as far out as you can get... what you regard as 'too far' - and when others follow, as they will, move on

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.

The ultimate creative thinking technique is to think like God. If you're an atheist, pretend how God would do it.

Architecture is for the young. If our teenagers don't get architecture - if they are not inspired, (then) we won't have the architecture that we must have if this country is going to be beautiful.

Space is the breath of art.

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.

Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

The best friend of earth of man is the tree.

When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.

The only thing wrong with architecture is architects.

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly.

A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration.

All the more I study Nature do I revere God, because Nature is all the body of God we will ever know.

At night... the streets become rhythmical perspectives of glowing dotted lines, reflections hung upon them in the streets as the wistaria hangs its violet racemes on its trellis. The buildings are shimmering verticality, a gossamer veil, a festive scene-prop hanging there against the black sky to dazzle, entertain, amaze.

Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see.

The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist.

I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up.

The best friend on earth of man is the tree: When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the earth.

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

Love of an idea is the love of God.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

You can't make an architect. But you can open the doors and windows toward the light as you see it.

If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor.

Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest.

I never design a building before I've seen the site and met the people who will be using it.

I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work.

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.

Doctors bury their mistakes, Architects cover them with ivy

We do not learn so much by our successes as we learn by failures - our own and others! Especially if we see the failures properly corrected.

Imitate nothing except principle.

I know we can't have a great architecture while it is only for the landlord.

Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.

Love is the virtue of the Heart, Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind, Decision is the virtue of the Will, Courage is the virtue of the Spirit.

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

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation. We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.

Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.

Early in life, I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change

If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. Remy de Gourmont An idea is salvation by imagination

To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.

A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working.

We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

How many understand that Nature is the essential character of whatever is. It's something you'll find by looking not at, but in, always in. It's always inside the thing, and it makes the outside. And some day, when you get sufficiently proficient in understanding the use of the term, you can tell by the outside pretty much from what's inside.

New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

Bring out the nature of the materials. Let their nature intimately into your scheme.

The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Science can give us only the tools in the box, these mechanical miracles that it has already given us. But of what use to us are miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them? We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man; we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine.

Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.

Architecture is essentially Human; it is the Human spirit manifesting itself. For when a Man builds, there, you've got him; you know exactly what, who and how that Man is.

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.