Philip Johnson Quotes
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All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.
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I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.
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If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.
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The future of architecture is culture.
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Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.
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I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.
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It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing - wonderful.
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In my own work, I'd say I'm a classicist, but I look everywhere for my solutions. I don't study the toilet-living habits of my clients, although that's a popular approach. First, I think of every building in history that has been similar in purpose. Then I think of the functional program - that's a major part of the study.
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All architects want to live beyond their deaths.
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Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.
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Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
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Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
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I used to think that each phase of life was the end. But now that my view on life is more or less fixed, I believe that change is a great thing. In fact, it's the only real absolute in the world.
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Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating.
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Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
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I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
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I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.
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I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
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Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?
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You cannot not know history.
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I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs - at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.
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I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.
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Architecture is art, nothing else.
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I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.