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Architecture is art, nothing else.
Philip Johnson -
The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
Philip Johnson
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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.
Philip Johnson -
The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.
Philip Johnson -
I'm about four skyscrapers behind.
Philip Johnson -
I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?
Philip Johnson -
To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.
Philip Johnson -
I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.
Philip Johnson
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Processionalism is primary - how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That's worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself; I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going.
Philip Johnson -
I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
Philip Johnson -
Dullness is the enemy.
Philip Johnson -
Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
Philip Johnson -
Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.
Philip Johnson -
I like Houston. It's the last great 19th-century city. Houston has a spirit about it that is truly American, an optimism. People there aren't afraid to try something new.
Philip Johnson
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Glibness will get your anywhere.
Philip Johnson -
There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.
Philip Johnson -
There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction.
Philip Johnson -
I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.
Philip Johnson -
How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine.
Philip Johnson -
There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.
Philip Johnson