Philip Johnson Quotes

52 quotes in 623 categories

• Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
• I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.
• Pick very few objects and place them exactly.
• The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat,…
• When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.
• The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.
• We do pretty much whatever we want to.
• Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
• Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating.
• I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
• 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…
• 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…
• 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,…
• Architecture is art, nothing else.
• Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
• I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.
• I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.
• Glibness will get your anywhere.
• I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
• If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.

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