All Philip Johnson Quotes
- Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful. Beautiful
- The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build. Build
- I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people. Guess
- 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… Architect
- You're going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You'll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead. Ahead
- 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… Beauty
- There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes. Building
- So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. Anything goes. Anything Goes
- I think the collectors have made an enormous contribution, not only to the market but to painters themselves... These people that buy, that set standards,… Buy
- Architecture is the art of how to waste space. Architecture
- All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. All
- All architects want to live beyond their deaths. All
- I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach? Architect
- I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright. Any
- 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… Anybody
- 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… Art
- 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… Any
- 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,… Approach
- 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… All
- 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… Awfully
- 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… Age
- We all see the world differently. And thank God for that. Otherwise, what a boring world this would be. All
- Dullness is the enemy. Dullness
- You cannot not know history. History
- I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects. Always Think