Quotes by Architects - Page 2

Of all calamities this is the greatest.
Thomas Jefferson
Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.
Arthur Erickson
And that's why people no longer care which words they use as long as they use lots of them.
Norton Juster
It is a wise man who said there is no inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.Fillossofee: Messages From a Grandfather, an ebook
Thomas Jefferson
I believe I’m very normal. I’m hyper-normal. I’m more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric.I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I’m less, rather than more, intelligent than other people.By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life.
Richard Saul Wurman
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
Larsson was an active and lifelong feminist, partly for personal reasons but also because he saw that ending gender slavery was as crucial to next-stage evolution as ending race slavery was to the last stage. It's a noble fight, not least because the various fundamentalisms threatening Western democracy are united in their urgent need to re-cage women's sexuality.
Elizabeth Farrelly
I don’t deny that it was more than a coincidence which made things turn out as they did, it was a whole train of coincidences. But what has providence to do with it? I don’t need any mystical explanation for the occurrence of the improbable; mathematics explains it adequately, as far as I’m concerned.Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the one will come up approximately 1,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term probability includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.
Max Frisch
An idea is salvation by imagination
Frank Lloyd Wright
Custom is the law of fools.
Sir John Vanbrugh
Your greatness is measured by your horizons.
Michelangelo
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson
It is ridiculous to lay down to people where a thing should stand, design everything for them from the lavatory pan to the ashtray. On the contrary, I like people to move their furniture so that it suits them (not me!), and it's quite natural (and I approve) when they bring the old pictures and mementos they have come to love into a new interior, irrespective of whether they are good taste or bad.
Adolf Loos
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we have been ignorant of their value.
Buckminster Fuller
No—I’ve got it,” Jill announced, interrupting my musing. “He’s a vampire.” I laughed again, feeling there was no end to the outrageous, ridiculous excuses we were coming up with. “Seriously, it makes sense. He’s always tired and pale, and keeps himself away from people so he won’t bite them....Maybe that’s what he’s doing when he disappears. Getting his fix of blood.
J.M. Richards
The most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don't understand something
Richard Saul Wurman
Words and numbers are of equal value, for in the cloak of knowledge one is warp and the other woof.
Norton Juster
Form ever follows function.
Louis H. Sullivan
Faith in oneself... is the best and safest course.
Michelangelo
I hope we shall ... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.
Thomas Jefferson
The poor who have neither property, friends, nor strength to labor are boarded in the houses of good farmers, to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are able to help themselves a little or have friends from whom they derive some succor, inadequate however to their full maintenance, supplementary aids are given which enable them to live comfortably in their own houses or in the houses of their friends. Vagabonds without visible property or vocation, are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor
Thomas Jefferson
Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.
Thomas Jefferson
Oh, it was 1775.” “What?” “1775. The Battle of Bunker Hill.” “Oh.” I laughed. “We learned about it the day we met,” he added. “Another red-letter day in history.
J.M. Richards
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Thomas Jefferson
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
Thomas Jefferson
Feelings are for the soul what food is for the body.
Rudolf Steiner
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I bundled in my own blanket and reflected on the strange and somewhat unexpected friendship that was slowly developing between Davin and myself. It was clear to me that he needed a friend, but for reasons unknown to me, thought that it was better for him to be alone.
J.M. Richards
A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.
Christopher Wren
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.
Thomas Jefferson
The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains ask yourself the question: Not what style but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity vulgarity anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.
Louis H. Sullivan
Writers use narratives to select from everything there is, and make contexts by putting the pieces into relation; that’s what writers do, they make contexts.
Paul Shepheard
And Milo, full of thoughts and questions, curled up on the pages of tomorrow's music and eagerly awaited the dawn.
Norton Juster
As much as I cared about him, I wasn’t a slave to fate. I could choose to ignore my feelings, strong as they were. It would be painful, but no more so than letting myself pine for my friend.
J.M. Richards
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820]
Thomas Jefferson
Feminism, in its fullest meaning, enjoins the human race to establish zones of liberation, and literally to reshape the territorial definition of our patriarchal world, along with the social identities and injustices that those boundaries have defined for all of us.
Leslie Weisman
I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.
Thomas Jefferson
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson
If it sells, it's art.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled until I set him free.
Michelangelo
Nice slippers,” Davin grinned. They were green and furry. “Thanks.” I shrugged and looked him over, half expecting to see a new injury. “So what’s up?” He had one hand behind his back.
J.M. Richards
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Thomas Jefferson
Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.
Leon Krier
I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to
Thomas Jefferson
Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
Norton Juster
The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.
Thomas Jefferson
Be the best, not necessarily the original.
I.M. Pei
After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.
Arthur Erickson
I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
When describing the University of Virginia: Here, We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it is intolerable.
John Vanbrugh
Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting
Thomas Jefferson
The present moment is creative creating with an unheard-of intensity.
Le Corbusier