Quotes by Architects - Page 9

I am often asked a stock question: 'Have you actually read all those books?' To this I have my answer ready: 'Is there anybody who has read all the books in his library?' That would be like claiming to enjoy the incredible luxury and good fortune of being able to accomplish everything in this life that one would wish.
Konstantinos Staikos
Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
Thomas Jefferson
When God looks at sin, what he sees is what a violin maker would see if the player were to use his lovely creation as a tennis racquet.
Tom Wright
If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the seperate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence bewteen the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole.
Vitruvius
A house is a machine for living.
Buckminster Fuller
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David."
Michelangelo
I delve into the mysterious and counterintuitive world of helmets and high-visibility gear later in the book. But it's worth immediately noting this: while they're not inherently bad, they're less a safety device for cycling than a symptom of a road network where no cyclist can truly feel safe.
Peter Walker
The want of a thing is perplexing enough but the possession of it is intolerable.
John Vanbrugh
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo
Art is a product of the intuitive—the most powerful instrument within us. The intuitive is the most accurate sense we have.
Louis I. Kahn
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Now, remember: they're not for eating, but for listening, because you'll often be hungry for sounds as well as food. Here are street noises at night, train whistles from a long way off, dry leaves burning, busy department stores, crunching toast, creaking bed springs, and of course, all kinds of laughter. There's a little of each, and in far off, lonely places, I think you will be glad to have them.
Norton Juster
And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
Norton Juster
Music is only sound expressing certain patterns so to what extent is that sound architecture and to what extent theatre?
Arthur Brown
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Thomas Jefferson
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
Success is a collection of problems solved.
I.M. Pei
I am accountable.I am correctable.I am transformable.Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God. By the love of God.By the word of God.Completely supplied in Christ Jesus.Unto all good works.
Carlton T. Brown
I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,...[One] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.
Thomas Jefferson
What? An alien. You think I'm from outer space." She snorts in disbelief. "I'm Kelly Tillman, you dumb-ass. From 41 Montana Avenue, Valentine, Texas. What's left of it. I canned seventh grade for a piece-of-crap job with lousy tips and lousy hours. You ain't telling me I'm the outsider here. No way.
Philip Webb
While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.
Thomas Jefferson
It is not an individual act, architecture. You have to consider your client. Only out of that can you produce great architecture. You cannot work in the abstract.
I.M. Pei
The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
Thomas Jefferson
I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.
Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.
Norton Juster
...We are all Federalists,and we are all Republicans.
Thomas Jefferson
Everything yields to diligence
Thomas Jefferson
You can put anything into words, except your own life
Max Frisch
When I arrived back at Intro to Basic Art again later that week, I thought for a moment we had a new student who didn’t know about the assigned seats. Sitting at my table was a girl in a long flowered dress, very vintage-hippie. She actually was wearing real flowers in her hair, and hardly any make up. I sat down, ready to explain to this poor lost soul that the seat was already taken, when I looked again and realized it was the same girl. I ended up not saying anything at all; I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be rude or just plain stupid.
J.M. Richards
...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same
Thomas Jefferson
Life is rich always changing always challenging and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood concrete glass and steel of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space.
Arthur Erickson
Never turn down a job because you think it's too small you never know where it may lead.
Julia Morgan
I know the price of success: dedication hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Thomas Jefferson
The truth is more important than the facts.
Frank Lloyd Wright
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly.
Thomas Jefferson
Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.
Leon Krier
I would say, then, that you are faced with a future in which education is going to be number one amongst the great world industries.
R. Buckminster Fuller
You have to be a friend to have them.
J.M. Richards
All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.
Thomas Jefferson
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
I suddenly felt the way Cinderella might have felt if she hadn’t had that convenient midnight curfew: my feet were hurting, my hair was slipping free from its pins, and my makeup was getting all smudged from sweat. I was unbelievably tired, undeniably depressed, and I just wanted charming.
J.M. Richards
If Enlightenment was the salad, Entanglement is the soup
Neri Oxman
I come to listen to your pain and to hear the stories and memories of a few obsessed citizens. Jerusalem, I come to you in disguise: in over-colourful, immodest clothes and vulgar make-up... The only way I could come to you was in disguise, as a whore.
Suad Amiry
Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
Thomas Jefferson
For five years, I have been sick and I have been trying to will myself to be better. To think harder about being better, to improve more. To become a better breather, reactor, meditator, hoping that if I just try hard enough, the symptoms will go away and I’ll feel like myself again, like a self I remember as if out of a rearview mirror except with this one, the objects are smaller than they appear. I have tried to force myself to be more clearheaded, energetic, grounded. Tried yoga, acupuncture, cognitive behavioral therapy, talk therapy, and long walks in the woods. And every few months, when I finally felt I’d reached a zenith of my abilities with yoga, CBT, or talk therapy, I would give it another shot: go to another doctor, a Western doctor, one with an M.D. and a white coat, and I would tell him or her my symptoms (for the gender of the doctor does not matter only, it would seem, my gender), and hope that once again, the doctor would pay attention, would take my case, would try to help me so that I didn’t have to so deeply and fervently try to help myself.
Eva Hagberg
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.
Thomas Jefferson
Jill!” I called to her through our connecting bathroom as I pulled on some jeans. “You realize I’ve been more than twenty-four hours without a shower, right?” “Oh, who cares,” she grumbled. “You look fine. Just put on some deodorant and a bra. I mean, aren’t we just going to be getting sweaty lugging your stuff down from storage anyway?
J.M. Richards
Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab.It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.So I said, call me Trimtab.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France.
Thomas Jefferson
I wouldn't eat too many of those [half-baked ideas] if I were you. They may look good, but you can get terribly sick of them."-Tock
Norton Juster
The rigidity of a bottle's form does not affect the fluidity of the liquid it contains.
Leon Krier
Technology - the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.
Max Frisch
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Thomas Jefferson
Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed.
Thomas Jefferson