No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
—Colleen Barrett (1944–2024) American Executive, Southwest Airlines President
Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music.
—Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German Philosopher
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.
—Frank Gehry (1929–2025) Canadian-Born Architect
The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.
—Louis Kahn (1901–74) American Architect
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Greek architecture is the flowering of geometry.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Light, God’s eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.
—Philip Johnson (1906–2005) American Architect, Curator, Designer
Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can’t be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole.
—Maya Lin (b.1959) American Architect, Artist
True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, and others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The future of architecture does not lie so much in continuing to fill up the landscape as in bringing back life and order to our cities and towns.
—Gottfried Bohm (1920–2021) German Architect, Sculptor
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, are merely shadows cast by outward things on stone or canvas, having in themselves no separate existence. Architecture, existing in itself, and not in seeming a something it is not, surpasses them as substance shadow.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of form.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.
—Geoffrey Jellicoe (1900–96) English Architect, Author
The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846) English Painter, Writer
Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
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