Frank Lloyd Wright Quotations | Page 2

We do not learn so much by our successes as we learn by failures - our own and others! Especially if we see the failures properly corrected.

They turned the country up on its side, and everything loose fell into California.

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly.

A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration.

Self fulfilling prophecies do exist in real life

We've been fighting from the beginning for organic architecture. That is, architecture where the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole, and where the nature of materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity-architecture of democracy.

Science can give us only the tools in the box, these mechanical miracles that it has already given us. But of what use to us are miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them? We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man; we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine.

We have no longer an outside and an inside as two separate things. Now the outside may come inside and the inside may and does go outside. They are of each other. Form and function thus become one in design and execution if the nature of materials and method and purpose are all in unison.

Each material has its own message.

Boston: Clear out eight hundred thousand people and preserve it as a museum piece. New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it.

Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey.

If the paintings are too large, cut them in half!

Architecture is essentially Human; it is the Human spirit manifesting itself. For when a Man builds, there, you've got him; you know exactly what, who and how that Man is.

Why should architecture or objects of art in the machine age, just because they are made by machines, have to resemble machinery?

How many understand that Nature is the essential character of whatever is. It's something you'll find by looking not at, but in, always in. It's always inside the thing, and it makes the outside. And some day, when you get sufficiently proficient in understanding the use of the term, you can tell by the outside pretty much from what's inside.

When anyone becomes an authority, that is the end of him as far as development is concerned.

Taste is a matter of ignorance. If you know what you are tasting, you don't have to taste.

Consider everything in the nature of a hanging fixture a weakness, and naked radiators an abomination.

The sense of space within the reality of any building is a new concept wherever architecture is concerned. But it is essential ancient principle just the same and is not only necessary now but implied by the ideal of democracy itself.

Wherever human life is concerned, the unnatural stricture of excessive verticality cannot stand against more natural horizontality.

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.

The best thing to do is go as far out as you can get... what you regard as 'too far' - and when others follow, as they will, move on

No house should ever be on any hill... It should be of the hill.

Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title. - Virginia Woolf, from Jacob's Room Television is chewing gum for the eyes.

The cultural influences in our country are like the floo floo bird. I am referring to the peculiar and especial bird who always flew backward. To keep the wind out of its eyes? No. Just because it didn't give a darn where it was going, but just had to see where it had been.

Love is the greatest virtue of the heart.

Love of an idea is the love of God.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly.

Mechanization best serves mediocrity.

If you would see how interwoven it is in the warp and woof of civilization ... go at night-fall to the top of one of the down-town steel giants and you may see how in the image of material man, at once his glory and his menace, is this thing we call a city.

The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest.

I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist's hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion.

If you tilt the whole country sideways, Los Angeles is the place where everything loose will fall.

I attend the greatest of all Churches. I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church.

We boast the highest standard of living when it's only the biggest.

Prison house for the soul

Humanity to me is not a mob. A mob is a degeneration of humanity. A mob is humanity going the wrong way.

What I like best about San Francisco is San Francisco.

The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears - as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.

San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.

It is a terrific thing to get a building built that has the qualities of greatness in it.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet.

To me, young has no meaning. It's something you can do nothing about, nothing at all. But youth is a quality. And if you have it, you never lose it.

I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.

The dynamic ideal we call democracy, gradually growing up in the human heart for two-thousand five hundred years, at least, has now every opportunity to found the natural democratic state in these United States of America by way of natural economic order and a natural, or organic, architecture.

Less is more only when more is too much.

Good taste is not a substitute for knowledge

"I don't know whether you are a saint or a fool" said my lawyer. I replied "Is there a difference?"

When I see architecture that moves me, I hear music in my inner ear

It is where life is fundamental and free that men develop the vision needed to reveal the human soul in the blossoms it puts forth.

As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but-instead-exalting the simple laws of common sense-or of super-sense if you prefer-determining form by way of the nature of materials...

Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.

To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

I do not believe in adding enrichment merely for the sake of enrichment. Unless it adds clearness to the enunciation of the theme, it is undesirable, for it is very little understood.

I prefer honest arrogance to hypocritical modesty.

Architecture is for the young. If our teenagers don't get architecture - if they are not inspired, (then) we won't have the architecture that we must have if this country is going to be beautiful.

Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.

Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.

I could list of dozens things my fiancee does that annoys me and I'm sure he could list off hundreds of things about me but the fact is that even through all that we love each other. We love each other in spite of our flaws and despite all the things we do that should make us hate each other we still continue to fall deeper in love. Sometimes we want to hate each other but for two people who are truly in love it simply isn't possible. Not even a little but, not even at all.

Entering into the spirit of this interior, you will discover the best possible atmosphere in which to show fine paintings or listen to music. It is this atmosphere that seems to me most lacking in our art galleries, museums, music halls and theaters.

Architecture isman'sgreat sense of himself embodied in a world of his own making. It may rise as high in quality only as its source because great art isgreat life.

Building becomes architecture only when the mind of man consciously takes it and tries with all his resources to make it beautiful, to put concordance, sympathy with nature, and all that into it. Then you have architecture.

Youth is not an age thing. It's a quality. Once you've had it, you never lose it.

Imitation is always insult--not flattery.

Man is a phase of nature, and only as he is related to nature does he matter, does he have any account whatever above the dust.

New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.

A building is not just a place to be but a way to be.

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.

Nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see...

The belief in a thing makes it happen.

Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

Architecture is the frame of human existence. We must dedicate this existence more to beauty. For if poetic principle has deserted us, how long are we going to last?

If it sells, it's art.

Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity

True ornament is not a matter of prettifying externals. It is organic with the structure it adorns, whether a person, a building, or a park. At its best it is an emphasis of structure, a realization in graceful terms of the nature of that which is ornamented

Architectural features of true democratic ground-freedom would rise naturally from topography, which means that buildings would all take on the nature and character of the ground on which in endless variety they would stand and be component part.

I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work.

If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working.

Imitate nothing except principle.

Individuality realized is the supreme attainment of the human soul, the master-master's work of art. Individuality is sacred.

The room within is the great fact about the building.

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

Freedom is from within.

The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation. We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.

Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him.

Love is the virtue of the Heart, Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind, Decision is the virtue of the Will, Courage is the virtue of the Spirit.

Nature is the inspiration for all ornamentation

The longer I lived, the more beautiful life became - despite my personal tragedies, the fire, despite my third wife and her dreadful taste. My dear Olgivanna, she insisted on replacing the lovely canvas and wooden trusses at Taliesin West with steel supports and pink frosted glass. Well, I was too old to care by then. What I decided early on was this: If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

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.

The tall modern office building is the machine pure and simple...the engine, the motor and the battleship the works of the century.

It's easier to make changes with a pencil than a wrecking bar.

The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist.

For America today organic architecture interprets (will eventually build) this local embodiment of human freedom. This natural architecture seeks spaciousness, grace and openness; lightness and strength so completely balanced and logical that it is a new integrity...

No stream rises higher than its source

Space is the breath of art.