Philip Johnson Quotes

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.

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 look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs - at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.

The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.

I used to think that each phase of life was the end. But now that my view on life is more or less fixed, I believe that change is a great thing. In fact, it's the only real absolute in the world.

The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat, one must have shelter. Next to religious worship itself, it is the spiritual handmaiden of our deepest convictions.

I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.

The best thing to do with water is to use a lot of it.

I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.

American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.

Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.

Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.

Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.

The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.

In our universal experience unintelligent material processes do not create life

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

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 the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?

Pick very few objects and place them exactly.

So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. 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, make everyone else itch to emulate.

I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?

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 worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself; I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going.

The future of architecture is culture.

In our greatest universities, naturalism - the doctrine that nature is all there is - is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds.

I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.

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 to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.

We all see the world differently. And thank God for that. Otherwise, what a boring world this would be.

We do pretty much whatever we want to.

Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.

The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.

Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing - wonderful.

[Evolution] doesn't mean God-guided, gradual creation. It means unguided, purposeless change. The Darwinian theory doesn't say that God created slowly. It says that naturalistic evolution is the creator, and so God had nothing to do with it.

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, although that's a popular approach. First, I think of every building in history that has been similar in purpose. Then I think of the functional program - that's a major part of the study.

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.

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 different periods. Each age has its own.