Walter Gropius Quotes

Limitation makes the creative mind inventive.

However often the thread may be torn out of your hands, you must develop enough patience to wind it up again and again.

We want to create the purely organic building, boldly emanating its inner laws, free of untruths or ornamentation.

The mind is like an umbrella. Its most useful when open.

The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! ... Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all get back to craft! ... The artist is a heightened manifestation of the craftsman ... Let us form ... a new guild of craftsmen without the class divisions that set out to raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! ... Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.

Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.

The Bauhaus fights imitation, inferior craftsmanship and artistic dilettantism

Children should be introduced right from the start to the potentialities of their environment, to the physical and psychological laws that govern the visual world, and to the supreme enjoyment that comes from participating in the creative process of giving form to one's living space.

Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts.

Society needs a good image of itself. That is the job of the architect.

A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.