Philip Johnson Quotes

In our universal experience unintelligent material processes do not create life ~ Philip Johnson

Pick very few objects and place them exactly. ~ Philip Johnson

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? ~ Philip Johnson

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

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

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

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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

A rude tourist was looking at paintings in a museum. He didn't find anything interesting and turned to the attendant while pointing to a large frame. Tourist: (making an ugly face) Is this what you call art? Attendant: No sir, this is what we call a mirror. ~ Johnson C. Philip

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

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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. ~ Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson is a highbrow. A highbrow is a man educated beyond his capacity. His house is a box of glass - not shelter. The meaning of the word shelter includes privacy. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

The future of architecture is culture. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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

[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. ~ Philip Johnson

We do pretty much whatever we want to. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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

Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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

All architects want to live beyond their deaths. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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

So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. Anything goes. ~ Philip Johnson

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

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. ~ Philip Johnson

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. ~ Philip Johnson

Slippers always seemed like kind of a nonsense item until she came to Ellingham and felt the bathroom floor on the first proper day of wintry weather. Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for. ~ Maureen Johnson

I was determined to have a spotless house when I grew up. ~ Sam Taylor-Johnson

Eighty percent of Americans with HIV do not know they are infected. ~ Philip Emeagwali

Nobody should lead mankind. It should lead itself. ~ Philip K. Dick

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog. ~ Philip Yancey

People can't really sympathize with you properly when you've woken them up ~ Maureen Johnson

Man is lonely mainly because he has been disconnected from the Divine presence. ~ James Johnson

Maybe, like Tony Amsterdam, you have seen a vision of God that is gone only temporarily; withdrawn, she thought, rather than ended. Maybe inside the terribly burned and burning circuits of your head that char more and more, even as I hold you, a spark of color and light in some disguised form manifested itself, unrecognized, to lead you, by its memory, through the years to come, the dreadful years ahead. A word not fully understood, some small thing seen but not understood; some fragment of a star mixed with the trash of this world, to guide you by reflex until the day...but it was so remote. She could not herself truly imagine it. Mingled with the commonplace, something from another world perhaps had appeared to Bob Arctor before it was over. All she could do now was hold him and hope. ~ Philip K. Dick

Books whose topics I thoroughy depsise are accapteble because they often force the reader to think and to examine his own beliefs. In an age where most people are either blindly obedient or radical, exposing oneself to the ideas contained in even the most controversial of books is a good thing. ~ Tiffini Johnson

Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy. ~ A. Philip Randolph

I know - from personal experience - that abiding values and abundant visions are learned in the homes of our people. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

His unit is in charge of 5,000 homes, and they've only been able to search about 2 percent of them. People are standing on roofs or sticking their hands out of air vents so they can get rescued. ~ Allen Johnson

He entered the elevator and together they moved closer to god ~ Philip K. Dick

If you are willing to go an Infinite distance to do what you are born to do, the way is opened, for You. ~ L.P. Johnson

Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America. ~ Tom L. Johnson

Heck by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we've already wasted fifteen minutes. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Not one of the three black deaf-mutes who come here every day owns a dog. They sit under the fragrant decay of the big mossy oak speaking with their eyes and hands. They love dogs so much they vibrate, but, like me, they can't bear to own one. Anyone who's ever owned one knows what owning love means. ~ Philip Schultz

Avarice is always poor. ~ Samuel Johnson

Your shadow will always release whatever overshadows you ~ Bill Johnson

He is the resounding human rebuttal to all Marxist historians who think history is the story of vast and impersonal economic forces. The point of the Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference. ~ Boris Johnson

Three Rules To Write By

Write naked.
That means to write what you would never say.

Write in blood.
As if ink is so precious you can't waste it.

Write in exile
as if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.

Denis Johnson ~ Denis Johnson

Stop what you are doing long enough to enjoy the sunset, listen to a special song that lifts you up, or pick up the phone and share some special thought with a caring friend. ~ Barbara Johnson

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding? ~ Philip Roth

But his very best questions always popped out of his mind, unprepared, never having been written down in advance because they were the angle he picked up on the fly, as he heard an answer to a lesser question. Those creative questions were the art. It is what, in my mind, made his querying great. ~ Philip A. Fisher

There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive. ~ Philip K. Dick

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. ~ Philip K. Dick

Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air. And having been a schoolteacher he knew how to get their hands up. He began, in his speeches, to ask questions. ~ Robert A. Caro

There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Every peace-filled moment you experience brings terror to the powers of darkness. ~ Bill Johnson

I'm a very good friend of Stephen Crabb, I had great fun campaigning with Boris Johnson on the winning side, I have great experience working with Theresa May in government on national security. I respect all of them and I hope that's very much the tone. ~ Liam Fox

At the crest of the hill outside Agor, Henry pulled the car to the side of the road and we got out to take in the view. In the falling shadows, the little Arab village at the foot of the Jewish settlement looked nothing like so grim and barren as it had a few minutes before when we'd driven down its deserted main street. A desert sunset lent a little picturesqueness even to that cluster of faceless hovels. As for the larger landscape, you could see, particularly in this light, how someone might get the impression that it had been created in only seven days, unlike England, say, whose countryside appeared to be the creation of a God who'd had four or five chances to come back to perfect it and smooth it out, to tame and retame it until it was utterly habitable by every last man and beast. Judea was something that had been left just as it had been made; this could have passed for a piece of the moon to which the Jews had been sadistically exiled by their worst enemies rather than the place they passionately maintained was theirs and no one else's from time immemorial. What he finds in this landscape, I thought, is a correlative for the sense of himself he would now prefer to effect, the harsh and rugged pioneer with that pistol in his pocket. ~ Philip Roth

Tessa and I started out with conflicting realities, found that when each of us reality-tested the other's, it collapsed. But now, instead of mutually destroying each other's realities, we are shaping a joint one between us. If two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion; the basic test that distinguishes reality from hallucination is the consensus gentium, that one other or several others see it too. This is the idios kosmos, the private dream, contrasted to the shared dream of us all, the koinos kosmos. What is new in our time is that we are beginning to see the plastic, trembling quality of the koinos kosmos - which scares us, its insubstantiality - and the more than mere vapor quality of the hallucination. Like sf, a third reality is formed halfway between. ~ Philip K. Dick

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote. ~ Philip Dormer Stanhope

And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs. ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

But to make a long story short, I decided that I was going to run, and I announced that I was going to run for president in Florida, I would be the favorite son from Florida, and that would stop Johnson and Kennedy from dividing up the state. ~ George Smathers

You've never told me about your love life, Scarlett. You're a very pretty girl. You must have a boy shacked up somewhere for your personal delights. I'd bet it's a booky one, overtones of Harry Potter and a lot of black T-shirts. ~ Maureen Johnson

People of excellence will always be brought before people of influence. ~ Bill Johnson

The not-quite-sort-of lie works here too - often an ad will announce that "Congressman Johnson voted for a bill that gave tax breaks to companies like Enron." True - although the bill allowed all companies to accelerate depreciation of copying machines. Yes, Enron benefited, but Enron also benefited from the revolution of the Earth around the sun. Hardly an argument to freeze the planet in one spot. ~ James Lileks

We must often remember what Christ said, that not he who begins, but he that perseveres to the end, shall be saved. ~ Philip Neri

I feel like the need to want to create and make something is stronger than the difficulties are going through. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

It might have been a new way for her heart to beat. ~ Philip Pullman

We return you to the Vice President, who is now addressing the National Sword Swallowers Association."
"-the psychotics, the sob sisters, the skin merchants, the saboteurs, the self-styled Sapphos, the self-styled Swinburners, the swine, the satyrs, the schizos, the sodomists, the sissies, the screamers, the screwy, the scum, the self-congratulatory self-congratulators, the sensationalists, the snakes in the grass, the sex fiends, the shiftless, the shines, the shaggy, the sickly, the syphilitic- ~ Philip Roth

Those who are in pain – most of the world's populations at any given moment – do not do a lot of thinking, speaking, or writing about suffering. All their energy goes into surviving. That is why a lot of what is said and written about suffering seems hollow to those actually in pain. ~ Luke Timothy Johnson

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place. ~ Philip Danforth Armour

L.A. really doesn't feel like home to me anymore. ~ Dakota Johnson

Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend we're all living in different worlds because we're on different continents. ~ Philip Glass

Beauty is a woman's curse. Men will hurt you just because you're beautiful. Just because they're self-conscious and need to validate themselves, they build their esteem by tearing yours down. They will try to con you out of your virginity, misuse your body, make you grieve so much you lose your beauty, and rob you of your sanity, but they can never take away your knowledge. ~ Chassidy Rae Johnson

If pride really went before a fall, then, Lucifer is the inventor of pride. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson