79 quotes
Both Art and Religion are on the way. Both must go hand in hand as ever before. Both together illuminating our sciences will constitute the soul of this civilization.
A Testament (1957)
If the abstraction is truly made well above the animal nature in man—his gregarious nature—it will keep the ancient rituals of his higher nature as long as possible. Human abstractions if true usually become ritual.
A Testament (1957)
So the poet in the engineer and the engineer in the poet and both in the architect may be seen here working together, lifelong.
A Testament (1957)
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.
Lecture to the Chicago chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (1904)
The soul of any civilization on earth has ever been and still is Art and Religion, but neither has ever been found in commerce, in government of the police.
A Testament (1957)
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.
The Living City (1958)
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.
The Living City (1958)
I'm no teacher. Never wanted to teach and don't believe in teaching an art. Science yes, business of course..but an art cannot be taught. You can only inculcate it, you can be an exemplar, you can create an atmosphere in which it can grow.
A free America, democratic in the sense that our forefathers intended it to be, means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call 'democracy' is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
The Future of Architecture (1953)
Success was misunderstood as essential to progress. Really success was worse than failure.
A Testament (1957)
New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it.
No! is always easier to say than Yes.
A Testament (1957)
What means more to the life of the individual in our own place in Time than this study of the nature of human nature, the search to discover pertinent traces of hidden impulses of life, to form continually new abstractions uplifting the life he lives?
A Testament (1957)
By being so far educated beyond his capacity is he unable to learn within himself from nature? Divorced as he is from her, who and what can now be his? Does the so-called free man of democracy merely exploit his sovereignity?
A Testament (1957)
Thus the plausible expedient has become gospel and continues to be generally foisted upon those who seek better things; the conformities proclaimed by authority, however specious, temporarily mistaken for Godhead.
A Testament (1957)
... the huge business of education is not on speaking terms with culture and such culture as we now have is not on speaking terms with reality.
A Testament (1957)
For this, if for no other reason, degeneration of creative ability in America has had ample support, and what nobility our society might still have is in danger of being submerged in overwhelming tides of rising conformity.
A Testament (1957)
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Attributed
There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.
Misattributed