Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes & Sayings

When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age. — Frank Lloyd Wright

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

A vital difference between the professional man and a man of business is that money making to the professional man should, by virtue of his assumption, be incidental; to the businessman it is primary. Money has its limitations; while it may buy quantity, there is something beyond it and that is quality. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Can it be that the ultimate chapter of this new era of democratic freedom is going to be deformed by this growing drift toward conformity encouraged by politics and sentimental education? If so then by what name shall our national American character be justly called? Doomed to beget only curiosities or monstrosities in art, architecture and religion by artists predominant chiefly by compliance with commercial expediency?
Machine standardization is apparently growing to mean little that is inspiring to the human spirit. We see the American workman himself becoming the prey of gangsterism made official. Everything as now professionalized, in time dies spiritually. Must the innate beauty of American life succumb or be destroyed? Can we save truth as beauty and beauty as truth in our country only if truth becomes the chief concern of our serious citizens and their artists, architects and men of religion, independent of established authority? — Frank Lloyd Wright

No stream rises higher than its source. What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

It's easier to make changes with a pencil than a wrecking bar. — Frank Lloyd Wright

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense. — Frank Lloyd Wright

If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The space within becomes the reality of the building. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Love is the greatest virtue of the heart. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I wouldnt mind seeing opera die. Ever since I was a boy, I regarded opera as a ponderous anachronism, almost the equivalent of smoking. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I prefer honest arrogance to hypocritical modesty. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Man in his upended street must know he is becoming a mere numerical item of convenience; on the way to being a thing. His inherent instinct for love and beauty is not only becoming suspect but, in spite of all intent, useless to society. He sees the human creature atrophy as he sees poverty of imagination in much "modern art," so-called. But it was Walt Whitman himself who raised the perpendicular hand to declare: "It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary." This is what is now coming forth in our architecture as in our life. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Give me the luxuries of life and I will gladly do without the necessities. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The room within is the great fact about the building. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

Imitation is always insult--not flattery. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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 ... — Frank Lloyd Wright

If it sells, it's art. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Space is the breath of art. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Good taste is not a substitute for knowledge — Frank Lloyd Wright

If you're going to have centralization, why not have it! — Frank Lloyd Wright

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Mechanization best serves mediocrity. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Every idea that is a true idea has a form, and is capable of many forms. The variety of forms of which it is capable determines the value of the idea. So by way of ideas, and your mastery of them in relation to what you are doing, will come your value as an architect to your society and future. That's where you go to school. You can't get it in a university, you can't get it here, you can't get it anywhere except as you love it, love the feeling of it, desire and pursue it. And it doesn't come when you are very young, I think. I believe it comes faster with each experience, and the next is very simple, or more simple, until it becomes quite natural to you to become master of the idea you would express.
"Idea and Essence" September 7, 1958 — Frank Lloyd Wright

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. — Frank Lloyd Wright

All I learned from Eliel Saarinen was how to make out an expense account — Frank Lloyd Wright

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope. — Frank Lloyd Wright

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now. — Frank Lloyd Wright

You can't make an architect. But you can open the doors and windows toward the light as you see it. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The primitive ideals of centralization are now largely self-defeating. Human crucifixion by vertically on the now static checkerboard of the old city is pattern already in agony; yet for lack of any organic planing it is going on and on
not living, but rather hanging by its eyebrows from its nervous system. — Frank Lloyd Wright

How many understand that Nature is the essencial 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.
[ ... ] But everything that's ever going to be of use to you in architecture or in life or anywhere you go or whatever you do is going to be Nature, in some of its immensely varied forms. So varied that there's no end to the variety imaginable.
"Nature" September 7, 1958 — Frank Lloyd Wright

The truth is more important than the facts. — Frank Lloyd Wright

A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there. — Frank Lloyd Wright

An idea is inevitably a coordination. It is a coming together of something that is separate or disorganized or incomplete. With an idea you begin to feel into the nature of that incompleteness.
"Nature and Idea" December 30, 1956 — Frank Lloyd Wright

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. 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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

There is no true understanding of any art without some knowledge of its philosophy. Only then does its meaning come clear. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I doubt if there is anything in the world uglier than a Midwestern city. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

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

What I like best about San Francisco is San Francisco. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Television is chewing gum for the eyes. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The outcome of the city will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

TV is chewing gum for the eyes. — Frank Lloyd Wright

All the more I study Nature do I revere God, because Nature is all the body of God we will ever know. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

If the paintings are too large, cut them in half! — Frank Lloyd Wright

The insolence of authority is endeavoring to substitute money for ideas. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Love of an idea is the love of God. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Television is bubble-gum for the mind — Frank Lloyd Wright

We boast the highest standard of living when it's only the biggest. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Liberty may be granted but freedom cannot be conferred. Freedom is from within. Notwithstanding all the abuses to which freedom is now subject
marking man down as a commercial item and cutting him off from his birthright by senseless
excess and the demoralization of the profit-system
yet man may still be in love with life and find life less and less abundant for this very reason. Truth is of freedom, always safe and affirmative, therefore conservative. Truth proclaims rejection of dated minor traditions, doomed by the great Tradition of The Law of Change is truth's great "eternal." Freedom is this "great becoming. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Nature is my manifestation of God.
I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The Lincoln Memorial is related to the toga and the civilization that wore it. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Doctors bury their mistakes, Architects cover them with ivy — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I know we can't have a great architecture while it is only for the landlord. — Frank Lloyd Wright

I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances. — Frank Lloyd Wright

A free America ... 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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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. — Frank Lloyd Wright

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. — Frank Lloyd Wright

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind. — Frank Lloyd Wright