W Gropius Quotes & Sayings

The Berlin of the '20s formed the foundation of my future education ... the Berlin of the UFA studios, of Fritz Lang, Lubitsch and Erich Pommer. The Berlin of the architects Gropius, Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe. The Berlin of the painters Max Libermann, Grosz, Otto Dix, Klee and Kandinsky. — Ken Adam

I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about! — Jean Webster

And we are grateful to the American young men and women who are risking their lives to give the Iraqi people this chance, this dream of democracy in Iraq now. — Ahmed Chalabi

Americans are good with to-do lists; just tell us what to do, and we'll do it. Throughout our history, we have proven that. Colonize. Check. Win our independence. Check. Form a union. Check. Expand to the Pacific. Check. Settle the West. Check. Keep the Union together. Check. Industrialize. Check. Fight the Nazis. Check. — Marianne Williamson

If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality. — Walter Gropius

Since art is dead in the actual life of civilized nations, it has been relegated to these grotesque morgues, museums. — Walter Gropius

Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes. — Walter Gropius

How can we expect our students to become bold and fearless in thought and action if we encase them in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which has long since disappeared? — Walter Gropius

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

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

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

Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society. — Walter Gropius

Limitation makes the creative mind inventive. — Walter Gropius

I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. — Philemon

Nothing worth having ever comes easy. — Autumn Karr

A lover of what is looks forward to everything: life, death, disease, loss, earthquakes, bombs, anything the mind might be tempted to call 'bad.' Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven't undone yet. Nothing outside ourselves can make us suffer. Except for our unquestioned thoughts, every place is paradise. — Byron Katie

I'd rather have answers than weapons. — Beth Revis

Long ago I lost the joy in living. The only joy I have is in my giving. — John D. Rockefeller

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

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. — Walter Gropius

The Bauhaus fights imitation, inferior craftsmanship and artistic dilettantism — Walter Gropius

Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as salon art. Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. — Walter Gropius

Architecture begins where engineering ends. — Walter Gropius

It was the garden of a man who wanted to rule the world but couldn't, and so had cut the world down to his own size. — Anthony Horowitz

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. — Walter Gropius

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

I am rather impatient to know the fate of my best gown. — Jane Austen

snakes rarely bite above the ankles — Janet Fitch

Think like a machine instead of a boy. — Orson Scott Card

It's the hurt business, it's boxing. We're there to get it in. — Floyd Mayweather Jr.

I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention. — Michael Graves

I'm always looking for context in which people tell stories. In "Fight Club" it's these support groups for dying people, and then in "Choke" it's 12-step recovery groups. In one novel it's artists' colonies, in another novel it's a diary form that submariners' wives typically keep so that when their husband comes back from serving on a submarine they have an accounting of their spouse's time. So I'm always looking for, number one, a non-fiction context - because you can tell a more outrageous story if you use a non-fiction form. — Chuck Palahniuk

A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy. — Walter Gropius

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. — Walter Gropius

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. — Walter Gropius