Great Throughts Treasury

"Love is the virtue of the Heart, Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind, Decision is the virtue of the Will, Courage is the virtue of the Spirit."

"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."

"Life always rides in strength to victory, not through internationalism... but only through the direct responsibility of the individual."

"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions."

"Life is truth."

"Love is the greatest virtue of the heart."

"Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world."

"New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed... a race for rent."

"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."

"New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it."

"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."

"Now a work of art is a work of nature, but it is a work of human nature. It is a work of the mind: and it's a work of the mind in circumstances for an occasion which, to which, for which, and which it may be supremely natural and simple and effective."

"Man is a phase of nature, and only as he is related to nature does he matter, does he have any account whatever above the dust."

"Mechanization best serves mediocrity."

"Move the chair (or table). [Wright's response to a client who phoned him to complain of rain leaking]"

"My building will last at least 300 years."

"Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see."

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

"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."

"Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him. This of course not antagonistic by sympathetic to the growth of all men as brothers. Free emulation not imitation of the bravest and the best is to be expected of him. Uncommon he may and will and should become as inspiration to his fellows, not a reflection upon them, not to be resented but accepted--and in this lies the only condition of the common man's survival. So only is he intrinsic to democracy."

"Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight to his steps. The Term 'genius' when applied to him simply means a man who understands what others only know about. A poet, artist or architect, necessarily 'understands' in this sense and is likely, if not careful, to have the term 'genius' applied to him; in which case he will no longer be thought human, trustworthy or companionable. Whatever may be his medium of expression he utters truth with manifest beauty of thought. If he is an architect, his building is natural. In him, philosophy and genius live by each other, but the combination is subject to popular suspicion and appellation 'genius' likely to settle him--so far as the public is concerned."

"Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity."

"Pseudo-scientific minds, like those of the scientist or the painter in love with the pictorial, both teaching as they were taught to become architects, practice a kind of building which is inevitably the result of conditioning of the mind instead of enlightenment. By this standard means also, the old conformities are appearing as new but only in another guise, more insidious because they are especially convenient to the standardizations of the modernist plan-factory and wholly ignorant of anything but public expediency. So in our big cities architecture like religion is helpless under the blows of science and the crushing weight of conformity--caused to gravitate to the masquerade in our streets in the name of modernity. Fearfully concealing lack of initial courage or fundamental preparation or present merit: reactionary. Institutional public influences calling themselves conservative are really no more than the usual political stand-patters or social lid-sitters. As a feature of our cultural life architecture takes a backward direction, becomes less truly radical as our life itself grows more sterile, more conformist. All this in order to be safe?"

"Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them."

"Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral."

"Old as man's mortal life is this urge to grow."

"Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art."

"So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal."

"Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity."

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you"

"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."

"Television is bubble-gum for the mind."

"The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect"

"The circus tent is not architecture."

"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."

"The best friend of earth and of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth"

"The cultural influences in our country are like the floo floo bird. I am referring to the peculiar and especial bird who always flew backward. To keep the wind out of its eyes? No. Just because it didn't give a darn where it was going, but just had to see where it had been."

"The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built."

"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."

"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."

"The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind."

"The heart is the first feature of working minds."

"The inappropriate cannot be beautiful."

"The Lincoln Memorial is related to the toga and the civilization that wore it."

"The land is the simplest form of architecture. Building upon the land is as natural to man as to other animals birds or insects."

"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."

"The measure of its nobility and its continuity is its depth of feeling and its sincerity. And if it has that quality, it stands."

"The multitudinous substitutes for indigenous culture cannot grow. Having no roots, they can only age and decay. Studious, sincere youth retires, defeated. American youth, capable of becoming serious competent artists, under such pressure as this on every side, confused, try not to give up--or fall in line. This is the nature of about all that can be called American education in the arts and architecture at this time. As for religion true to the teaching of the great redeemer who said The Kingdom of God is within you--that religion is yet to come: the concept true not only for the new reality of building but for the faith we call democracy."

"The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation. We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more."

"The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization."