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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

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I Think The Collectors

Philip Johnson

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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.

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You're Going To Change The World? Well, Go Ahead And Try. You'll Give It Up At A Certain Point And Change Yourself Instead.

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.

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.

I Wish Someone Would Ask Me To Design A Cathedral.

In Our Universal Experience Unintelligent Material Processes Do Not Create Life

If Architects Weren't Arrogant, They Wouldn't Be Architects. I Don't Know A Modest Good Architect.

I Haven't Any Wisdom - Just A Child Like Everybody Else. I'm Not As Great As Frank Lloyd Wright.

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.

The Automobile Is The Greatest Catastrophe In The Entire History Of City Architecture.

Purpose Is Not Necessary To Make A Building Beautiful.

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.

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.

Architecture Is Basically The Design Of Interiors, The Art Of Organizing Interior Space.

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.

[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.

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.

We Do Pretty Much Whatever We Want To.

I'm A Chameleon, So Changeable. I See Myself As A Gadfly And A Questioner.

Architecture Is The Art Of How To Waste Space.

I Call Myself A Traditionalist, Although I Have Fought Against Tradition All My Life.

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?

I Guess I Want To Make Money Just Like Other People, Perhaps More Than Most People.

The Best Thing To Do With Water Is To Use A Lot Of It.

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.

I Guess I Can't Be A Great Architect. Great Architects Have A Recognizable Style. But If Every Building I Did Were The Same, It Would Be Pretty Boring.

All Architects Want To Live Beyond Their Deaths.

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I Get Between Nine And Ten Hours Of Sleep. Go To Bed At 8:30 And Get Up At 6:00 Or 6:30 If I Oversleep.

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.

The People With Money To Build Today Are Corporations - They Are Our Popes And Medicis. The Sense Of Pride Is Why They Build.

American Megalomania Is Largely Responsible For The Growth Of The Skyscraper School.

There's No Worse Feeling Than Seeing My Buildings And Realizing The Mistakes.

Glibness Will Get Your Anywhere.

I Wouldn't Build A Building If It Wasn't Of Interest To Me As A Potential Work Of Art. Why Should I?

The First Complete Sentence Out Of My Mouth Was Probably That Line About Consistency Being The Hobgoblin Of Small Minds.

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Pick Very Few Objects And Place Them Exactly.

From The Very Fact The Universe Is On The Whole Orderly, In A Manner Comprehensible To Our Intellect, Is Evidence That We And It Were Fashioned By A Common Intelligence.

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Ninety-eight Percent Are Boxes, Which Tells Me That A Lot Of People Are In Denial. We Live And Work In Boxes. People Don't Even Notice That. Most Of What's Around Us Is Banal. We Live With It. We Accept It As Inevitable. People Say, "this Is The World The Way It Is, And Don't Bother Me." Then When Somebody Does Something Different, Real Architecture, The Push-back Is Amazing. People Resist It. At First It's New And Scary.

Scientific Naturalism Is A Story That Reduces Reality To Physical Particles And Impersonal Laws, [and] Portrays Life As A Meaningless Competition Among Organisms That Exist Only To Survive And Reproduce.

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