Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

The truth is more important than the facts.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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.Persistently holding quality above quantity only as he attempts to live a superior life of his own, and to whatsoever degree in whatever case he finds it; this is his virtue in a democracy such as ours was designed to be.Only this sense of proportion affords tranquility of spirit, in itself beauty, in either character of action. Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm. The assumption of the firm countenance, lips compressed in denial or resentment is not known to her as it is known to civilization. Such negation by human countenance may be moral (civilization is inclined to morality) but even so not nature. Again exuberance is repose but never excess.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

How is he made? Oftentimes bitter, sometimes sweet, seldom even wide-awake, architectural criticism of the modern wholly lacks inspiration or any qualification because it lacks the appreciation that is love: the flame essential to profound understanding. Only as criticism is the fruit of such experience will it ever be able truly to appraise anything. Else the spirit of true criteria is lacking. That spirit is love and love alone can understand. So art criticism is usually sour and superficial today because it would seem to know all about everything but understand nothing. Usually the public prints afford no more than a kind of irresponsible journalese wholly dependent upon some form of comparison, commercialization or pseudo-personal opinion made public. Critics may have minds of their own, but what chance have they to use them when experience in creating the art they write about is rarely theirs? So whatever they may happen to learn, and you learn from them, is very likely to put over on both of you as it was put over on them. Truth is seldom in the critic; and either good or bad, what comes from him is seldom his. Current criticism is something to take always on suspicion, if taken at all.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Early in life I had to choose between arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly but take every building to pieces and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms getting back to first principles.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

~ 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

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

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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

~ 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

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

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Space is the breath of art.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

The space within becomes the reality of the building.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.

~ 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

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

~ 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

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward.

~ 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

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

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Less is only more where more is no good.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Television is chewing gum for the eyes.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

An idea is salvation by imagination.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

~ 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