Quote

I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.

Philip Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Philip Johnson
Age: 98 †
Born: 1906
Born: July 8
Died: 2005
Died: January 25
Architect
Art Historian
Cleveland
Ohio
Philip Cortelyou Johnson
Phillip Johnson
Like
Havens
Haven
Wisdom
Everybody
Child
Else
Lloyd
Children
Wright
Great
Frank

More quotes by Philip Johnson

Image
There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.
Philip Johnson
Image
I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
Philip Johnson
Image
Processionalism is primary - how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That's worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going.
Philip Johnson
Image
When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.
Philip Johnson
Image
We do pretty much whatever we want to.
Philip Johnson
Image
Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
Philip Johnson
Image
American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.
Philip Johnson
Image
The best thing to do with water is to use a lot of it.
Philip Johnson
Image
I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it to make something new of it not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.
Philip Johnson
Image
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.
Philip Johnson
Image
Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
Philip Johnson
Image
I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
Philip Johnson
Image
All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.
Philip Johnson
Image
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
Image
[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.
Philip Johnson
Image
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.
Philip Johnson
Image
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.
Philip Johnson
Image
Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.
Philip Johnson
Image
Glibness will get your anywhere.
Philip Johnson
Image
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.
Philip Johnson