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Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.

Philip Johnson

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Philip Johnson
Age: 98 †
Born: 1906
Born: July 8
Died: 2005
Died: January 25
Architect
Art Historian
Cleveland
Ohio
Philip Cortelyou Johnson
Phillip Johnson
Change
Twice
Anything
River
Believe
Rivers
Havens
Haven
Step
Steps
Relativist
Faith
Nihilist

More quotes by Philip Johnson

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Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
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Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
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Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
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I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
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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.
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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.
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I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.
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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.
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The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
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Glibness will get your anywhere.
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American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.
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Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.
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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
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The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.
Philip Johnson
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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
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There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.
Philip Johnson
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Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
Philip Johnson
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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
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I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
Philip Johnson
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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