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Glibness will get your anywhere.

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
Anywhere

More quotes by 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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The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
Philip Johnson
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Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we've both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business.
Philip Johnson
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Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson
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Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
Philip Johnson
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I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
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
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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
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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.
Philip Johnson
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We do pretty much whatever we want to.
Philip Johnson
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When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.
Philip Johnson
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Pick very few objects and place them exactly.
Philip Johnson
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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.
Philip Johnson
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I hate the celebrity architect thing. I just do my work. The press comes up with this stuff and it sticks. I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.
Philip Johnson
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[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
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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.
Philip Johnson
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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.
Philip Johnson
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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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I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
Philip Johnson
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Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
Philip Johnson