Quote

There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.

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
Seeing
Feeling
Feelings
Buildings
Mistakes
Worse
Building
Realizing
Mistake

More quotes by Philip Johnson

Image
We do pretty much whatever we want to.
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
When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.
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
I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
Philip Johnson
Image
The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
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 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.
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
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
Image
Glibness will get your anywhere.
Philip Johnson
Image
Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
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
Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
Philip Johnson
Image
I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
Philip Johnson
Image
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
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
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
The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
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