Quote

So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. Anything goes.

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
Goes
Open
Whatever
Form
Anything
Floodgates
Origin
Delight
Pure

More quotes by Philip Johnson

Image
The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.
Philip Johnson
Image
We do pretty much whatever we want to.
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
Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
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
Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
Philip Johnson
Image
I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.
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
Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
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
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
American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.
Philip Johnson
Image
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
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
Image
I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
Philip Johnson
Image
Architecture is art, nothing else.
Philip Johnson
Image
Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson
Image
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
Image
The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
Philip Johnson