Philip Johnson Quotes

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Philip Johnson

Profession : Architect

Birth : July 8, 1906

I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs - at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.

Philip Johnson

I'm about four skyscrapers behind.

Philip Johnson

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

I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.

Philip Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?

Philip Johnson

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

Philip Johnson

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

How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine.

Philip Johnson

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

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

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

Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.

Philip Johnson

I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.

Philip Johnson

Glibness will get your anywhere.

Philip Johnson