Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes

"I don't know whether you are a saint or a fool" said my lawyer. I replied "Is there a difference?"

Individuality realized is the supreme attainment of the human soul, the master-master's work of art. Individuality is sacred.

We've been fighting from the beginning for organic architecture. That is, architecture where the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole, and where the nature of materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity-architecture of democracy.

New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed... a race for rent.

Architectural features of true democratic ground-freedom would rise naturally from topography, which means that buildings would all take on the nature and character of the ground on which in endless variety they would stand and be component part.

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

I could list of dozens things my fiancee does that annoys me and I'm sure he could list off hundreds of things about me but the fact is that even through all that we love each other. We love each other in spite of our flaws and despite all the things we do that should make us hate each other we still continue to fall deeper in love. Sometimes we want to hate each other but for two people who are truly in love it simply isn't possible. Not even a little but, not even at all.

I attend the greatest of all Churches. I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church.

I voted for Stevenson as opposed to Eisenhower because I thought he would make a good president, but against my conscience because I thought that he was too good for the job.

Doctors bury their mistakes, Architects cover them with ivy

Architecture is essentially Human; it is the Human spirit manifesting itself. For when a Man builds, there, you've got him; you know exactly what, who and how that Man is.

We do not learn so much by our successes as we learn by failures - our own and others! Especially if we see the failures properly corrected.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet.

Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.

For America today organic architecture interprets (will eventually build) this local embodiment of human freedom. This natural architecture seeks spaciousness, grace and openness; lightness and strength so completely balanced and logical that it is a new integrity.

Early in life, I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change

I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work.

How many understand that Nature is the essential character of whatever is. It's something you'll find by looking not at, but in, always in. It's always inside the thing, and it makes the outside. And some day, when you get sufficiently proficient in understanding the use of the term, you can tell by the outside pretty much from what's inside.

Love is the virtue of the Heart, Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind, Decision is the virtue of the Will, Courage is the virtue of the Spirit.

Bring out the nature of the materials. Let their nature intimately into your scheme.

When anyone becomes an authority, that is the end of him as far as development is concerned.

The best friend on earth of man is the tree: When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the earth.

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.

Entering into the spirit of this interior, you will discover the best possible atmosphere in which to show fine paintings or listen to music. It is this atmosphere that seems to me most lacking in our art galleries, museums, music halls and theaters.

Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.

Nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.

Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm.

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly, but take every building to pieces, and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.

It is where life is fundamental and free that men develop the vision needed to reveal the human soul in the blossoms it puts forth.

Good taste is not a substitute for knowledge

From time to time the continent shifts, and everything that isn't fastened down slides into Southern California.

I feel coming on a strange disease - humility.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.

I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist's hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion.

Wherever human life is concerned, the unnatural stricture of excessive verticality cannot stand against more natural horizontality.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.

San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.

No stream rises higher than its source. What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

The longer I lived, the more beautiful life became - despite my personal tragedies, the fire, despite my third wife and her dreadful taste. My dear Olgivanna, she insisted on replacing the lovely canvas and wooden trusses at Taliesin West with steel supports and pink frosted glass. Well, I was too old to care by then. What I decided early on was this: If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.