A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims.

If a dictator takes up my ideas, the resulting town will survive the political system that commissioned it and stand as a social good. Besides, modernism rather than classicism has dominated the architecture of totalitarian regimes of both the left and right.

As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely.

For architecture, nature provides only indications and analogies, not models to imitate.

You need a prince to make a town in an intellectual sense. Developers want to make money. If they cared about architecture, they'd become architects. I've had so many projects that never came off because they had no sponsor, and not because they were utopian. I just want to build a town that's normal.

Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.

Lots of English people say exactly the opposite of what they mean.