Philip Johnson Quotes

I'm about four skyscrapers behind.

- Philip Johnson

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

- Philip Johnson

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

To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.

- 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

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

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

It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing - wonderful.

- Philip Johnson

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

- Philip Johnson

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

- 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

Dullness is the enemy.

- Philip Johnson

You're going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You'll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead.

- Philip Johnson

Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating.

- 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

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

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

- Philip Johnson

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

- Philip Johnson

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

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 call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.

- Philip Johnson

Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.

- 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

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

- 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

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

If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.

- Philip Johnson

The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.

- 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

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

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 only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction.

- Philip Johnson

I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.

- Philip Johnson

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

- Philip Johnson

I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.

- Philip Johnson

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.

- Philip Johnson

I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.

- Philip Johnson

The future of architecture is culture.

- Philip Johnson

Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.

- Philip Johnson

Glibness will get your anywhere.

- Philip Johnson

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

- Philip Johnson

Architecture is art, nothing else.

- Philip Johnson