Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Frank Lloyd Wright Architect

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Jun 8, 1867
  • Died: Apr 9, 1959

Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 532. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater, which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.

His work includes original and innovative examples of many building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.

Space is the breath of art.

Freedom is from within.

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

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

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

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

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

Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site.

Mechanization best serves mediocrity.

Less is only more where more is no good.

Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.

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

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.

Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now.

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward.

Life always rides in strength to victory, not through internationalism... but only through the direct responsibility of the individual.

The truth is more important than the facts.