Architect Quotes - Page 26

• The cynic is his own worst enemy. It requires far less skill to run a wrecking company than it does to be an architect.

  Uell Stanley Andersen

  Running, Worst Enemy, Skills

  Uell Stanley Andersen (1954). “The key to power and personal peace”

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• Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Moving, Book, Artist

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• Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Destiny, Men, Order

  "The Brothers Karamazov". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, part 2, book 5, chapter 4, p. 291, 1945.

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• What a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects themselves.

  August Weismann

  Father, Ideas, Sublime

  August Weismann, Sir John Arthur Thomson, Margaret R. Thomson (1904). “The Evolution Theory”

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• Nature has provided us a spectacular toolbox. The toolbox exists. An architect far better and smarter than us has given us that toolbox, and we now have the ability to use it.

  Barry Schuler

  God, Soul, Use

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• We are all architects of faith, ever living in these walls of time.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Wall

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• Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing.

  B. C. Forbes

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

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• Better to be the architect of something you can endorse than the placard waving protagonist standing in the rain.

  Mr. Wrestling

  Rain, Political, Campaigns

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• A building does not have to be an important work of architecture to become a first-rate landmark. Landmarks are not created by architects. They are fashioned by those who encounter them after they are built. The essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a city's memory. Compared to the place it occupies in social history, a landmark's artistic qualities are incidental.

  Herbert Muschamp

  Memories, Cities, History

  "The Secret History of 2 Columbus Circle" by Herbert Muschamp, www.nytimes.com. January 8, 2006.

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• You are the architect of your own destiny; you are the master of your own fate; you are behind the steering wheel of your life. There are no limitations to what you can do, have, or be. Except the limitations you place on yourself by your own thinking.

  Brian Tracy

  Motivational, Fate, Destiny

  Brian Tracy (2009). “The 21 Success Secrets of Self-made Millionaires: How to Achieve Financial Independence Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.63, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The pursuit of peace resembles the building of a great cathedral. It is the work of a generation. In concept it requires a mater-architect; in execution, the labors of many.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Peace, Humanity, Execution

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• The decisions of our past are the architects of our present.

  Dan Brown

  Past, Decision, Our Past

  Dan Brown (2014). “Inferno: Special Illustrated Edition (Enhanced): Featuring Robert Langdon”, p.42, Knopf

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• I'd say I never considered myself a great architect. I'm more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares.

  Maria Semple

  Creative, Taste, Nightmare

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• My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and — oh, yeah — head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time.

  Rick Riordan

  Girlfriend, Honor, Olympus

  "The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus)". Book by Rick Riordan, August 14, 2012.

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• No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.

  Thomas Friedman

  Doctors, Matter, Stuff

  Thomas L. Friedman (2007). “The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century”, p.15, Macmillan

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• The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.

  Alain de Botton

  Kindness, Order, Should Have

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• Yes, Garnett Grey was an Architect. Were a psychoanalyst to approach him from behind, tap his shoulder, and say 'Humanity,' Garrett'd spin and respond, without hesitation, 'Solvable'.

  Chip Kidd

  Humanity, Grey, Shoulders

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• I like ruins because what remains is not the total design, but the clarity of thought, the naked structure, the spirit of the thing.

  Tadao Ando

  Badass, Bad Ass, Design

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• A profound design process eventually makes the patron, the architect, and every occasional visitor in the building a slightly better human being.

  Juhani Pallasmaa

  Badass, Bad Ass, Design Process

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• Buildings should be good neighbours.

  Paul Thiry

  Building, Should, Be Good

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• Question everything generally thought to be obvious.

  Dieter Rams

  Ninja, Obvious

  François Burkhardt, Inez Franksen, Dieter Rams (1981). “Design: Dieter Rams &”

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• Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long.

  Kenzo Tange

  Long, Design, Arbitrary

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• Experimental architecture by its very nature is more prone to the depredations of time and natural elements than buildings made from conventional materials through traditional methods. Avant-garde architects often simply do not know how the products of their imagination will perform when implemented, especially if untested components are involved.

  Martin Filler

  Imagination, Avant Garde, Natural Elements

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• We do not create the work. I believe we, in fact, are discoverers.

  Glenn Murcutt

  Believe, Facts, Architecture

  Glenn Murcutt (2002). “The Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2002: Presented to Glenn Marcus Murcutt”

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• To me the drawn language is a very revealing language: one can see in a few lines whether a man is really an architect.

  Eero Saarinen

  Men, Lines, Architecture

  Eero Saarinen (1962). “Eero Saarinen on His Work: A Selection of Buildings Dating from 1947 to 1964 with Statements by the Architect”, New Haven : Yale University Press

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