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
The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds. – Philip Johnson
If architects weren’t arrogant, they wouldn’t be architects. I don’t know a modest good architect. – 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
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
Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space. – 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
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
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 haven’t any wisdom – just a child like everybody else. I’m not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright. – 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
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
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
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
