Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, abundantly creative master of American architecture, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. He believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. His “Prairie style” became the basis of 20th-century residential design. Inspirational Frank Lloyd Wright quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.
If you’re searching for life quotes and sayings that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of R. Buckminster Fuller quotes.
Most Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes
The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built. Frank Lloyd Wright
Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. Frank Lloyd Wright
If you’re going to have centralization, why not have it! Frank Lloyd Wright
We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us. Frank Lloyd Wright
We should have a system of economics that is a structure that is organic tools. We do not have it. We are all hanging by our eyebrows from skyhooks economically, just as we are architecturally. Frank Lloyd Wright
Form follows function that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. Frank Lloyd Wright
It is a terrific thing to get a building built that has the qualities of greatness in it. Frank Lloyd Wright
A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there. Frank Lloyd Wright
Architecture ismans great sense of himself embodied in a world of his own making. It may rise as high in quality only as its source because great art isgreat life. Frank Lloyd Wright
The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life. Frank Lloyd Wright
All I learned from Eliel Saarinen was how to make out an expense account.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. Frank Lloyd Wright
We boast the highest standard of living when it’s only the biggest. Frank Lloyd Wright
You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having. Frank Lloyd Wright
When anyone becomes an authority, that is the end of him as far as development is concerned. Frank Lloyd Wright
A building is not just a place to be but a way to be. Frank Lloyd Wright
We do not learn so much by our successes as we learn by failures our own and others! Especially if we see the failures properly corrected. Frank Lloyd Wright
No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other. Frank Lloyd Wright
Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. Frank Lloyd Wright
Space is the breath of art. Frank Lloyd Wright
Well, now that he’s finished one building, he’ll go write four books about it. Frank Lloyd Wright
A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working. Frank Lloyd Wright
I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist’s hand even were that magic hand were in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion. Frank Lloyd Wright
Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use. Frank Lloyd Wright
I feel coming on a strange disease coming on. Frank Lloyd Wright
You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site. Frank Lloyd Wright
The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist. Frank Lloyd Wright
We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional. Frank Lloyd Wright
If you tilt the whole country sideways, Los Angeles is the place where everything loose will fall. Frank Lloyd Wright
Love is the virtue of the Heart, Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind, Decision is the virtue of the Will, Courage is the virtue of the Spirit. Frank Lloyd Wright
The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty. Frank Lloyd Wright
The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own, we have no soul of our own civilization. Frank Lloyd Wright
Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves. Frank Lloyd Wright
More and more, so it seems to me, light is the beautifier of the building.Frank Lloyd Wright
A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn’t afterward. Frank Lloyd Wright
I never design a building before I’ve seen the site and met the people who will be using it. Frank Lloyd Wright
God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. Frank Lloyd Wright
Less is only more where more is no good. Frank Lloyd Wright
A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration. Frank Lloyd Wright
The truth is more important than the facts. Frank Lloyd Wright
I doubt if there is anything in the world uglier than a Midwestern city. Frank Lloyd Wright
When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers. Frank Lloyd Wright
I wouldn’t mind seeing opera die. Ever since I was a boy, I regarded opera as a ponderous anachronism, almost the equivalent of smoking. Frank Lloyd Wright
Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order. Frank Lloyd Wright
Entering into the spirit of this interior, you will discover the best possible atmosphere in which to show fine paintings or listen to music. It is this atmosphere that seems to me most lacking in our art galleries, museums, music halls and theaters. Frank Lloyd Wright
Simplicity and Repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art. Frank Lloyd Wright
The best friend of earth of man is the tree. Frank Lloyd Wright
Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials. Frank Lloyd Wright
Consider everything in the nature of a hanging fixture a weakness, and naked radiators an abomination. Frank Lloyd Wright
Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.
The dynamic ideal we call democracy, gradually growing up in the human heart for two thousand five hundred years, at least, has now every opportunity to found the natural democratic state in these United States of America by way of natural economic order and a natural, or organic, architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. Frank Lloyd Wright
The measure of a man’s culture is the measure of his appreciation. We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more. Frank Lloyd Wright
If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life. Frank Lloyd Wright
I know we can’t have a great architecture while it is only for the landlord. Frank Lloyd Wright
The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seems as part of the other. Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity the imply have at last come home. Frank Lloyd Wright
Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well fed. Frank Lloyd Wright
The best friend on earth of man is the tree: When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the earth. Frank Lloyd Wright
Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity. Frank Lloyd Wright
The space within becomes the reality of the building. Frank Lloyd Wright
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. Frank Lloyd Wright
Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. Frank Lloyd Wright
Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Frank Lloyd Wright
Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity. Frank Lloyd Wright
Wherever human life is concerned, the unnatural stricture of excessive verticality cannot stand against more natural horizontality. Frank Lloyd Wright
The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty. Frank Lloyd Wright
The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk happy. Frank Lloyd Wright
Early in life, I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change Frank Lloyd Wright
The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seems as part of the other. Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity the imply have at last come home. Frank Lloyd Wright
Youth is a circumstance you can’t do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old. Frank Lloyd Wright
Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now. Frank Lloyd Wright
Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Frank Lloyd Wright
It’s easier to make changes with a pencil than a wrecking bar. Frank Lloyd Wright
