Frank Lloyd Wright Quotations
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was born and raised in Wisconsin. He was born in a rural area of Wisconsin called Richland Center on June 8, 1867. He attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison studying Civil Engineering. His appreciation for nature stems from the abundance of great beauty in this state that I now proudly call home.
A great artist, a world-renowned architect and a man who had definite thoughts about life. His quotes are just as memorable as his architecture. Journey with me as we explore his thoughts. Listen to videos about some of his most famous structures. And lastly, see the new toy that was release under the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation - a licensed and authorized Lego of his two most famous structures - the Guggenheim in NY and Fallingwaters in Spring Green Wisconsin.
"A Forthright Pure Builder"
When Frank Lloyd Wright was lecturing in England, in 1934 in London, the chair of the lecture detailed that Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) needed no introduction. He went on to detail the very meaning of his name:
- Frank - meaning "forthright, direct"
- Lloyd - in Welsh means "pure"
- Wright - "builder"
Timeless Tributes
FLW's work was timeless, having no beginning and having no end, being relevant as much as today as his work was in 1934. The Guggenheim (FLW's design for the NY Guggenheim) was not a building of a certain era, but a building that has stood the test of time and continues to make a statement not just externally but the interior architecture as well. Each building is both a tribute to its architect and also to nature - FLW's "God".
What Made FLW Timeless?
What made FLW's work timeless? What made FLW stand out? His connection to nature? His blunt personality? He continuity from architecture to furniture? His design philosophy of starting from the inside? All of these things and much more.
Perhaps I was the only American who thought the Guggenheim was only in NY. There are Guggenheim Museums around the world. However, it is true that only the NY museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The NY Museum is often hailed as Wright's most famous work, I would disagree, I believe Fallingwaters would be but perhaps my perspective of growing up in the Midwest is clouded.
Guggenheim Museums Around the World:
- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York - Frank Lloyd Wright Architect
- The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
- The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao Frank Gehry Architect
- Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (built in cooperation with the Deutsche Bank)
Architecture - Inside Out
Wright's designs started from the inside and worked their way out. He wanted the interiors to be comfortable and in unison with nature.
His style was later dubbed by historians as the "Prairie School", a style that emanated from Wright's influence in a state in the United States of America which has an abundance of nature - Wisconsin - known for its long open horizontal planes and prairies.
In a celebration of Wright's life and work, the Guggenheim Museum, New York City set on display many of the drawings and model. Steve Rodriquez speaks with David van Leer, the Assistant Curator who guides us through the exhibition.
A few statistics about Frank Lloyd Wright's prolific career: 64 projects with 201 drawings, over 1100 designs and built over 400 designs. The beauty of architecture is in the design not necessarily in the construction - it is in the creation - creating a thing of beauty to compliment the greatest artist of all - Mother Nature.
Celebrating 50 Years Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture From Within Without
“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen”
Frank Lloyd Wright quote
“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 quote
“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.”
Frank Lloyd Wright quote
Frank Lloyd Wright
Great Quotes from Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's Thoughts About Architecture
The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.
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 Lincoln Memorial is related to the toga and the civilization that wore it. 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
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The space within becomes the reality of the building.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The truth is more important than the facts.
Frank Lloyd Wright
There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.
Frank Lloyd Wright
"Think simple" as my old master used to say - meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Frank Lloyd Wright
To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Less is only more where more is no good.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Mechanization best serves mediocrity.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.
Frank Lloyd Wright
New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed... a race for rent.
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
No stream rises higher than its source. What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.
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
Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Space is the breath of art.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
Frank Lloyd Wright
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright
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.
Frank Lloyd Wright
All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
Frank Lloyd Wright
An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's Personal Philosophy
The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. Frank Lloyd Wright
Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. Frank Lloyd Wright
Life always rides in strength to victory, not through internationalism... but only through the direct responsibility of the individual.
Frank Lloyd Wright
An idea is salvation by imagination.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's Thoughts on Freedom
A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Freedom is from within.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's Thoughts on Life
Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
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
I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture.
Frank Lloyd Wright
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.
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 believe totally in a Capitalist System, I only wish that someone would try it.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I feel coming on a strange disease - humility.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's Thoughts on Technology
Television is chewing gum for the eyes. Frank Lloyd Wright
Creative Quotations from Frank Lloyd Wright
Song by Simon and Garfunkle - So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright - Lego Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright Legos
The Lego Group Announces New Legos - Frank Lloyd Wright Replicas
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced that The LEGO Group is now the exclusive licensed manufacturer of Frank Lloyd Wright Collection® LEGO Architecture sets.
Architecture is a natural extension of The Lego Group. They combined with Adam REed Tucker of Brickstructure, Inc. to bring to us a line of six buildings - two are FLW - the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and “Fallingwater.”
These toys which were first released in 2009 are a great gift for men, women, children of all ages. They can not only collect and construct their favorite buildings but also see the genius in the engineering in a hands-on fashion.
The toys include booklets that detail the instructions along with historical materials and photographs of each Frank Llloyd Wright building.
Frank Lloyd Wright Links and Resources
- Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes
A listing of favorite Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes - Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Woodblock Prints
Early Years and Career It came as a surprise to me that such a renowned architect as Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was a fan and collector of Japanese woodblock prints and that especially in his later... - Frank Lloyd Wright-A Man Far Ahead of His Time
Frank Lloyd Wright (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons) If you've followed my recent hubs (Wall Whispers about abandoned buildings and My Architectural Fascination-England), you'll notice that I've been...
Take Our Poll
Which Building Do You Think of When You Hear the Name Frank Lloyd Wright?
Frank Lloyd Wright's Architectural Genius
Frank Lloyd Wright understood his architectural genius. He also understood his own personal flaws. After one of his homes burned to the ground leaving only his studio standing, Frank Lloyd Wright remarked that God knew his work was good but also knew his human frailties. His relationship with women was scattered at best. He left his first family and six children and first wife with months of bills and no means of support. He continued to struggled through a couple of other chapters in his life to a point where his personal life overshadowed and damaged his professional life.
Frank Lloyd Wright's career is marked with artistic genius and over the life of his career he leaves with us a legacy of powerful statements and quotes and a legacy of living architecture. Following FLW's guidance in architecture and using texture blocks is something every builder should take note of. We have the technology now to make his architecture cost effective and low maintenance. The texture blocks are pure genius and work simply in design and function. To quote Wright, "form follows function." Nature has determined this and following the path of God is always the right thing to do.
Great Links to Frank Lloyd Wright
- SAVE WRIGHT: Properties for sale
List of Frank Lloyd Properties for sale. - REVIEW: Frank Lloyd Wright at the Milwaukee Art Museum - JSOnline
One of the first things visitors will see in a new exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright at the Milwaukee Art Museum is a rarely seen symbol of his faith in the transformative power of architecture. - Frank Lloyd Wright's Favorite Fireplace and Wisconsi...
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 - April 9, 1959, aged 91) was a world famous architect. Born in Wisconsin and retain by the best in the world for state of the art luxury hotels, international corporate... - Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Woodblock Prints
Early Years and Career It came as a surprise to me that such a renowned architect as Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was a fan and collector of Japanese woodblock prints and that especially in his later... - Hotels - Frank Lloyd Wright's Hotels - Lake Geneva W...
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw quotes (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950) Frank Lloyd...
Frank Lloyd Wright Doormat - Buy Online at Amazon
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Everyone has an opinion about this great artist. He lead a flamboyant life and left a legacy in the world of art and architecture. Would you desire to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright style home? Do you own a piece of art work in his distinctive Prairie style?
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© 2010 Kelly A. Kline
