“Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.”

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.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Good taste is not a substitute for knowledge.

Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials.

The truth is more important than the facts.

A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration.

There is no true understanding of any art without some knowledge of its philosophy. Only then does its meaning come clear.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.

An architect’s most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking ball at the site.

The best thing to do is go as far out as you can get… what you regard as ‘too far’-and when others follow, as they will, move on.

Building becomes architecture only when the mind of man consciously takes it and tries with all his resources to make it beautiful, to put concordance, sympathy with nature, and all that into it. Then you have architecture.

Youth is not an age thing. It’s a quality. Once you’ve had it, you never lose it.

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

Each material has its own message.

Space is the breath of art.

Man is a phase of nature, and only as he is related to nature does he matter, does he have any account whatever above the dust.

Writing is something you’ll never learn in any university or at any school. It’s something that is within you, and if it isn’t there, nothing can put it there.

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

A boy has to peddle his book.

All one can really leave one’s children is what’s inside their heads. Education, in other words, and not earthly possessions, is the ultimate legacy, the only thing that cannot be taken away.

There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it.

It is personal. That’s what an education does. It makes the world personal.

The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

Never was I power thirsty, or trying to control everyone. I believed in educating everyone, so they could all get to the position I was at.