“No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.”

Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization.

The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.

Surrogate experience and surrogate environments have become the American way of life.

The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.

There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture.

Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history.Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone.

There are two kinds of people in the world – those who have a horror of a vacuum and those with a horror of the things that fill it. Translated into domestic interiors, this means people who live with, and without, clutter.

New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.

Waiting is a special kind of activity – if activity is the right word for it – because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives.

Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death.

Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.

If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.

If you will; they are places for doing nothing and they have no life of their own. … their one constant is what might be called a decorative rigor mortis.

In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style.

. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean.

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.

There are some who esteem that it is a naivety to believe that a moral regeneration may be possible (“soit possible”, Fr.); now, if this was not the case, it would not be worth the trouble that humanity continue to vegetate without aim.

Any material may be used but the theme is the same and the response is the same for all artwork.

It is not on the ruin of liberty that we may (in the future… – “pourra”, Fr.) build justice.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.

History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.

If I like a person, I like them. I may like the art and not like the person.

Experience shows that what great role pratice and experience play in education; pratice, the prolonged exercice lead to habit: exemple suggests imitation.