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Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

Ben Nicholson

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.
BEN NICHOLSON

Enemy Fall Tyrants Worst
Painting’ and ‘religious experience’ are the same thing. It is a question of the perpetual motion of a right idea.
BEN NICHOLSON

Ideas Painting Religious
Student journeys which were important to me were Sicily, Greece, and Egypt, where I really saw these buildings, and that is where you’re able to grasp what things mean.
BEN NICHOLSON

Country Journey Mean
I haven’t done any building designs since the Loaf House.
BEN NICHOLSON

Design Done House
Politics are beautiful. They enable a community to live collectively with one another. It’s not about stabbing each other in the back it’s about enabling people to reach their dreams and pursue happiness.
BEN NICHOLSON

Beautiful Dream People
I’m interested in locating the holy grail of the minimum means to express the most complex ideas.
BEN NICHOLSON

Grail Holy Ideas Mean
The corruption of the American soul is consumerism.
BEN NICHOLSON

Consumerism Corruption Soul
Very rarely are we directing or cutting someone elses boards. We concept, direct, shoot, animate and edit almost everything that comes through here.
BEN NICHOLSON

Board Cutting Direct
I started producing work with an ecstatic addiction.
BEN NICHOLSON

Addiction Ecstatic Work
Realism’ has been abandoned in the search for reality: the ‘principal objective’ of abstract art is precisely this reality.
BEN NICHOLSON

Abandoned Art Reality
We are pushing hard to find quality advertising clients.
BEN NICHOLSON

Clients Pushing Quality
I haven’t done any building designs since the Loaf House.
BEN NICHOLSON

Design Done House
I’m just interested in meditating on certain ideas, and I like to draw: that’s my way of thinking.
BEN NICHOLSON

Drawing Ideas Thinking
When I left school I went on trip around the world – I only got as far as Australia, but like a bloody fool I cut it short because of a girl. It’s probably one of my big regrets in life.
BEN NICHOLSON

Girl Regret School
What I feel bad about is not having published very much in the last few years.
BEN NICHOLSON

Feels Lasts Years
Satire is fascinating stuff. It’s deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it’s the only thing that makes any sense.
BEN NICHOLSON

Breaking Down Serious Stuff
I’m not an expert, but I want to be.
BEN NICHOLSON

Desire Experts Want
I have a book of buildings from 25,000 BC. These are huts built out of mammoth bones. These buildings were beautifully made, from the bones of the body into shelter.
BEN NICHOLSON

Body Book Shelter
I deeply believe in pluralism. I believe in the close proximity of multiple systems or agnostic systems.
BEN NICHOLSON

Agnostic Believe Pluralism
The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural… Whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point.
BEN NICHOLSON

Kind Musical Painting
You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it’s best.
BEN NICHOLSON

Earth Heaven Vision
I’m not an expert, but I want to be.
BEN NICHOLSON

Experts Hope Want
I see man more as an instrument or an agent more than anything else.
BEN NICHOLSON

Agents Instruments Men
If you’re into architecture and you’re from the West, everything is hors d’oeuvres for working to rebuild the Temple. Ultimately you’re led there. You can’t escape it.
BEN NICHOLSON

Architecture Temple West
The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul.
BEN NICHOLSON

Greed Guy Soul

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

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Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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