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Top 20 Louis Sullivan Quotes (2025 Update)

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Form ever follows function.”

1. “Form ever follows function.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action.”

2. “To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “A proper building grows naturally, logically, and poetically out of all its conditions.”

3. “A proper building grows naturally, logically, and poetically out of all its conditions.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.”

4. “Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Our architecture reflects truly as a mirror.”

5. “Our architecture reflects truly as a mirror.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition.”

6. “Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “When you look on one of your contemporary ‘good copies’ of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.”

7. “When you look on one of your contemporary ‘good copies’ of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time – is he who shall create poems in stone.”

8. “The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time – is he who shall create poems in stone.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Happiness and depression cannot blossom on the same vine. Some people affirm their woes and beg for sympathy. Others, unfortunately, cast gloom wherever they go. These poor souls were born sick and tired.”

9. “Happiness and depression cannot blossom on the same vine. Some people affirm their woes and beg for sympathy. Others, unfortunately, cast gloom wherever they go. These poor souls were born sick and tired.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “But the building’s identity resided in the ornament.”

10. “But the building’s identity resided in the ornament.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome.”

11. “Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “It was the spirit animating the mass and flowing from it, and it expressed the individuality of the building.”

12. “It was the spirit animating the mass and flowing from it, and it expressed the individuality of the building.”

— Louis Sullivan

Featured in: Individuality Quotes

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Words are most malignant, the most treacherous possession of mankind. They are saturated with the sorrows of all time.”

13. “Words are most malignant, the most treacherous possession of mankind. They are saturated with the sorrows of all time.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.”

14. “It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

15. “Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “The chief characteristics of the tall building is that it is lofty. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation so that from bottom to top it should be a unit without a single dissenting line.”

16. “The chief characteristics of the tall building is that it is lofty. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation so that from bottom to top it should be a unit without a single dissenting line.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “It is the mass dream of inverted self, populous with fears overt and secret, that forms the continuous but gossamer thread upon which are strung as phantom beads all civilizations from the remotest past of record to that of the present day and hour.”

17. “It is the mass dream of inverted self, populous with fears overt and secret, that forms the continuous but gossamer thread upon which are strung as phantom beads all civilizations from the remotest past of record to that of the present day and hour.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?”

18. “What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.”

19. “How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected.”

20. “If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “Alas, the world has never known a sound social fabric, a fabric sound and clean to the core and kindly. For it has ever turned its back on Man.”

21. “Alas, the world has never known a sound social fabric, a fabric sound and clean to the core and kindly. For it has ever turned its back on Man.”

— Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan Quote: “The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one – of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation.”

22. “The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one – of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation.”

— Louis Sullivan

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