Top 40 Philip Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The future of architecture is culture.”

— Philip Johnson

2. “We all see the world differently. And thank God for that. Otherwise, what a boring world this would be.”

— Philip Johnson

3. “Architecture is the art of how to waste space.”

— Philip Johnson

4. “I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.”

— Philip Johnson

5. “I’m a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.”

— Philip Johnson

6. “I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?”

— Philip Johnson

7. “Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.”

— Philip Johnson

8. “I guess I can’t be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.”

— Philip Johnson

9. “Don’t build a glass house if you’re worried about saving money on heating.”

— Philip Johnson

10. “Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.”

— Philip Johnson

11. “Faith? Haven’t any. I’m not a nihilist or a relativist. I don’t believe in anything but change. I’m a Heraclitean – you can’t step in the same river twice.”

— Philip Johnson

12. “All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.”

— Philip Johnson

13. “I used to think that each phase of life was the end. But now that my view on life is more or less fixed, I believe that change is a great thing. In fact, it’s the only real absolute in the world.”

— Philip Johnson

14. “The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat, one must have shelter. Next to religious worship itself, it is the spiritual handmaiden of our deepest convictions.”

— Philip Johnson

15. “If architects weren’t arrogant, they wouldn’t be architects. I don’t know a modest good architect.”

— Philip Johnson

16. “There’s no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.”

— Philip Johnson

17. “We do pretty much whatever we want to.”

— Philip Johnson

18. “Processionalism is primary – how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That’s worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I’m a ‘straight-in’ man myself; I’m too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I’m going.”

— Philip Johnson

19. “So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. Anything goes.”

— Philip Johnson

20. “There’s no such thing as old age. I’m no different now than I was 50 years ago. I’m just having more fun.”

— Philip Johnson

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21. “It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you’re nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing – wonderful.”

— Philip Johnson

22. “Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.”

— Philip Johnson

23. “You’re going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You’ll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead.”

— Philip Johnson

24. “I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.”

— Philip Johnson

25. “In our greatest universities, naturalism – the doctrine that nature is all there is – is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds.”

— Philip Johnson

26. “The people with money to build today are corporations – they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.”

— Philip Johnson

27. “How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That’s the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he’d done a good line. When he didn’t, he threw it away. I wish I’d thrown away some of mine.”

— Philip Johnson

28. “Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven’s ‘Eighth’ does?”

— Philip Johnson

29. “I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.”

— Philip Johnson

30. “All architects want to live beyond their deaths.”

— Philip Johnson

31. “Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.”

— Philip Johnson

32. “The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.”

— Philip Johnson

33. “Pick very few objects and place them exactly.”

— Philip Johnson

34. “Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.”

— Philip Johnson

35. “I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs – at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.”

— Philip Johnson

36. “Glibness will get your anywhere.”

— Philip Johnson

37. “I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.”

— Philip Johnson

38. “Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.”

— Philip Johnson

39. “American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.”

— Philip Johnson

40. “Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.”

— Philip Johnson

41. “The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.”

— Philip Johnson

42. “In our universal experience unintelligent material processes do not create life.”

— Philip Johnson

43. “I get between nine and ten hours of sleep. Go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 if I oversleep.”

— Philip Johnson

44. “I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.”

— Philip Johnson

45. “I wouldn’t build a building if it wasn’t of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?”

— Philip Johnson

46. “I haven’t any wisdom – just a child like everybody else. I’m not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.”

— Philip Johnson

47. “Early unsuccessess shouldn’t bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.”

— Philip Johnson

48. “The best thing to do with water is to use a lot of it.”

— Philip Johnson

49. “From the very fact the universe is on the whole orderly, in a manner comprehensible to our intellect, is evidence that we and it were fashioned by a common intelligence.”

— Philip Johnson