ARTHUR ERICKSON

Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.

The heart, not the head, must be the guide.

There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.

Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process.

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.

What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.

Nowhere has specialization penetrated so deeply into the building professions as North America.

The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.

God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.

The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.

Bankers cannot afford to be concerned with only the economic aspects of projects. There may be serious implications on the natural environment, the urban environment, on human culture.

The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.

Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

Nearly all of the advances in structural and aesthetic innovation is coming from abroad.

Whenever we witness art in a building, we are aware of an energy contained by it.

The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.

The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.

We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.

Builders eventually took advantage of the look of modernism to build cheaply and carelessly.

Tahiti has been spoiled for many years, but Bali is one of the few cultures with origins in one of the great ancient cultures which is still alive.

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

We settled this continent without art. So it was easy for us to treat it as an imported luxury, not a necessity.