Oscar Niemeyer Quotes

The 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium, which I helped to conceive, is designed to embody the Olympic spirit of 'fair competition.' It tells people that freedom is possible but needs fairness, courage and strength.

What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.

I have the responsibility of over four million people, and I am in a position to do good, to be able to bring about a new life for my people, and I will continue to move in that direction. It's a burden, but it needs to be done, and you have to have the courage and wisdom to see it through.

It is right and natural that generous minds while in the twenties should think the books which try to reform the world's wrong the greatest of all.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Architecture adds dimensions to my life that would be impossible to acquire if I retired. The beautiful thing about architecture is that every project is brand new. I am forced to renew myself with every project. Isn't that wonderful?

The structure of life I have described in buildings - the structure which I believe to be objective - is deeply and inextricably connected with the human person, and with the innermost nature of human feeling.

Sometimes idealism and all that make believe makes the world a better place.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

I feel like it's important to use this gift God gave me, my life and my career to do something to make the world a better place. It's an easy thing for me to do.

It was my interest in happiness that led me to the subject of habits, and of course, the study of habits is really the study of happiness. Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life, and a significant element of happiness.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I've had and also the people I've had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we're even alive at all.

Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

When your heart speaks to you about what you need to do to sustain life on this planet, listen to it, make a difference, and be an inspiration for generations to come. Be inspired by people like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Christopher Reeve, Albert Schweitzer, Helen Keller, and many others.

I had to find the courage to turn my life around.

All my life I had feared to-morrow, until I decided to have faith and to live to-day in courage.

Newport Center has become a Mediterranean town. The climate here is the same as the Mediterranean's, and so is the architecture. This center exudes a radiance, an energy. It will become a special way of life for everyone.

Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.

The one thing I witnessed over and over were these pretty young people who would throw themselves into a cause larger than themselves and believe they could change the world.

Art to me is a humanitarian act and I believe that there is a responsibility that art should somehow be able to effect mankind, to make the word a better place.

The power of youth is the common wealth for the entire world. The faces of young people are the faces of our past, our present and our future. No segment in the society can match with the power, idealism, enthusiasm and courage of the young people.

I've often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible, but probable.

Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.

The country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

It is senseless to blame others or your environment for your miseries. Change begins from the moment you muster the courage to act. When you change, the environment will change. The power to change the world is found nowhere but within our own life.