Philip Johnson Quotes

It may not be art, but it is history.

Historically, in the world of architecture, enormous amounts of care and energy have been lavished on things that are almost a cliched idea of culture.

Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.

Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.

Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.

Art is the permanence of a civilization.

Art is how a culture records its life, how it poses questions for the next generation and how it will be remembered.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

Music and fashion are a sign of the times and a reflection of what people want and need at this very day and age.

Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.

A country, a style or an epoch are interesting only for the idea behind them.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

I'm not mainly interested in what buildings mean as symbols or vehicles for ideas.

Music is part of history, and our history has lessons that cannot be separated from our greatest music.

Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Greeks... Only their art, whenever it was beautiful, stands proud and exalted, rising above all time.

I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own.

For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation.

It states, History should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and solving the challenges of the future. It also suggests that this celebration of the end of slavery is an important and enriching part of the history and heritage of the United States.

For a country is not merely a piece of earth; it is, above all, a compendium of social, cultural, and historical factors which begin to acquire sense and order through the process of writing.

Fashion is an expression of a time, of a place, of history. It's putting things into context.

It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.

Imagine if all those kings and dukes hadn't commissioned those crazy cathedrals, paintings and music... we'd still be living in sticks and mud. Because none of those things made any economic sense. Human beings' capacity to 'waste time' is a miracle - but that's exactly what art is for.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.