Monumental Landscape Quotes

Leave it [The Grand Canyon] as it is. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it …. Keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as one of the sights which every American … should see.

In the U.S., everything is big - it's like looking through a magnifying glass.

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.

The Pyramids are perfect, but you can't put the Pyramids in the middle of Manhattan. In the desert, the combination of light and form makes it perfect.

The great seats of power tend to be wide and open, not vertical and soaring. Red Square, Tiananmen Square, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - all massive but with large open spaces that project an image of might.

D.C. is a small town with some big-town features.

I would have loved to be the designer of the Capitol of the United States. I would love to do some important major public building.

I actually enjoy having the Capitol view. We started referring to it as the trillion dollar view.

A monument should be singular. Fate and happenstance have endowed this democracy with a constellation of remarkably varied and aesthetically impressive representations of our national adventure, and this endowment should be enlarged with care.

When you're driving into D.C. as a young kid and you go over the Key Bridge and see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Capitol Building, they become a part of the landscape for you. You are also constantly in contact with this idea that history, and the people that made it, are being remembered.

Stonehenge is famously aligned with midsummer sunrise, and possibly also intentionally with midwinter sunset.