Quotes & Sayings by Frank Lloyd Wright

Wright on Buildings and Landscape

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.

Minority Report

[Architectural] Competitions have never yet given the world anything worth having. […] Now, the reason is this—one reason, this isn’t the only reason, in every competition that goes through, the committee is first of all an average. […] Then, the committee goes through the exhibit, picks out the best designs and the worst ones, and throws them out. Why? Because they can’t get together on the best one. That one is always a minority report. You see? The best ones have to go. The worst ones have to go. Then there is the average. (May, 1949)

Invest in Beauty

If you foolishly ignore beauty, you’ll soon find yourself without it. Your life will be improverished. But if you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Buildings Are the Children of Earth and Sun

Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.

What is Style?

What is style? Every flower has it; every animal has it; every individual worthy the name has it in some degree, no matter how much sandpaper may have done for him. … This quality of style is a subtle thing, and should remain so, and not to be defined in itself so much as to be regarded as a result of artistic integrity.

Form Follows Function

Form follows function- that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

Wright on Los Angeles

Turn the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

Black and Blue Furniture

I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture.

Wright on Le Corbusier

“Well, now that he’s finished one building, he’ll go write four books about it” about Le Corbusier.

Less is More

Less is only more where more is no good.

No Stream Rises Higher Than Its Source

No stream rises higher than its source. What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built.

The Mother Art

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

Advise His Client To Plant Vines

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines–so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.

New York Times Magazine, October 4, 1953

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