The best evidence of a mind is when you change it.
Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past.
There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last.
Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.
There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines – lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure.
The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.
Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.
It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.
Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next.
States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.
Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification.
Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge; and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.
Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.
A philosopher who says, ‘There are no truths, only interpretations,’ risks the retort: ‘Is that true, or only an interpretation?’
The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language.
Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity – the habit of saying “good morning” to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.
Beauty is assailed from two directions – by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.
Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.