Famously referred to as the ‘father of skyscrapers’, Louis Sullivan was an eminent architect from the United States. A mentor to Frank Llyod Wright, Sullivan pioneered modern design principles in North America.
Throughout his career, he verbalized several quotes about modernism, architecture, and art that still influence people till this day. In this article, you will find 30 best quotes by Louis Sullivan.
1. “It was the spirit animating the mass and flowing from it, and it expressed the individuality of the building.” -Louis Sullivan
2. “Alas, the world has never known a sound social fabric, a fabric sound and clean to the core and kindly. For it has ever turned its back on Man.” -Louis Sullivan
3. “Form follows function.” -Louis Sullivan
4. “Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will.” -Louis Sullivan
5. “Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.” -Louis Sullivan
6. “Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition.” -Louis Sullivan
7. It is the mass dream of inverted self, populous with fears overt and secret, that forms the continuous but gossamer thread upon which are strung as phantom beads all civilizations from the remotest past of record to that of the present day and hour.” -Louis Sullivan
8. “What the people are within, the buildings express without.” -Louis Sullivan
9. “A proper building grows naturally, logically, and poetically out of all its conditions.” -Louis Sullivan
10. “The building’s identity resided in the ornament.” -Louis Sullivan
11. “The chief characteristics of the tall building is that it is lofty. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation so that from bottom to top it should be a unit without a single dissenting line.” -Louis Sullivan
12. “How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.” -Louis Sullivan
13. “Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.” -Louis Sullivan
14. “In the history of mankind there are recorded two great Inversions. The first, set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary.” -Louis Sullivan
15. “The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one – of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation.” -Louis Sullivan
16. “That it is today the only art for which the multitudinous rhythms of outward nature, the manifold fluctuations of man’s inner being have no significance, no place.” -Louis Sullivan
17. “Words are most malignant, the most treacherous possession of mankind. They are saturated with the sorrows of all time.” -Louis Sullivan
18. “The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time— is he who shall create poems in stone.” -Louis Sullivan
19. “When you look at one of your contemporary ‘good copies’ of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.” -Louis Sullivan
20. “Our architecture reflects truly as a mirror.” -Louis Sullivan
21. “Happiness and depression cannot blossom on the same vine. Some people affirm their woes and beg for sympathy. Others, unfortunately, cast gloom wherever they go. These poor souls were born sick and tired.” -Louis Sullivan
22. “It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.” -Louis Sullivan
23. “The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer.” -Louis Sullivan
24. “The tyranny alike of church and state has been curbed, and true power is now known to reside where forever it must remain — in the people.” -Louis Sullivan
25. “No complete architecture has yet appeared in the history of the world because men, in this form of art alone, have obstinately sought to express themselves solely in terms either of the head or of the heart. I hold that architectural art, thus far, has failed to reach its highest development, its fullest capability of imagination, of thought and expression, because it has not yet found a way to become truly plastic: it does not yet respond to the poet’s touch.” -Louis Sullivan
26. “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.” -Louis Sullivan
27. “It has, alas, for centuries been taught that the intellect and the emotions were two separate and antagonistic things. This teaching has been firmly believed, cruelly lived up to. How depressing it is to realize that it might have been taught that they are two beautifully congenial and harmonious phases of that single and integral essence that we call the soul. That no nature in which the development of either is wanting can be called a completely rounded nature.” -Louis Sullivan
28. “Taste is one of the weaker words in our language. It means a little less than something, a little more than nothing; certainly it conveys no suggestion of potency. It savors of accomplishment, in the fashionable sense, not of power to accomplish in the creative sense. It expresses a familiarity with what is au courant among persons of so-called culture, of so-called good form. It is essentially a second-hand word, and can have no place in the working vocabulary of those who demand thought and action at first hand. To say that a thing is tasty or tasteful is, practically, to say nothing at all.” -Louis Sullivan
29. “The schools, having found the object of their long, blind searching, shall teach directness, simplicity, naturalness: they shall protect the young against palpable illusion. They shall teach that, while man once invented a process called composition, Nature has forever brought forth organisms. They shall encourage the love of Nature that wells up in every childish heart, and shall not suppress, shall not stifle, the teeming imagination of the young. They shall teach, as the result of their own bitter experience, that conscious mental effort, that conscious emotionality, are poor mates to breed from, and that true parturition comes of a deep, instinctive, subconscious desire. That true art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life. That Nature is strong, generous, comprehensive, fecund, subtile: that in growth and decadence she continually sets forth the drama of man’s life. That, thro’ the rotating seasons, thro’ the procession of the years, thro’ the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.” -Louis Sullivan
30. “Glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome.” -Louis Sullivan
