Louis Sullivan quotes

Louis Sullivan was an American architect often called the "father of skyscrapers" and a pioneer of modern architecture. His designs emphasized simplicity, function, and the expressive use of ornamentation. He greatly influenced the development of American architecture and mentored Frank Lloyd Wright. Here are 54 of his quotes:

An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet ... this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times. (Louis Sullivan)
It was the spirit animating the mass and flowing from it, and it expressed the individuality of the building. View quote
Louis Sullivan
Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome. View quote
Louis Sullivan
Form ever follows function. View quote
Louis Sullivan
What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action? View quote
Louis Sullivan
An art of expression should begin with childhood, and the lucid use of one's mother tongue should be typical of that art. The sense of reality should be strengthened from the beginning, yet by no means at the cost of those lofty illusions we call patriotism, veneration, love. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
I have warned you over and over that for every physical effect there is a psychic cause. You see the effect - the cause is just as visible. Can you imagine that Man is here made in the image of his Almighty, when he pollutes that which the Almighty, as it is said, has given to him when he pollutes even himself? This is not democracy, my lad, it is modern American inhumanity. This is not civilization, it is CALIBAN ! View quote
Louis Sullivan
Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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)
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition. View quote
Louis Sullivan
Words are most malignant, the most treacherous possession of mankind. They are saturated with the sorrows of all time. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. Yet evidently the true object of education, now as ever, is to develop the capabilities of the head and of the heart. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
The true architectural art, that art toward which I would lead you, rests, not upon scholarship but upon human powers; and, therefore, it is to be tested, not by the fruits of scholarship, but by the touch-stone of humanity. View quote
Louis Sullivan
High ideals make a people strong. ... decay comes when ideals wane. View quote
Louis Sullivan
A proper building grows naturally, logically, and poetically out of all its conditions. View quote
Louis Sullivan
To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action. (Louis Sullivan)
Our architecture reflects truly as a mirror. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan
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. View quote
Louis Sullivan