Frank Lloyd Wright was known for his radical buildings in the 20th century.
But he was also a prolific writer, and a philosopher whose ideas transcended architecture.
Here are 16 quotes from FLW about creativity, conformity, poets, prophecies, Emerson (and not buildings):
An idea is salvation by imagination.
The song, the masterpiece, the edifice are a warm outpouring of the heart of man— human delight in life triumphant: we glimpse the infinite.
Really to believe in something is the greatest boon, I think, and to believe wholeheartedly in it and to serve it with all your strength and your might is salvation.
There is a deadly tendency towards conformity which in the human spirit is something like gangrene in the human flesh.
The greatest harm that man can do in life is to spoil the faith, the trust, and the fresh vision of the child.
The cardinal sin or architecture is overdoing anything.
The [Welsh] definition of genius was very simple, very true, and very good: A man who can see nature; a man who has a heart for nature (that is, who loves nature), and a man who had the courage to follow nature.
A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.
Good reading of the great poets is just as essential to the spiritual life as sitting down at the table and eating when you are hungry.
Cultivate the poet. The poet is the unacknowledged legislator of this universe and the sooner we knock under to that the better. Get Emerson’s essay on the American scholar and read it once a year.
The artist himself, of course, is of his time, or he is not an artist. He is the prophet of his time and of his day; he is the seeing-eye of his people. He can see a little further and more clearly than his people see.
The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.
Get the habit of analysis -- analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.
I have never wanted to be finished. I have never wanted to feel that what I have done was the best I could do. I have to be careful of that because that is poison to the creative spirit.
I am not a “masterpiece man”— the next one I am going to do is always the best. When a man points to his masterpiece, he is finished. Do not look for much from him.
You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.