The architect of the Guggenheim Museum, Fallingwater, the Robie House, and the Johnson Wax Administration Building, Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “You do not learn by way of your successes. No one does.” Just as he flouted convention in a series of astonishing buildings, so did Wright go against the grain in his career as a writer and lecturer. On subjects as diverse as McCarthyism and cement blocks, he produced countless lectures and articles, a half-dozen books, and a remarkable series of informal talks delivered to his apprentices on Sunday mornings.
Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, the author of several collections of Wright’s writings and Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, has culled more than two hundred quotations from a wide range of sources, drawing heavily on transcripts of the Sunday talks. The themes to which Wright returned most often serve as the book’s sections: the value of architecture takes precedence, but topics such as government and the getting of wisdom provide memorable and pungent comments.

Wright was brash, outspoken, funny, irreverent, and unafraid of the most sweeping generalizations. In Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture, Nature, and the Human Spirit, all those qualities shine, but so do the architect’s religious faith, his unswerving commitment to hard work, and a firm moral scheme that connected the two.

Quotes organized by subject: Architecture, Nature, the Soul & Faith, Humanity, Wisdom, Creativity, Beauty, Culture & Values, Democracy & the Individual, Government, Work & Success, and Frank Lloyd Wright on Frank Lloyd Wright.