Quote#Politics & Power
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all…
Quote byLouis Sullivan · 1856–1924
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896).
English (original)
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.
— Louis Sullivan
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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.
The human mind in all countries having gone to the uttermost limit of its own capacity, flushed with its conquests, haughty after its self-assertion upon emerging from the prior dark age, is now nearing a new phase, a phase inherent in the …
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 …
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, …
Truly we are face to face with great things.
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.