Louis Sullivan - Power Quotes

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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.

Louis Sullivan
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
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
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
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
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.

Louis Sullivan