Less is more.
(Mies van der Rohe)

Space and Light and Order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.
(Le Corbusier)

Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
(Frank Lloyd Wright)

Neither is it the right angle, which me attracts, nor the straight line, hard, inflexible, made by men.
What attracts me is the curve, free and sensual, the curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the winding course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the beloved woman.
The universe is made out of curves - the curved universe of Einstein.
(Oscar Niemeyer)

A wheel?
Thirty spokes meet at a nave! But the empty hole is the essence of the wheel.
A jug?
Clay is moulded into a vessel! But the empty hollow is the essence of the jug.
A house?
Walls with doors and windows! But the empty space is the essence of the house. Therefore use what exists; Recognize the utility of what not exists.
(Lao-Tse)

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. (Albert Einstein)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
(William Shakespeare)

The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves and grows and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognized that this web is intrinsically dynamic.

(Fritjof Capra)

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.
(H. G. Wells)

Since food, shelter, and clothing, are considered as the most essential needs of man, the art of making them characterizes the various civilizations on earth. This art is design . The greatest works are often the most humble. The efficient and simple beauty of man's working clothes and tools the world over is a constant cause of wonder... The art of native food, evolved from the direct products of climate and soil, is forever a source of amazement and joy... But design offers its greatest examples in the art of shelter, or architecture , because it creates the environment for living and thus makes possible the development of all other forms of art.
(Paul Jacques Grillo)

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
(Khalil Gibran)

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside.
(William Morris)

The function of what I call design science is to solve problems by introducing into the environment new artifacts, the availability of which will induce their spontaneous employment by humans and thus, coincidentally, cause humans to abandon their previous problem-producing behaviors and devices. For example, when humans have a vital need to cross the roaring rapids of a river, as a design scientist I would design them a bridge, causing them, I am sure, to abandon spontaneously and forever the risking of their lives by trying to swim to the other shore.
(Richard Buckminster Fuller)

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.
(Frank Lloyd Wright)

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.
(H. G. Wells)

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
(Richard Buckminster Fuller)

Life is the art of encounter.
(Vinícius de Moraes)

The words are like the tunes. People always try to improve something, isn't it? But often you ruin the song trying to perfect it. You try to make it better in a way that it loses the grace. Because sometimes, the grace is in the improvisation.
(Antonio Carlos Jobim)

As completeness is always imperfect, so is perfection always incomplete.
(Carl Gustav Jung)

Brazil has no vocation for mediocrity.
(Lúcio Costa)

We are a country condemned to be modern.
(Mário Pedrosa)

There are no dead things. Each thing is an expression of life, which acts and claims for its rights like a present living being. And the more things you have, the more you have to comfort them. Not only are they serving us, but also we have to serve them. And many times we are more their servant than they ours.
(Christian Morgenstern)

It is alarming that publications devoted to architecture have banished from their pages the words Beauty, Inspiration, Magic, Spellbound, Enchantment, as well as the concepts of Serenity, Silence, Intimacy and Amazement. All these have nestled in my soul, and though I am fully aware that I have not done them complete justice in my work, they have never ceased to be my guiding lights.  Religion and Myth. It is impossible to understand Art and the glory of its history without avowing religious spirituality and the mythical roots that lead us to the very reason of being of the artistic phenomenon. Without the one or the other there would be neither Egyptian pyramids nor those of ancient Mexico. Would the Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals have existed? Would the amazing marvels of the Renaissance and the Baroque have come about?  And in another field, would the ritual dances of the so-called primitive cultures have developed? Would we now be the heirs of the inexhaustible artistic treasure of worldwide popular sensitivity? Without the desire for God, our planet would be a sorry wasteland of ugliness. "The irrational logic harboured in the myths and in all true religious experience has been the fountainhead of the artistic process at all times and in all places". These are words of my good friend, Edmundo O'Gorman, and, with or without his permission, I have made them mine.
Beauty.
The invincible difficulty that the philosophers have in defining the meaning of this word is unequivocal proof of its ineffable mystery. Beauty speaks like an oracle, and ever since man has heeded its message in an infinite number of ways: it may be in the use of tattoos, in the choice of a seashell necklace by which the bride enhances the promise of her surrender, or, again, in the apparently superfluous ornamentation of everyday tools and domestic utensils, not to speak of temples and palaces and even, in our day, in the industrialized products of modern technology. Human life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called so.
Silence.
In the gardens and homes designed by me, I have always endeavoured to allow for the interior placid murmur of silence, and in my fountains, silence sings.
Solitude.
Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.
Serenity.
Serenity is the great and true antidote against anguish and fear, and today, more than ever it is the architect's duty to make of it a permanent guest in the home, no matter how sumptuous or how humble. Throughout my work I have always strived to achieve serenity, but one must be on guard not to destroy it by the use of an indiscriminate palette.
Joy.
How can one forget joy? I believe that a work of art reaches perfection when it conveys silent joy and serenity. 
Death.
The certainty of death is the spring of action and therefore of life, and in the implicit religious element in the work of art, life triumphs over death. 
Gardens.
In the creation of a garden, the architect invites the partnership of the Kingdom of Nature. In a beautiful garden, the majesty of Nature is ever present, but Nature reduced to human proportions and thus transformed into the most efficient haven against the aggressiveness of contemporary life. 
The Art of Seeing.
It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis. 
(Luis Barragan)

Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream, and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?

(Khalil Gibran)

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific - they are true organisms, spiritually conceived, works of art using the best technology.

(Frank Lloyd Wright)

The dramatic change in concepts and ideas that happened in physics during the first three decades of this century (XX) has been widely discussed by physicists and philosophers for more than fifty years... The intellectual crisis of quantum physicists in the 1920's is mirrored today by a similar but much broader cultural crisis. The major problems of our time... are all different facets of one single crisis, which is essentially a crisis of perception... Like the crisis in quantum physics, it derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated world view... At the same time researchers... are developing a new vision of reality... emerging from modern physics which can be characterized by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process. What we are seeing today is a shift of paradigms not only within science but also in the larger social arena... The social paradigm now receding had dominated our culture for several hundred years, during which it shaped our modern Western society and has significantly influenced the rest of the world... This paradigm consists of... the view of the world as a mechanical system, the view of the body as a machine... the view of life as a competitive struggle... the belief of unlimited progress achieved through economic and technological growth and the belief that the female is subsumed under the male... During recent decades all these assumptions have been severely limited and in need of radical revision. Indeed, such a revision is now taking place... In science, the language of systems theory, and especially the theory of living systems, seems to provide the most appropriate formulation of the new ecological paradigm.

(Fritjof Capra)

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.

(Richard Buckminster Fuller)

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
(Nicolaus Copernicus)

A garden is the result of arranging natural materials, according to aesthetic laws and interwoven with the artist's vision, his past experiences, his insecurity, grief, his attempts, his mistakes and his successes.

(Roberto Burle Marx)

Knowing is not enough;
we must apply.
Willing is not enough;
we must do.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

How do I make a sculpture? I just remove everything from the block of marble which is not necessary.

(Michelangelo Buonarotti)

A garden is made of light and sounds; the plants are participants.

(Roberto Burle Marx)

The chief source of art is man's pleasure in his daily necessary work, which expresses itself and is embodied in that work itself; nothing else can make the common surroundings of life beautiful, and whenever they are beautiful it is a sign that men's work has pleasure in it, however they may suffer otherwise. It is the lack of this pleasure in daily work which has made our towns and habitations sordid and hideous, insults to the beauty of the earth which they disfigure, and all the accessories of life mean, trivial, ugly - in a word, vulgar . Terrible as this is to endure in the present, there is a hope in it for the future; for surely it is but just that outward ugliness and disgrace should be the result of the slavery and misery of the people; and that slavery and misery once changed, it is but reasonable to expect that external ugliness will give place to beauty, the sign of free and happy work.

(William Morris)

Design is not the product of an intelligentsia. It is everybody's business, and whenever design loses contact with the public, it is on the losing end. For the first time in history, there is today a total disconnection between art and the people. When I say that design is everybody's business, I don't mean that design is a do-it-yourself job. I mean that it affects everybody , at all times , in our lives . Unless we gain a better understanding of design, we shall witness our environment getting steadily worse, in spite of the constant improvement of our machines and tools.

(Paul Jacques Grillo)

Heaven, earth and mankind are the three powers in the world, and it is man, who has to bring harmony into the two others - being heaven, the creative power of events in time, and earth, the receptive power of expansion in space. Heaven shows the images, and the man with vocation brings them into reality. The book of transformations (I Ching), where we find this sentence, is based on the insight that the last reality is not in the passive situations, but within the spiritual law, which gives sense and an impulse of continuous effect to all events.

(Richard Wilhelm)

And what is it to work with love? It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. Work is love made visible.

(Khalil Gibran)

More is more.
(Robert Venturi)

Doing more with less.

(Richard Buckminster Fuller)