“1. An honest ego in a healthy body2. An eye to see nature3. A heart to feel nature4. Courage to follow nature5. A sense of proportion (humor)6. Appreciation of work as idea and idea as work7. Fertility of imagination8. Capacity for faith and rebellion9. Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance10. Instinctive cooperation”

“An idea is inevitably a coordination. It is a coming together of something that is separate or disorganized or incomplete. With an idea you begin to feel into the nature of that incompleteness."Nature and Idea" December 30, 1956”

“Every idea that is a true idea has a form, and is capable of many forms. The variety of forms of which it is capable determines the value of the idea. So by way of ideas, and your mastery of them in relation to what you are doing, will come your value as an architect to your society and future. That's where you go to school. You can't get it in a university, you can't get it here, you can't get it anywhere except as you love it, love the feeling of it, desire and pursue it. And it doesn't come when you are very young, I think. I believe it comes faster with each experience, and the next is very simple, or more simple, until it becomes quite natural to you to become master of the idea you would express."Idea and Essence" September 7, 1958”

“An idea is salvation by imagination”

“A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working.”

“The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation. We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.”

“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”