“If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.”
Quoted in Berel Lang, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer, 1978), pp. 715-739; see http://www.jstor.org/pss/1342952.
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Adolf Loos 1
Austrian/Czech architect 1870–1933Related quotes

“Don’t push the on-button if you don’t know where the off-button is.”
Source: Short fiction, The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello, p. 224

Sylvester Daggerwood, or New Hay at the Old Market, Scene 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).