“Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight is to his steps. The term "genius" when applied to him simply means a man who understands what others only know about.”

— Frank Lloyd Wright

A Testament (1957)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 4, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight is to his steps. The term "genius" when applied to him simply me…" by Frank Lloyd Wright?

Frank Lloyd Wright photo

Frank Lloyd Wright99

American architect (1867-1959) 1867–1959

Related quotes

“A man who can’t read only knows what other folks tell him.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 15.

“A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

“So far as one understands a man, one is that man. The man of genius takes his place in the above argument as he who understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Einen Menschen verstehen heißt also: auch er sein. Der geniale Mensch aber offenbarte sich an jenen Beispielen eben als der Mensch, welcher ungleich mehr Wesen versteht als der mittelmäßige. Goethe soll von sich gesagt haben, es gebe kein Laster und kein Verbrechen, zu dem er nicht die Anlage in sich verspürt, das er nicht in irgend einem Zeitpunkte seines Lebens vollauf verstanden habe. Der geniale Mensch ist also komplizierter, zusammengesetzter, reicher; und ein Mensch ist um so genialer zu nennen, je mehr Menschen er in sich vereinigt, und zwar, wie hinzugefügt werden muß, je lebendiger, mit je größerer Intensität er die anderen Menschen in sich hat.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 106.

“I have a philosophy that when you have a commander in the field, let him know what you want done and then let him alone. I have two other philosophies. One is: Do the best you can with what you have. The other is: Do not worry about water over the dam.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

From Time magazine's interview with King, Volume XL, Number 23 (December 7, 1942), p. 32.
1940s

“Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena. … But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

“The eyesight for an eagle is what thought is to a man.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Creator

“Eagle,” p. 72
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Thought and Flight”

“When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head—the other man's head, I mean—then that proved that his—the first fellow's—girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other fellow's—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his girl—not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the—Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

“When I speak of All That Is, you must understand my position within it. All That Is knows no other. This does not mean that there may not be more to know. It does not mean, and here words quite fail us, it does not mean that All That Is, in any terms we can conceive of, may not be limited. It knows of no other.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 426, Page 25
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 9

“The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. … It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 139.

“After all, sympathy is genius. A man who really sympathizes with another understands him. A man who sympathizes with a religion, instantly sees the good that is in it, and the man who sympathizes with the right, sees the evil that a creed contains.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Related topics