Adolf Loos Quotes

• Lack of ornamentation is a sign of spiritual strength.

  Adolf Loos

  Spiritual, Spiritual Strength, Ornamentation

  39 Copy quote

• Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.

  Adolf Loos

  Inspirational, Fashion, Fear

  65 Copy quote

• The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, Home, House

  24 Copy quote

• Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.

  Adolf Loos

  Badass, Bad Ass, Men

  33 Copy quote

• The work of art is brought into the world without there being a need for it. The house satisfies a requirement. The work of art is responsible to none; the house is responsible to everyone. The work of art wants to draw people out of their state of comfort.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, People, House

  17 Copy quote

• The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, House, Comfort

  20 Copy quote

• Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he does so a few years before he would have committed murder.

  Adolf Loos

  Men, Years, Criminals

  23 Copy quote

• Be truthful. Nature only sides with truth.

  Adolf Loos

  Two Sides, Sides, Truthful

  27 Copy quote

• The room has to be comfortable; the house has to look habitable.

  Adolf Loos

  House, Looks, Rooms

  14 Copy quote

• All art is erotic. The first ornament to have been invented, the cross, was of erotic origin. It was the first work of art. A horizontal stroke: the woman lying down. A vertical stroke: the male who penetrates her.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, Lying, Erotic

  18 Copy quote

• Supply and demand regulate architectural form.

  Adolf Loos

  Demand, Form, Supply And Demand

  17 Copy quote

• Changes in the traditional way of building are only permitted if they are an improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be hundreds of years old has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie that walks by our side.

  Adolf Loos

  Lying, Years, Stronger

  14 Copy quote

• I have emerged victorious from my thirty years of struggle. I have freed mankind from superfluous ornament.

  Adolf Loos

  Struggle, Years, Ornaments

  20 Copy quote

• The work of art shows people new directions and thinks of the future. The house thinks of the present.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, Thinking, People

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, Race, People

  "Style as Instrument, Style as Person" by Berel Lang, Critical Inquiry Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 715-739, Summer, 1978.

  21 Copy quote

• Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he loves the house and hates art.

  Adolf Loos

  Art, Hate, Men

  15 Copy quote

• The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear Vienna herself.

  Adolf Loos

  Cities, Wish, Vienna

  64 Copy quote

• The law courts must appear as a threatening gesture toward secret vice. The bank must declare: here your money is secure and well looked after by honest people.

  Adolf Loos

  Law, People, Secret

  16 Copy quote

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