Skyscraper Quotes - Page 3

• The bias among architecture critics isn't against skyscrapers per se, but against the way in which their design is so heavily dictated by economic considerations - the way in which skyscrapers are real estate before they are architecture.

  Paul Goldberger

  Real, Design, Way

  "Ask the Author Live: Paul Goldberger on the World Trade Center". The New Yorker interview, www.newyorker.com. September 2, 2011.

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• Right after 9/11 it looked as if the idea of a huge skyscraper might be considered obsolete. It came back, but I think that's more closely connected to the rise of Asian and Middle Eastern cities in the world economy (Dubai, Shanghai, Taipei, etc.) than anything else.

  Paul Goldberger

  Thinking, Dubai, Cities

  "Ask the Author Live: Paul Goldberger on the World Trade Center". The New Yorker interview, www.newyorker.com. September 2, 2011.

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• Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know. The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale — and ultimately it is a gamble — demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Tombstone, Tragedy, Triumph

  "PG&E's real estate rumors" by David Lazarus, www.sfgate.com. October 12, 2001.

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• Art deals with profound and simple moods. Let us suppose that the artist - in this instance (the artist) Picabia - gets a certain impression by looking at our skyscrapers, our city, our way of life, and that he tries to reproduce it. He will convey it in plastic ways on the canvas, even though we see neither skyscrapers nor city on it.

  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

  Art, Simple, Cities

  The Globe and commercial advertiser (newspaper), p. 8/10, February 20, 1913.

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• Don't you give me that postmodern bullshit. There is truth, There is a truth. And what you want, or you feel, or you need, isn't going to change the truth. Any more than it's going to topple a skyscraper. There's truth, and there's belief. Don't call a mule a stallion.

  Carol Plum-Ucci

  Giving, Bullshit, Needs

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• Data isn't information, any more than fifty tons of cement is a skyscraper.

  Clifford Stoll

  Data, Library, Fifty

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• Asia is still dominated by skyscrapers. I hope that, in European cities, it will become a declining trend. They were almost never necessary.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Cities, Trends, Asia

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• Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Religious, Animal, Men

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• In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left. However, he said, there is one last mystery. There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen. There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Llhasa.

  Heinrich Harrer

  Country, Kings, War

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• I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.

  John Keegan

  Thinking, Hiking, Mountain

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• While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Pride, Government, Cities

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• I told myself that if I didn't care, this wouldn't have hurt so much - surely that proved I was alive and human and all those touchy-feely things, for once and for all. But that wasn't a relief, not when I felt like a skyscraper with dynamite on every floor.

  Jodi Picoult

  Hurt, Relief, Alive

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• Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Honesty, Oneness, Effort

  "A Plea for Solidarity". The International Socialist Review, Vplume XIV, No. 9, March 1914.

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• We have had the stone age; we have had the iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, and sky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men's visions. Towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out of their hearts.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Heart, Men, Swings

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1913). “Crowds: A Study of the Genius of Democracy and of the Fears, Desires, and Expectations of the People”

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• This (America) is a land of rich diversity, from the towering skyscrapers of Manhatan all the way to the towering mounds of garbage piled up next to the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Humorous, Land

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• A great city with water barriers and no bridges is like a skyscraper with no elevators. Bridges are a monument to progress.

  Joseph Straus

  Bridges, Cities, Water

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• the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. ... At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Style, Unbearable, Goes On

  Ada Louise Huxtable (1986). “The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style”, Pantheon

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• New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

  E. B. White

  New York, White, Church

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.156, Cornell University Press

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• [New York] is a city largely based on great skyscrapers, and they will always be the essence of New York. That won't change, just as the character of the people who live here will not be altered by this tragedy.

  Donald Trump

  New York, Character, Essence

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• As a kid growing up in a small town in Washington State, my only exposure to New York City was through movies. The town with its towering skyscrapers, fascinating people and teeming energy absolutely captivated me.

  Robert Osborne

  New York, Growing Up, Kids

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• Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain and gaining new and wider views.

  Albert Einstein

  Climbing, Views, Creating

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• The Anasazi did manage to construct in stone the largest and tallest buildings erected in North America until the Chicago steel girder skyscrapers of the 1880s.

  Jared Diamond

  America, Chicago, Steel

  Jared Diamond (2011). “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition”, p.131, Penguin

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• No security guard can stop a refrigerator falling off a skyscraper.

  Jadakiss

  Fall, Rapper, Security Guards

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• Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Air, Height

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.159, DEBOLS!LLO

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• To me, the difference between New York and London is that things are boring and staid in London. But even the sh-tty diner and bars here are kind of exciting for me. Downtown is funky, West Village is beautiful with the cobbled streets, but I love going uptown because you then you go, "F-ck, I'm in New York!" You see all the skyscrapers.

  Theo James

  Beautiful, Kind, Boring

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