A Quote by Philip Johnson

I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

Philip Johnson

Quote Topics

Any Deny History Improve Like Make Mold New Onto Point Riches Something Something New Thing Tradition Twist

Quote Author

Philip Johnson
American - Architect
July 8, 1906 - January 25, 2005

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

Masaharu Morimoto

Theatre artists are essentially sort of charlatans and thieves, I mean that's the tradition that we come from, so I have absolutely no, I make no bones about the fact that I steal from here and I take from there, and we all do it, that's perfectly all right, that's the nothing, there's nothing new in the world, there's nothing actually new in the way that you do something, but the point is is how do you take something and use it to articulate what is essentially a core of any given theatrical production.

Simon McBurney

I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

Henry Ford

The one good thing about a movie and music and stuff like that: Sometimes it's a counterpoint between the movie and the music itself, the difference and the tension they build together. I think that could be something that helped with me, because when I write songs now, I write lyrics a bit like that. I try to make the music be an interesting twist on the lyrics and help tell the story in a - I don't tell crazy stories, you know? So a lot of times, the twist is in the subtleties. The twist is in the way the story's told.

Patrick Watson

This is a good thing, mixing culture to make something new, something no one has ever seen. This is kind of a new history.

Hiroyuki Sanada

You see it in the many bouncing clothes that are not just pleats. To make them, two or three people twist them - twist, twist, twist the pleats, sometimes three or four persons twist together and put it all in the machine to cook it.

Issey Miyake

I believe history and tradition is something solid and something we can rest on. I am not crazy about putting new spices in chocolate.

Jacques Torres

I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do...something that references tradition, but is still new.

Georg Baselitz

I didn't have to fit into a mold. You make the mold. People can smell a rat. If you're doing thing for marketing and for a record label, you're going to set yourself up to be called a phony. As long as it's true to you, you do it.

Anthony Evans

For people who make inventions, whether they make scientific inventions or artistic inventions, they're driven by pretty much the same thing. It's some mistrust from somebody saying it couldn't be a certain way, and overthrowing that. But that can happen at any point in history, at any time you come along. It doesn't get better or worse because you're born in this era or that era - I think it's more individualistic. It comes from within, you know, it's an internal thing.

Paula Scher

He was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be - a student of history; and like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

A. J. P. Taylor

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tradition is not something a man can learn; not a thread he picks up when he feels like it; any more than a man can choose his own ancestors. Someone lacking a tradition who would like to have one is like a man unhappily in love.

Talal Asad

I appreciate the history and tradition of Notre Dame. I also appreciate the history and tradition of Oklahoma, and I have been part of building that tradition here.

Bob Stoops

I like working together with different producers. Of course the process is different, producing a new track is like creating something all new, while reworking an already existing track is more like giving your own twist to the record.