You can't have the finest buildings if they're not in focus. They become like nice cars parked on the street.

The Eisenhower Memorial competition and project have stirred a remarkable polemic, the center of which is not President Eisenhower or Washington, D.C. but Mr. Gehry and the values he promulgates.

If a dictator takes up my ideas, the resulting town will survive the political system that commissioned it and stand as a social good. Besides, modernism rather than classicism has dominated the architecture of totalitarian regimes of both the left and right.

As long as artists arbitrarily assume the right to decide what is or is not art, it is logical that the public will just as arbitrarily feel that they have the right to reject it.

Poverty will not be allowed to become a wall in the way of education.

My mother was a first-grade teacher, so I credit her with this lifelong intellectual curiosity I have, and love of reading and learning.

No matter how good a teacher is, if that teacher won't play as part of the team, you're better off without her.

You can learn from everyone, the president or the cleaner. You need teachers in life, but they're not always school teachers or professors. You learn from ordinary people. You learn from travel, from just walking down the street.