The buildings we create inspire us, reflect who we are as a society, and stand tall against everything we throw at them. They protect us against the elements, hold us up, and we admire their beauty and strength. When you work in the construction industry, you see evidence of your job every day, from the jobsite you worked on last week to the project you’re hoping to get next month. You’re out there, creating something, every single day.
Here are nine quotes on construction to inspire you and two more to make you laugh.
“We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.” – Winston Churchill, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
“A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured.” – Louis Kahn, American architect
“To me, a building—if it’s beautiful—is the love of one man, he’s made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.” – Martha Graham, American dancer
“You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect
“I get just as excited about building a birdhouse as when providing strategic counsel to a client.” – Robert L. Peters, Canadian graphic designer
“There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them.” — Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet
“It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.” David Allan Coe, American singer and songwriter
“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” – Frank Gehry, Canadian-American architect
“We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.” – John Ruskin, English writer and philosopher
“If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it’s a failure.” – Douglas Coupland, Canadian novelist
“People just naturally assume that dogs would be incapable of working together on some sort of construction project. But what about just a big field full of holes.” – Jack Handey, American humorist
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