The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.
Louis KahnRead
All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the interconnectedness of all things in nature, highlighting that everything is made of light and shadows are a result of this essence.
Louis Kahn's quote delves into the philosophy of existence, suggesting that all material forms, including nature and humanity, are fundamentally composed of light. It implies that what we perceive as solid or material is merely a manifestation of light, and the shadows that these forms cast are intrinsic to their existence, reflecting a deeper unity and relationship between the seen and unseen aspects of reality.
Themes
LightNatureMaterialExistencePhilosophyInterconnectedness
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on environmentalism, one might use this quote to emphasize our bond with nature.
More from Louis Kahn
All quotes →I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art.
Louis KahnRead
Greek architecture taught me that the column is where the light is not, and the space between is where the light is. It is a matter of no-light, light, no-light, light. A column and a column brings light between them. To make a column which grows out of the wall and which makes its own rhythm of no-light, light, no-light, light: that is the marvel of the artist.
Louis KahnRead
The room is the beginning of architecture.
Louis KahnRead
Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.
Louis KahnRead
The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.
Louis KahnRead
Similar quotes
I've always taken that as my guiding principle and the rest is just set dressing. You can have dragons in it, or aliens and starships, or a western about a gunslinger, or even literary fiction, and ultimately you're still writing about the human heart in conflict with itself.
George R. R. MartinRead
Whatever the reason, for most of the present century, the literature and publicity of the old established [animal welfare] groups made a significant contribution to the prevailing attitude that dogs and cats and wild animals need protection, but other animals do not. Thus people came to think of "animal welfare" as something for kindly ladies who are dotty about cats, and not as a cause founded on basic principles of justice and morality.
Peter SingerRead
The basis of drama is... the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable.
David MametRead
The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within — and make the point: This can be done.
Abraham MaslowRead
The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all.
Isaac AsimovRead
The Sunni militants that make up ISIS are not the underlying problem in Syria and Iraq, but rather they are a symptom of other deeper problems.
Peter BergenRead