'It is an architect's business to understand all the styles and to be prejudiced in favour of none.' (Thomas Hopper, 1837)

'Tradition is the alphabet, form is the language, architecture is the poem.' (Richard England)

'Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power and pleasure.' (John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Achitecture, 1849)

'Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.' (Ernest Dinmet, What We Live By, 1932)

'Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.' (Thomas Fuller 1608-1661)

'If, for the rest, it be asked us to specify what kind of amount of art, style,or other interest in a building, makes it worth protecting, we answer, anything which can be looked on as artistic, picturesque, historical, antique, or substantial: any work, inshort, over which educated, artistic people would think it worth while to argue at all.' (William Morris, SPAB Manifesto 1877)

'When we build, let us think that we build forever.' (John Ruskin, 1819-1900)

'We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us' (Sir Winston Churchill, The Times, 1960)

'We should make the old serve the new' (Mao Tse Tung)

'Having to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions or human types, is one of our greatest problems and the one we bother about the least.' (John Galsworthy, Over the River)