“We must develop some kind of consistent theory for relating one building to another and to the environment. The Ecole des Beaux Arts did have such a theory. I’m not proposing that we bring it back, but in the nineteenth century when the Ecole des Beaux Arts was in full swing, they did have a comprehensible theory in regard to the relationship of one building to another—as did earlier periods of architecture.
The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair has been damned for a great many years, but it is time we reassessed it. It was a comprehensible whole, not a collection of individual buildings. We may not like the individual buildings, but they read as a group. The spaces between them were well thought-out; some buildings served as anchors and dominated less important ones by their size, placement, proportions and relationship to the ground, the sky and their neighbors.”
Rudolph, Paul Marvin, 1918-1997. "The Form of the City." Canadian Architect 4 (March 1959): 49-67.

“Hong Kong is an entirely different project. It is interesting in that it's being built on somebody else's foundations, and, therefore, the planning of Hong Kong is determined by foundations already poured in place. The owners changed because of the relationship with Red China and everybody got scared. They are totally commercial office buildings, unlike Jakarta, and therefore the ground rules are very different. Also there are multiplicities of owners, unlike Dharmala, which is a corporate headquarters. It is like home to them, and, therefore, they take great interest in it. It's not that they don't take an interest in the Hong Kong projects. It's just that the ground rules are very, very different, about what you can and cannot do. The Hong Kong project is two towers and I wanted to connect them with interlacing bridges. I don't know whether you've ever seen any of those sketches or not. They wouldn't let me do that. The reason for that was the prime developer/owner said that he made a substantial part of his fortune in textiles in Indonesia as a matter of fact. He said all of his factories had interconnecting bridges that take material and people from one part to the other. He didn't want these office buildings to look like that. I was really disappointed. I couldn't get around that argument though I did try.”
Interview with Robert Bruegmann, 1986

“We must search for the innate possibilities of a given site or climate and the regional characteristics of vernacular building. Every city has its own unique scale, proportions and materials. Traditional methods of building quite often are still the most economical; one doesn’t always have to put up a curtain wall.
Mendelsohn [Erich, 1887-1953] in his hospital [Maimonides Hospital, 1946-1950] in San Francisco used a series of balconies that echo one of the city’s common denominators, i.e., the bay window. The shutter in New Orleans tends to have been used in the early French architecture, the Greek revival architecture and now in modern architecture. If one finds in a city that kind of common denominator, one should try to use it to make the new more sympathetic with the old; but such elements must be used in one’s own way.”
Rudolph, Paul Marvin, 1918-1997. "The Form of the City." Canadian Architect 4 (March 1959): 49-67.

"Years ago I designed a house in Alabama based on Greek Revival architecture of the South. I was brought up in that area, I knew it well, and my first memories of architecture were the Greek Revival buildings of the area and the sharecroppers' cottages, both of which intrigued me no end. Both seemed to have a complete validity - in other words, vernacular and so-called high architecture. This house in Alabama has double-story-high porches on four sides, over-scaled columns not based on structural need but on character - yet it's a modern house. It doesn't ever deal with Greek columns, capitals and bases, cornices, nor the use of symbols, but the image of the south is very clear. The design comes from the climate, the environment, how people live, what was suitable. It gets very hot in summer; therefore, the enclosure is put in man-made shade, which lowers the energy consumption of the air-conditioning system. It has many symmetrical parts, but the circulation and spatial organization is asymmetrical. If you know the location of this house it is clear that it really comes from the Greek Revival architecture of the South, but it certainly doesn't have any Greek Revival symbols, although its image is similar because it tries to solve some of the same problems."
Davern, Jeanne M. "A Conversation with Paul Rudolph." Architectural Record 170 (March 1982): 90-97.

“Architectural educations’ first concern is to perpetuate a climate where the student is acutely and perceptively and incessantly aware of the creative process. We must understand that after all the building committees, the conflicting interests, the budget considerations and the limitations of his fellow man have been taken into consideration that his responsibility has just begun. He must understand that in the exhilarating, awesome moment when he takes pencil in hand, and holds it poised above a white sheet of paper, that he has suspended there all that has gone before and all that will ever be. The creative act is all that matters.”
Rudolph, Paul Marvin, 1918-1997. "The Architectural Education in U.S.A." Zodiac 8 (1961): 162-165.