While I dare say that most architects have not actually read John Ruskin's 19th Century book of architectural criticism, The Stones of Venice, but they all know his name. This quote may have seemed quaint during recent decades of throwaway buildings, but it may be coming back into fashion in a more environmental age:
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that in a is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that people will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our parents did for us.'"
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that in a is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that people will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our parents did for us.'"