The Sovereignty of the Individual

The following is an excerpt from a speech by Frank Lloyd Wright. I do not know the exact occasion of the speech.

Culture and education are two very different things. Culture is the developing of the idea by way of itself, and education is informing, teaching, telling the individual. It is only by a natural growth that you can attain culture, but you can return from school conditioned instead of enlightened. Education today doesn't mean culture. In fact, Lewis Sullivan once stated that a highbrow was a man educated far baeyond his capacity. Education today is not even on speaking terms with what we should call culture. We need culture more and education less. We acquire it through organic architecture, a new sense of what constitutes humanity under harmonious conditions. There is a tremendous reflection.

When you reach the higher spiritual realm that we call art you begin to look for things that are creative rather than just repetitive. I think there is where you are in the realm of culture, rather than education.

Culture is not for the crowd. Culture is an individual thing. And that is what our forefathers struck when they declared that the individual is sovereign. The sovereignty of the individual. That means a certain aloneness to begin with. A certain rejection of the common man as common, but insisting on his privilege to the uncommon. And that exists in every human soul today and this is the country that declares it.