01UndatedWestern society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
02UndatedThis metropolitan world, then, is a world where flesh and blood is less real than paper and ink and celluloid. It is a world where the great masses of people, unable to have direct contact with more satisfying means of living, take life vicariously, as readers, spectators, passive observers: a world where people watch shadow-heroes and heroines in order to forget their own clumsiness or coldness in love, where they behold brutal men crushing out life in a strike riot, a wrestling ring or a military assault, while they lack the nerve even to resist the petty tyranny of their immediate boss: where they hysterically cheer the flag of their political state, and in their neighborhood, their trades union, their church, fail to perform the most elementary duties of citizenship.Living thus, year in and year out, at second hand, remote from the nature that is outside them and no less remote from the nature within, handicapped as lovers and as parents by the routine of the metropolis and by the constant specter of insecurity and death that hovers over its bold towers and shadowed streets - living thus the mass of inhabitants remain in a state bordering on the pathological. They become victims of phantasms, fears, obsessions, which bind them to ancestral patterns of behavior.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
04UndatedThe artist has a special task and duty the task of reminding men of their humanity and the promise of their creativity.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
05UndatedLife is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation and without being allowed the preliminary trials the failures and botches that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
06UndatedThe last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved the willing cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
07UndatedEvery generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
08UndatedOne of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
09UndatedLife is the only art that we are required to practise without preparation and without being allowed the preliminary trials the failures and botches that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
10UndatedHumor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
11UndatedA certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
12UndatedHowever far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson; nothing is impossible.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
13UndatedThe earth is the Lord's fullness thereof: this is no longer a hollow dictum of religion, but a directive for economic action toward human brotherhood.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
14UndatedA day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
16UndatedRestore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
17UndatedTo curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
18UndatedThe way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.Lewis Mumford / quote ↗
