Lewis Mumford Quotes

Most popular Lewis Mumford Quotes

The self holds both a hell and a heaven. - Lewis Mumford quote.
The self holds both a hell and a heaven.

the self

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
— Lewis Mumford in Quote

cars

One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude. - Lewis Mumford quote.
One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude.
— Lewis Mumford The Urban Prospect: Essays

maturity

A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail. - Lewis Mumford quote.
A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.
— Lewis Mumford

courage

Space travel is an extravagant feat of technological exhibitionism. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Space travel is an extravagant feat of technological exhibitionism.
— Lewis Mumford

space exploration space

Utopias rest on the fallacy that perfection is a legitimate goal of human existence. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Utopias rest on the fallacy that perfection is a legitimate goal of human existence.
— Lewis Mumford Findings and Keepings. Analects for an Autobiography

utopia

The clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men. - Lewis Mumford quote.
The clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men.
— Lewis Mumford Technics and Civilization

time

Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.
— Lewis Mumford

Travel

The artist does not illustrate science but he frequently, however, responds to the same interests that a scientist does. - Lewis Mumford quote.
The artist does not illustrate science but he frequently, however, responds to the same interests that a scientist does.
— Lewis Mumford
One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence. - Lewis Mumford quote.
One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
— Lewis Mumford The Transformations of Man

intelligence

Chaos, if it does not harden into a pattern of disorder, may be more fruitful than a regularity too easily accepted and a success too easily achieved. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Chaos, if it does not harden into a pattern of disorder, may be more fruitful than a regularity too easily accepted and a success too easily achieved.
— Lewis Mumford Findings and Keepings. Analects for an Autobiography

chaos

The 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.
The 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
The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved; the willful cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence. - Lewis Mumford quote.
The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved; the willful cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence.

parenting

Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.
— Lewis Mumford The City in History

babies

An underlying urge to self-transformation possibly lies at the basis of all existence, finding expression in the process of growth, development, renewal, directed change, perfection. - Lewis Mumford quote.
An underlying urge to self-transformation possibly lies at the basis of all existence, finding expression in the process of growth, development, renewal, directed change, perfection.
— Lewis Mumford The Transformation of Man

transformation

Life 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.
Life 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.

life preparation

One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude: a city should not merely draw men together in many varied activities, but should permit each person to find, near at hand, moments of seclusion and peace. - Lewis Mumford quote.
One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude: a city should not merely draw men together in many varied activities, but should permit each person to find, near at hand, moments of seclusion and peace.
— Lewis Mumford The Urban Prospect: Essays

solitude

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. - Lewis Mumford quote.
What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself.

the world

The clock, moreover, is a piece of power-machinery whose 'product' is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. - Lewis Mumford quote.
The clock, moreover, is a piece of power-machinery whose 'product' is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.
— Lewis Mumford Technics and Civilization

time

Perhaps our age will be known to the future historian as the age of the bulldozer and the exterminator; and in many parts of the country the building of a highway has about the same result upon vegetation and human structures as the passage of a tornado or the blast of an atom bomb. - Lewis Mumford quote.
Perhaps our age will be known to the future historian as the age of the bulldozer and the exterminator; and in many parts of the country the building of a highway has about the same result upon vegetation and human structures as the passage of a tornado or the blast of an atom bomb.
— Lewis Mumford
Western 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.
Western 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

society technology