Lewis MumfordWhat 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 o… ▶372PhilosophyReading
Lewis MumfordThe artist does not illustrate science; ... [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist conver… ▶373Reading
Lewis MumfordThe 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. <… ▶374HumanityPoliticsReading
Lewis MumfordIt has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless.331Philosophy
Lewis MumfordOrder and creativity are complementary.354Hope
Lewis MumfordIron and coal dominated everywhere, from grey to black: the black boots, the black stove-pipe hat, the black coach or carriage, the black iron frame of the hearth, the black cooki… ▶321HumanityLove
Lewis MumfordWar is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.322Politics
Lewis MumfordLife 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 t… ▶344LifeReading
Lewis MumfordTraditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. ✨ Lewis Mumford (1940). Faith for living356HopeLifeTime
Lewis MumfordIn its revolt against congestion and sordor, a space-hungry generation has, I fear, developed eyes that are bigger than its stomach. ✨ Lewis Mumford (1964). The High Way and… ▶312Hope
Lewis MumfordA 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 fa… ▶369HumanityLifeTruth
Lewis MumfordThe very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and… ▶358HumanityHumor
Lewis MumfordA man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.304Thought
Lewis MumfordThe artist has a special task and duty... reminding people of their humanity and the promise of their creativity.359HumanityThought
Lewis MumfordBy his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed… ▶337HumanityLifeReading
Lewis MumfordEvery 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… ▶293HumanityPolitics
Lewis MumfordToday, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century. ✨ Technics and Civilization by Lewi… ▶338Humanity
Lewis MumfordRestore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.283Humanity
Lewis MumfordEvery generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. ✨ The Brown Decades ch. 1 (1931)317Hope
Lewis MumfordIn war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer. ✨ Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner (2010). Technics and Civilization, p.93, University of Chicago Press… ▶262Humanity
Lewis MumfordMisery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product. ✨ Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner (2010… ▶306DeathHumanity
Lewis MumfordThe right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city. ✨ Lewi… ▶3410Sadness
Lewis MumfordLife is an art we are required to practice without preparation, a score that we play at sight even before we have mastered our instruments.252Life
Lewis MumfordHe who touches the soil of Manhattan and the pavement of New York, touches, whenever he knows or not, Walt Whitman.296Politics
Lewis MumfordWar vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing. ✨ Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner (2010). Technics and Civilization, p.83, University of Chicago Press3310Humanity
Lewis MumfordOnly when love takes the lead will the earth, and life on earth, be safe again. And not until then. ✨ William L. Thomas, William L. Thomas (Jr.), Carl Ortwin Sauer, Lewis Mu… ▶286LifeLove
Lewis MumfordThe city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and mo… ▶286ReadingThoughtTruth
Lewis MumfordNew York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city. ✨ My Works and Days. Book by Lewis Mumford, 1979.254Reading
Lewis MumfordWhen vitality runs high, death takes men by surprise. But if they close their eyes to this possibility, what they gain in peace they lose in sensibility and significance.298Death
Lewis MumfordSport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to suc… ▶309DeathHumanityLife
