The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity. Lewis Mumford More Quotes by Lewis Mumford More Quotes From Lewis Mumford The convenience of timekeeping is greatly overrated; and the people who practice it so faithfully that they lose the capacity for appreciating the fixed and the static and the spatially related experiences cut themselves off from a good part of reality. Lewis Mumford cutting time reality What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers? Lewis Mumford waking-life buttons tasks The physical lot of surviving workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality. Lewis Mumford emotional children school The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression. Lewis Mumford cacophony progress wonder I'm a pessimist about probabilities, I'm an optimist about possibilities. Lewis Mumford pessimist possibility optimism We must give as much weight to the arousal of the emotions and to the expression of moral and esthetic values as we now give to science, to invention, to practical organization. One without the other is impotent. Lewis Mumford organization expression giving Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal. Lewis Mumford immortality birth growth The timelessness of art is its capacity to represent the transformation of endless becoming into being. Lewis Mumford transformation becoming art Idealism and science continue to function in separate compartments; and yet 'the happiness of man on earth' depends upon their combination. Lewis Mumford combination earth men While a great many other ideas and measures are of prime importance for the good life of the community, that which concerns its architectural expression is the notion of the community as limited in numbers, and in area... To express these relations clearly, to embody them in buildings and roads and gardens in which each individual structure will be subordinated to the whole - this is the end of community planning. Lewis Mumford good-life garden expression Don't take the will for the deed; get the deed. Lewis Mumford deeds ambition advice Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food. Lewis Mumford revenge spiritual meaningful Iron 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 cooking pots and pans and stoves. Was it a mourning? Was it protective coloration? Was it mere depression of the senses? No matter what the original color of the paleotechnic milieu might be it was soon reduced by reason of the soot and cinders that accompanied its activities, to its characteristic tones, grey, dirty-brown, black. Lewis Mumford heart science dirty Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence. Lewis Mumford citizenship groups democracy 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 training. Lewis Mumford training practice life art
