War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing. Lewis Mumford More Quotes by Lewis Mumford More Quotes From Lewis Mumford By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale. Lewis Mumford leisuremachinesfashion The artist has a special task and duty... reminding people of their humanity and the promise of their creativity. Lewis Mumford carpe-diemcreativityartist Before modern man can gain control over the forces that now threaten his very existence, he must resume possession of himself. This sets the chief mission for the city of the future: that of creating a visible regional and civic structure, designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world, attached to images of human nature and love. Lewis Mumford creatinghomemen When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day actually does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement. Lewis Mumford times-like-thesevoiceart Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. Lewis Mumford pessimisttraditionpast Life is an art we are required to practice without preparation, a score that we play at sight even before we have mastered our instruments. Lewis Mumford sighthappy-lifeart Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. Lewis Mumford grandmotherfamilyfather Virtue is not a chemical product...it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key. Lewis Mumford keysliteraturemean I would die happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, "This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!" Lewis Mumford tombstonepersonalitymen The fact that order and creativity are complementary has been basic to man's cultural development; for he has to internalize order to be able to give external form to his creativity. Lewis Mumford creativitymenorder In our entrancement with the motorcar, we have forgotten how much more efficient and how much more flexible the footwalker is. Lewis Mumford flexibleefficientforgotten Every transformation of humanity has rested upon deep stirrings and intuitions, whose rationalized expression takes the form of a new picture of the cosmos and the nature of the human. Lewis Mumford intuitionexpressionhumanity Only when love takes the lead will the earth, and life on earth, be safe again. And not until then. Lewis Mumford safeearth New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city. Lewis Mumford citiesnew-yorkperfect Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Lewis Mumford expansiongoalmean Organic planning does not begin with a preconceived goal; it moves from need to need, from opportunity to opportunity, in a series of adaptations that themselves become increasingly coherent and purposeful, so that they generate a complex final design, hardly less unified than a pre-formed geometric pattern. Lewis Mumford goalopportunitymoving Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created."We effectively became "time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers" with the invention of the clock." Lewis Mumford clockpiecesmen (The processes are) doubly ruinous: they impoverish the earth by hastily removing, for the benefit of a few generations, the common resources which, once expended and dissipated, can never be restored; and second, in its technique, its habits, its processes, the paleotechnic period is equally inimical to the earth considered as a human habitat, by its destruction of the beauty of the landscape, its ruining of streams, its pollution of drinking water, its filling the air with a finely divided carboniferous deposit, which chokes both life and vegetation. Lewis Mumford drinkingairwater 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 cuttinginspirationchildren In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage. Lewis Mumford squirrelsrealnames
