Lewis Mumford – 15 Quotes

15 Quotes by Lewis Mumford

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

A 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

Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.

– Lewis Mumford

A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.

– Lewis Mumford

Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.

– Lewis Mumford

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

– Lewis Mumford

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.

– Lewis Mumford

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

– Lewis Mumford

The 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

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.

– Lewis Mumford

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

The 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

However 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

The artist does not illustrate science (but) he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does.

– Lewis Mumford

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

– Lewis Mumford