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Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future.

Lewis Mumford

New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Cities Country People Perfect
Henceforward, I shout to the heavens, I shall deliver no more lectures on behalf of good causes: I am the good cause that denies the need for such lectures. Avaunt, importuning world! Back to my cell.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Cell Heaven Needs
In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Army Peace War
Architecture is either the prophecy of an unformed society or the tomb of a finished one.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Architecture Prophecy Tomb
Safety razors make it hard to grow beards in America: America would be a better place if there were a few bearded, savage, terrible old men.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Country Men People Safety
Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Birth Growth Immortality
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Flower Funny Witty
Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Aggravation Life Sacred
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

Creativity Men Order
The 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 converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Artist Expression Science
For most Americans, progress means accepting what is new because it is new, and discarding what is old because it is old.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Accepting Mean Progress
Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Focus Past Provoking Thought
Every work of art is an abstraction from time; it denies the reality of change and decay and death.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Art Decay Reality
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

Government Real Thinking
The self holds both a hell and a heaven.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Heaven Hell Self
To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.
LEWIS MUMFORD

Art Machines Opportunity

Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future.

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Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future.

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Popular Authors

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