Every 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.
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.
LEWIS MUMFORDThe self holds both a hell and a heaven.
LEWIS MUMFORDHumor is our way of defending ourselves from life’s absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.
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 converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations.
LEWIS MUMFORDTo curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.
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 training…
LEWIS MUMFORDArchitecture is either the prophecy of an unformed society or the tomb of a finished one.
LEWIS MUMFORDThe 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 MUMFORDEvery work of art is an abstraction from time; it denies the reality of change and decay and death.
LEWIS MUMFORDSafety 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 MUMFORDNothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.
LEWIS MUMFORDIf we never met again in our lives I should feel that somehow the whole adventure of existence was justified by my having met you.
LEWIS MUMFORDGrowth and self-transformation cannot be delegated.
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.
LEWIS MUMFORDThe chief enemy of peace is the spirit of unreason itself: an inability to conceive alternatives, an unwillingness to reconsider old prejudices, to part with ideological obsessions, to entertain new ideas or to improve new plans.
LEWIS MUMFORDToday, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
LEWIS MUMFORD