The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture. – Lewis Mumford
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 Mumford
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
We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end. – Lewis Mumford
The earth is the Lords fullness thereof: this is no longer a hollow dictum of religion, but a directive for economic action toward human brotherhood. – Lewis Mumford
War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society. – 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
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
One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence. – Lewis Mumford
Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. – 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
A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail. – Lewis Mumford
Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends. – 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
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 society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility. – 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
