Lewis Mumford Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Lewis Mumford quotes, Lewis Mumford sayings, and Lewis Mumford proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence. Lewis Mumford
Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. Lewis Mumford
The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind. Lewis Mumford
The ultimate gift of conscious life is a sense of the mystery that encompasses it. Lewis Mumford
Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. Lewis Mumford
Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. Lewis Mumford
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind. Lewis Mumford
The convenience of timekeeping is greatly overrated; and the people who practice it so faithfully that they lose the capacity for appreciating the fixed and the static and the spatially related experiences cut themselves off from a good part of reality. Lewis Mumford
It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless. Lewis Mumford
To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity. Lewis Mumford
The timelessness of art is its capacity to represent the transformation of endless becoming into being. Lewis Mumford
Utopias rest on the fallacy that perfection is a legitimate goal of human existence. Lewis Mumford
Every generation revolt against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. Lewis Mumford
The rational conquest of the environment by means of machines is fundamentally the work of a woodman...Stone is a mass: but wood, by its nature, is already a structure. Lewis Mumford
Wood, then, was the most various, the most shapeable, the most serviceable of all the materials that man has employed in his technology: evan stone was at best an accessory. Lewis Mumford
Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities. 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
The city, with language...remains man's greatest work of art, a place where 'time becomes visible,' and 'mind takes form.' Lewis Mumford
By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed. Lewis Mumford
I'm a pessimist about probabilities, I'm an optimist about possibilities. Lewis Mumford