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Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford Quotes

Historian

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Famous Lewis Mumford Quotes

“Organic planning does not begin with a preconceived goal; it moves from need to need, from opportunity to opportunity, in a series of adaptations that themselves become increasingly coherent and purposeful, so that they generate a complex final design, hardly less unified than a pre-formed geometric pattern.”

NeedsDoeMovingOpportunityGoalDesignSeriesComplexesFinalsPatternsPlanningAdaptationUnifiedGeometric
Book:THE CITY IN HISTORY
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“Stieglitz conceived, though he never carried out, a series of photographs of the heads of stallions and mares, of bulls and cows, in the act of mating, hoping to catch in the brute an essential quality that would symbolize the probably unattainable photograph of a passionate human mating.”

HumansQualityEssentialsSeriesPhotographPassionateCowsBullsBrutesUnattainableMatingStallionsMares
Book:Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s
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“Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.”

NeedsHas BeensOrderSportsDifficultExistenceSkillsMassAddPopulationExcitementMotivational SportsHeroismParticipationFeatsVicarious
Author:Lewis Mumford
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“Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.”

HumansTechnologyEnvironmentDutyConsequenceWesternProsperityAcceptedSurrenderInventionPrimitiveTechnologicalArbitraryImperativesNoveltyTabooSave Mother EarthWestern Society
Author:Lewis Mumford
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“Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.”

FatherFamilyGenerationsGrandmotherGrandfatherGrandparentGrandchildrenMy GrandmotherMy GrandfatherRevoltThis GenerationGrandpaChildren And GrandchildrenMy GrandchildrenGrandkidsParents And GrandparentsGeneration GapGrandparents DayGreat GrandfatherGrandchildren And GrandparentsGrandparents From GrandchildrenMother And GrandmotherGreat GrandparentsFunny GrandparentGrandmother And GrandchildrenMother GrandmotherFunny GrandmotherHappy Mothers Day GrandmotherNana's And GrandchildrenFathers And GrandfathersGreat Grandpa
Author:Lewis Mumford
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“Iron and coal dominated everywhere, from grey to black: the black boots, the black stove-pipe hat, the black coach or carriage, the black iron frame of the hearth, the black cooking pots and pans and stoves. Was it a mourning? Was it protective coloration? Was it mere depression of the senses? No matter what the original color of the paleotechnic milieu might be it was soon reduced by reason of the soot and cinders that accompanied its activities, to its characteristic tones, grey, dirty-brown, black.”

HeartMatterReasonMightScienceBlackColorActivityOriginalsNo Matter WhatCookingMereCoachesSensesDirtyToneCharacteristicsMourningBrownHatsIronPotBootsGreyCoalProtectivePipeCarriagesStovesMilieuPots And PansBlack Boots
Book:Technics and Civilization
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