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Lewis Mumford Quotes

Historian

Historian and urban planner, known for his influential work on city planning and design, including the seminal work 'The City in History'.

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Famous Lewis Mumford Quotes

“The timelessness of art is its capacity to represent the transformation of endless becoming into being.”

Art Becoming Art Is Capacity Transformation Endless Immortality Timelessness

Author:Lewis Mumford

“When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day actually does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement.”

Doe Art Seems Artist Voice Doubt Painting Empty Statements Rational Abstract No Doubt Meaningless Coherence Abstract Painting Times Like These

Book:Art and Technics

Source: Art and Technics

“Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.”

Firsts Art Dream Moral Effects Expression Products Concerned Manifestation Unconscious Repression Orderly Morbid Jung Religion And Art

Author: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 the training...”

Life Art Life Is Practice Essentials Training Trials Preparation True Life

Author: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.”

Art Matter Form Culture Energy Social Cities Creativity Function Symbols Chiefs Reproduction City Life Cities At Night

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Life is an art we are required to practice without preparation, a score that we play at sight even before we have mastered our instruments.”

Art Play Life Is Practice Sight Instruments Preparation Score Happy Life

Author: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.”

Mind Art Facts Running Form Turns Nature Cities Conditions Conscious Works Of Art Urban Caves Framework Ants City Life Mackerel

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Because of their origin and purpose, the meanings of art are of a different order from the operational meanings of science and technics: they relate, not to external means and consequences, but to internal transformations, and unless it produce these internal transformations the work of art is either perfunctory or dead.”

Mean Art Different Purpose Order Produce Art Is Consequence Transformation Relate Internals Works Of Art Meaning Of Art

Author:Lewis Mumford

“To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.”

Art Opportunity Limits Machines Denial Curb Handicrafts

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Every work of art is an abstraction from time; it denies the reality of change and decay and death.”

Art Reality Art Is Deny Works Of Art Decay Abstraction

Book:Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s

Source: Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s

“Without leisure there can be neither art nor science nor fine conversation, nor any ceremonious performance of the offices of love and friendship.”

Art Fine Conversation Office Performances Leisure Love And Friendship

Book:My works and days: a personal chronicle

Source: My works and days: a personal chronicle

About the Author

Born: October 19, 1895
Died: January 26, 1990
Known for: Historian
Quotes: 141

Books & Sources

My works and days: a personal chronicleRelated source material

Technics and CivilizationRelated source material

Findings and keepings: analects for an autobiographyRelated source material

THE CITY IN HISTORYRelated source material

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its ProspectsRelated source material

The Culture of CitiesRelated source material

The myth of the machineRelated source material

Art and TechnicsRelated source material

Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930sRelated source material

The High Way and the CityRelated source material

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