Home / Authors / Lewis Mumford

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'.

Filter quotes by topic

All Men Humans Ifs Art Form People Cities Values Existence Doe Goal Mean Needs Ends Machines Order Purpose Self War World

Famous Lewis Mumford Quotes

“Toute transformation sociale (...) s'est fondée sur de nouvelles bases métaphysiques et idéologiques; ou plutôt, sur des émotions et intuitions plus profondes, dont l'expression rationalisée prend la forme du cosmos et de la nature de l'homme.”

Cities Society Lewis Mumford

Author:Lewis Mumford

“The great city is the best organ of memory man has yet created.”

Men Memories Cities Organs Great Cities

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Before modern man can gain control over the forces that now threaten his very existence, he must resume possession of himself. This sets the chief mission for the city of the future: that of creating a visible regional and civic structure, designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world, attached to images of human nature and love.”

Men World Humans Self Home Force Cities Existence Modern Human Nature Creating Gains And Love Structure Possession Deeper Missions Chiefs Visible Civics Resumes Modern Man Love And Nature

Author:Lewis Mumford

“When cities were first founded, an old Egyptian scribe tells us, the mission of the founder was to 'put gods in their shrines.' The task of the coming city is not essentially different: its mission is to put the highest concerns of man at the center of all his activities.”

Men Firsts Different Cities Activity Highest Concern Tasks Missions Founders Egyptian Shrines Scribes

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.”

Forget Cities Car Lovers Motor Motor Cars Lovers And Friends

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

“The cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live.”

People Life Inspirational Dream Cities Vision Mansions

Book:The Story of Utopias

Source: The Story of Utopias

“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

“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.”

Age Cities Building Access Vehicle

Book:The High Way and the City

Source: The High Way and the City

“New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city.”

Perfect Cities New York Models

Author:Lewis Mumford

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

Similar Authors

Erich FrommBrowse related quotes
Leo TolstoyBrowse related quotes
Gilbert K. ChestertonBrowse related quotes
Ayn RandBrowse related quotes
John RuskinBrowse related quotes
Friedrich NietzscheBrowse related quotes
Jose Ortega y GassetBrowse related quotes
Francis BaconBrowse related quotes
Immanuel KantBrowse related quotes
Arthur SchopenhauerBrowse related quotes