Home / Quotes / Quote by Lewis Mumford

Quote by Lewis Mumford

“The Fujiyama of Architecture?at once a lofty mountain and a national shrine.”

Quote by Lewis Mumford

Author

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

You May Also Like

“(The processes are) doubly ruinous: they impoverish the earth by hastily removing, for the benefit of a few generations, the common resources which, once expended and dissipated, can never be restored; and second, in its technique, its habits, its processes, the paleotechnic period is equally inimical to the earth considered as a human habitat, by its destruction of the beauty of the landscape, its ruining of streams, its pollution of drinking water, its filling the air with a finely divided carboniferous deposit, which chokes both life and vegetation.”

“Mechanical instruments, potentially a vehicle of rational human purposes, are scarcely a blessing when they enable the gossip of the village idiot and the deeds of the thug to be broadcast to a million people each day.”

People Humans Purpose Millions Blessing Instruments Deeds Rational Idiot Each Day Gossip Village Vehicle Thug Village Idiots

Book:Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization

“The physical lot of surviving workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality.”

Source: The Pentagon of Power

“What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers?”

Ifs Humans Left Materials Tasks Goods Performers Waking Buttons Degrading Belittle Waking Life

Book:The myth of the machine

Source: The myth of the machine

“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

“If there are favourable habitats and favorable forms of association for animalsand plants, as ecology demonstrates, why not for men? If each particular natural environment has has its own balance; is there not perhaps an equivalent of this in culture?”

Ifs Men Form Culture Natural Environment Particular Balance Plant Why Not Association Ecology Natural Environment Habitat

Author:Lewis Mumford

“The life-efficiency and adaptability of the computer must be questioned. Its judicious use depends upon the availability of its human employers quite literally to keep their own heads, not merely to scrutinize the programming but to reserve for themselves the right of ultimate decision. No automatic system can be intelligently run byautomatonsor by people who dare not assert human intuition, human autonomy, human purpose.”

People Humans Use Running Purpose Decision Depends Computer Ultimate Dare Intuition Programming Reserves Efficiency Autonomy Employers Adaptability Availability Scrutinize

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, the industries that are favored by such expansion must, to maintain their output, be devoted to goods that are readily consumable either by their nature, or because they are so shoddily fabricated that they must soon be replaced. By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.”

Mean Ends Turns Goal Wealth Economy Fashion Industry Built Machines Productions Scales Goods Leisure Devoted Consumption Replaced Expansion Output Obsolescence

Book:THE CITY IN HISTORY

Source: THE CITY IN HISTORY

“The chief ability of an executive should be his ability to recognize ability.”

Should Ability Chiefs Executives

Author:Evan Esar

“You can't judge the ability of a doctor by the amount of praise the undertakers give him.”

Giving Ability Judging Amount Doctors Praise Undertaker

Author:Evan Esar