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Metropolis Quotes

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Metropolis Quotes

“With an evermore increase of industrialisation machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.”

HumansHumanityEconomySocietyHumanCapitalismMachinesAutonomyMarxismModernitySystemCyberpunkMachineMetropolisIndustrialisationNeuromancerFritz LangMachine AutonomySystem Autonomy
Book:Fritz Lang: Filmbilder Vorbilder
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“But this city is a world of its own, a country within a country. People are used to taking the old and making it news; and used, too, to taking the new and making it old. Every glass of water from its taps, it is said, has passed six times through the kidneys of another, and every scrap of its land has been trodden on, fought over, dug up and broken down for centuries.”

EnglandLondonDirtyBritainCityCapitalMetropolisUk
Book:Hearts and Minds
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“Bombay, you will be told, is the only city India has, in the sense that the word city is understood in the West. Other Indian metropolises like Calcutta, Madras and Delhi are like oversized villages. It is true that Bombay has many more high-rise buildings than any other Indian city: when you approach it by the sea it looks like a miniature New York. It has other things to justify its city status: it is congested, it has traffic jams at all hours of the day, it is highly polluted and many parts of it stink.”

CitiesIndiaIndian AuthorsCity LifeBombayMetropolisMumbaiKhushwant Singh
Book:Truth, Love & A Little Malice
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“[Soho] is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds.”

LondonAmbiguityCity LifeMetropolisSoho
Book:Unnatural Causes
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“It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. [...] But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. [...] It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world.”

LifeCitiesLondonCity LifeMetropolis
Book:The Complete Notebooks of Henry James: The Authoritative and Definitive Edition
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“It is the glory of London that it is always ending and beginning anew, and that a visitor, with a good eye and indefatigable feet, will find in her travels all the Londons she has ever met in the pages of books, one atop the other, like the strata of the Earth.”

LifeCitiesHistoryLondonRenewalCity LifeMetropolisCircle Of LifeFictional LondonLiterary London
Book:Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City
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“Sometimes work was just what you clocked into while you were falling in love. Sometimes sex was just something you did while you weren't at work. Drugs were something you did sometimes when you couldn't deal with one of those things, or with yourself. The City was so expensive and so grueling sometimes that it was easy to be unsure why you were there. Many were there to make money, money that could largely only be made there, in the long spiny arms of industries that could never grow anywhere else or anywhere smaller. Some people just liked it, its loudness and crowdedness and surprises. Some started there for a reason and then couldn't imagine being anywhere else, but maybe lost track of that reason along the way. Some people had a plan. Some were just chancing it. Either way the months flew by, and over the years you came up with something or you came up with not much.”

LoveLifeSexWorkCitiesPlansGoalsDrugsCity LifeMetropolisUrban LifeMetropolisesUrban Fabric
Book:Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City
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“ভ্রমর বিহীন কিছু ফুল ভ্রমর বিহীন কিছু ফুল এখানেই ঝরেছিল রক্তের ভেতর আম্র রাজহাঁস স্বর্ণডিম্বপ্রসু রাজহাঁস এখানেই কাটা হয়েছিল- সুস্বাদু মাংসের গন্ধে পরিতৃপ্ত উনুন দেখেছিল আকাশের অন্তহীন উনুনের তাপে শীতের কার্ডিগান খুলে এক বালিকা দুই বুকে তার রেখেছে উত্তাপ তার পিকনিক পার্ডেনের কাছেই কাটা হয়েছিল রাজহাঁস আমার রক্তের ফুলগুলি ভ্রমর বিহীন ঝরে পড়েছিল সেদিন রাজহাঁস ও ফুল বিষয়ক কবিতাগুলি আমি মাংস রাঁধার জন্যই দিয়েছিলুম উনুনে সাধ ছিল সে বালিকা পাবে বটে মাংসের সুঘ্রাণ কারণ অনেক মাংস ঘেটেছি আমি আমি দেখেছি মাংসের বায়ু পিত্ত কফ দেখেছি এমনকি সত্ত্ব তম রজ এই তিনপ্রকার গুনও থাকে মাংসাশী শরীরে তবু আমি এক জরায়ু থেকে বেরিয়ে আরেক জঠরে খুঁজেছিলাম আমার সন্তানের মুখ- আমার মৃত পিতার শরীর দেখে আমি বুঝেছিলুম বেঁচে থাকা জরুরী আমার মা-র হতাশা দেখে বুঝেছিলাম মৃত্যুও দরকারী হতে পারে জীবনের তবু সকল জ্ঞানের পর কাঁটা ও কম্পাস বিহীন- আমি আমি এক বালিকার জন্যে কেটে ফেলি আমার রাজহাঁস কবিতার খাতা ঠেলে দিয়েছিলুম উনুনে এক বালিকার জন্যে আমার চৈতন্যের ক্রন্দন আমি দেখে ফেলি বীর্যরসে- তৎক্ষনাৎ আর দেরী নয় বলে আমি জড়িয়ে ধরি অশোক-ষষ্ঠীর দিন সেই বালিকার শরীর রক্তের ভেতর ভ্রমর বিহীন ফুলগুলি ফুটে ওঠে”

LoveLifeDeathPhilosophy QuotesSanityMetropolis
Book:নষ্ট আত্মার টেলিভিসন
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“এই একাকীত্বই মহান এটা যদি তুমি তোমার হাতে থাকা ঘড়ির কাঁটার গতিবিধির সাথে ধীরে ধীরে দ্যাখো। ভালোবাসার কারণে আজ মানুষ খুবই ক্লান্ত বিকলাঙ্গ মানুষ একে অপরের নিকট শুভ নয় তাঁরা একে অপরের প্রতি ধনীরা ধনীর সন্নিকটে শুভ নয় এক ফকিন্নি অপর ফকিন্নি প্রতিও। আমরা ভয়ে আছি। আমাদের শিক্ষাব্যবস্থা আমাদের বলে; নিশ্চই আমরা সবাই একদা বড় মাপের বিজয়ী গাধা হতে পারব। এটা আমাদের কখনো জ্ঞাত করেনি কোন বস্তিজীবন বা কোন আত্মহত্যা সম্বন্ধে। অথবা একটা নির্জনস্থানে একাকী পরে থাকা কোন সন্ত্রাসী অস্পৃষ্ট অদৃষ্ট কোন উদ্ভিদ ভরা জলার সম্বন্ধে।”

LifePoetryAngerCityMetropolisPolemics
Book:Bukowski on Bukowski
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“The night of 'the look' on the avenue de New York. People drift along not seeing each other. It is like a vernissage without paintings. It could be the Exterminating Angel or 'Pure Festival' - pure in the sense of Virilio's 'pure war' - on screen. The only hot spot is the trap-door through which the champagne arrives. Peculiar feverish, power-mad tribe, dissolute yet oversensitive, metaphysics with infrared lighting. Nothing in their gaze, everything in the way they look, nothing in their eyes, everything in the decibel level. The gentle air of the Piazza Navona in December, with the acetylene lamps and the reflections of the turquoise water on the Bernini horses. A beauty that is purely Roman. In the Campo dei Fiori someone has laid fresh flowers at the foot of the statue of Giordano Bruno, burned for heresy on this very spot four centuries ago. The touching loyalty of the Roman people; where else would you see such a thing? The hot December multitudes spill out into the street: Christmas is almost as mild here as in Brazil. The city is only beautiful when the crowd invades it. So many people on the streets always gives the impression of a silent uprising. Everyone walks along in the luminous muted buzz of voices and the narrow streets. Everything is transformed into a silent opera, a theatrical geometry. Everything sings in this part of the city.”

TechnologyMetropolisProvinceAnachronismsPure FestivalPure WarVirilio
Book:Cool memories
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“Big buildings were always the main targets of his megapolisomancy—he claimed they were the chief concentration-points for city-stuff that poisoned great metropolises or weighed them down intolerably. Ten years earlier, according to one story, he had joined other Parisians in opposing the erection of the Eiffel Tower. A professor of mathematics had calculated that the structure would collapse when it reached the height of seven hundred feet, but Thibaut had simply claimed that all that naked steel looking down upon the city from the sky would drive Paris mad.”

MetropolisBuildingsMegapolisomancy
Book:Dark Ladies: Conjure Wife/Our Lady of Darkness
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“Dystopolis by Stewart Stafford Phantasmagoria in the mirror, A bribed witness is my whore, Plastic surgery getting dearer, I must go work out my core. Swallowing carcinogen smog, Painful panting, freezing air, Neutered day of the old dog, On my hamster wheel there. Crawled down to the plague pits, Crab-like, they crept up on me, Sour milk séance of the obits, Drowning in a mausoleum sea. Mild convulsions on a night cold, Cram triage bodies in my bed, Fights reheated getting so old, Awake to find myself dead. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”

FutureDystopianUrban FantasySurrealDystopiaSocial CommentaryFuturisticDystopian FictionMetropolisNeologism
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“At a moderate calculation, among a million of persons inhabiting the metropolis, there are, at least, twenty-five thousand children who attend these schools, and cost their parents as many pounds sterling, per annum.”

ChildrenPersonsSchoolParentMillionsFiveCostThousandTwentiesPoundsModeratesCalculationsTwenty FiveMetropolisSterling
Book:Improvements in Education, as it Respects the Industrious Classes of the Community: Containing Among Other Important Particulars, an Account of the Institution for the Education of One Thousand Poor Children, Borough Road Southwark; and of the New System of Education on which it is Conducted
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“The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.”

GivingMindBodySpaceViewsRaceCitiesAirBirthBreathingMind And BodyConfinedDegeneratesHurtfulStagnantMetropolisBreathing Space
Book:The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt
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“The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis.”

LittlesBookFormUnderstandingReligiousWrittenFieldsSceneElementsMajorsUniqueAspectAccountsTablesPhotographLandscapeContributionMapsLastingChicagoUrbanSurveysOverlookedMetropolisAmerican Landscape
Author:Peter Haggett
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“When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.”

WellsHonorSimplicityAncientGreekPuritySincerityRhetoricComposingIlliterateForumsIncumbentsNeighbourhoodsMetropolisDictionNativityAspersion
Book:The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
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“The capitalists of a country which manages to capture foreign markets from other countries are able to increase their profits at the expense of the capitalists of the other countries. Similarly, a colonial metropolis may achieve an export surplus through investment in its dependencies.”

MayCountryAbleAchieveIncreaseInvestmentProfitManageExpensesCaptureCapitalistOther CountriesDependencySurplusMetropolis
Book:Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy 1933-1970
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“My first decade of living in a metropolis was like, I was a people watcher. It meant the world to me to talk to strangers. I got excited about the fifth time I'd see the same person in the same bodega. I loved getting to know a certain clerk or barista. It took on a whole big meaning for me because of that atomization that suburban people do start to feel.”

PeopleKnowsWorldFeelsFirstsPersonsWholeBigsCertainExcitedStrangerDecadesFifthClerksWatchersMetropolisBarista
Author:Debra Granik
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“The archiepiscopal throne of Macedonius, which had been polluted with so much Christian blood, was successively filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus. Their diocese enjoyed a free importation of vice and error from every province of the empire; the eager pursuit of religious controversy afforded a new occupation to the busy idleness of the metropolis: and we may credit the assertion of an intelligent observer, who describes, with some pleasantry, the effects of their loquacious zeal.”

MayChristianReligiousHistoryBloodEffectsIntelligentFilledErrorsBusyVicesCreditPursuitEnjoyedEmpiresOccupationThronesObserversControversyIdlenessZealAssertionProvincesRoman EmpireMetropolisPleasantriesImportation
Book:The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.”

TwoValuesThreeForceCitiesBalanceDisciplineLessonsStrategyChaosArchitectureBlockDistinctionAnarchyFormalIrrelevantFluidManhattanBuilderGridsMetropolis
Author:Rem Koolhaas
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“The harmony of the nation is promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments of mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the ties of personal friendship formed between the representatives of its several parts in the performance of their service at this metropolis.”

WholeTogetherNationsSocialFriendshipHabitPerformancesHarmonyUnionsTiesMutualSentimentsRepresentativesIntercourseMutual RespectMetropolis
Book:John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848; chronology, documents, bibliographical aids
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“What I'm nostalgic for is the idea of an edge in New York. There used to be these fringes of the city where civilization sort of ended, and therefore young people could live cheaply, or open nightclubs or art galleries, or even squat. That fringe moved out to New Jersey and Brooklyn. The whole idea of the metropolis is the centralization of like-minded souls, and when the central real estate becomes too expensive, the dreamers, the young poets, and the artists will go elsewhere.”

PeopleArtRealSoulArtistPoetMovedDreamerElsewhereFringeNostalgicSquatMetropolis
Author:Jay McInerney
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“Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.”

EnoughTodayWaitingSleepCitiesBreakSunAirWesternEveningHeat1960sSydneyMulticulturalThunderstormMetropolisBusters
Author:Geraldine Brooks
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