A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.
Lewis Mumford

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Lewis Mumford

A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.
Lewis Mumford

Don't take the will for the deed; get the deed.
Lewis Mumford

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.
Lewis Mumford

Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.
Lewis Mumford

Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.
Lewis Mumford

However far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson; nothing is impossible.
Lewis Mumford

It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless.
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 training.
Lewis Mumford


New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city.
Lewis Mumford

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development.
Lewis Mumford

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
Lewis Mumford

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis Mumford

Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.
Lewis Mumford

The artist does not illustrate science (but) he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does.
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.
Lewis Mumford

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

The earth is the Lord's fullness thereof: this is no longer a hollow dictum of religion, but a directive for economic action toward human brotherhood.
Lewis Mumford

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.
Lewis Mumford