Frasi di Lewis Mumford (79 frasi, pagina 2)

Often quoted as "Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.", e.g, Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 112.
Faith for Living (1940)

“Man's chief purpose…is the creation and preservation of values: that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life.”

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Lewis Mumford

Faith for Living (1940)

“In the elemental emotions of fear and rage associated with the most primitive parts of the brain, this swift response without conscious intervention or direction is a condition of survival: but something more than survival comes forth from it; for this very automatism freed the growing brain and ramifying nervous system for more important services, detached from the immediate pressure for survival, performed by the new brain. Here by his conscious symbolic activities man created a second realm that conforms more closely to his higher personal and social needs.”

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Lewis Mumford libro The Myth of the Machine

pg 397
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

“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.”

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Lewis Mumford

"The Drama of the Machines" in Scribner's Magazine (August 1930)

“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…”

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Lewis Mumford libro The Myth of the Machine

Technical Liberation
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

“It is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live.”

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Lewis Mumford

The Story of Utopias, Chapter One http://books.google.com/books?id=846mSPr_kaUC&q=%22It+is+our+utopias+that+make+the+world+tolerable+to+us+the+cities+and+mansions+that+people+dream+of+are+those+in+which+they+finally+live%22&pg=PA11#v=onepage (1922).

“If, as many anthropologists still hold, the making and using of tools as one of the chief sources of primitive man's intellectual development, is it not time that we asked ourselves what will happen to man if he departs as completely as he now threatens to do from his primal polytechnic occupations? Since they can no longer be pursued at a profit, perhaps they will have to be restored as modes of sport and recreation, even more as helpful — increasingly essential — forms of personal service and mutual aid.”

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Lewis Mumford libro The Myth of the Machine

Technical Liberation
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

“Let us confess it: the human situation is always desperate.”

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Lewis Mumford

In the Name of Sanity (1954)

“Modern industrial design is based on the principle of conspicuous economy [but] the bourgeois culture which dominates the Western World is founded… on the principle of conspicuous waste.”

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Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford (1930) Modern American design. R.L. Leonard, & ‎C.A. Glassgold (eds.), ‎American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen. p. 9; As cited in: V.T. Clayton et al. Drawing on America's Past, p. 28

“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.”

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Lewis Mumford

"Revolt of the Demons", p. 399
Interpretations and Forecasts 1922-1972 (1973)

“One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude: a city should not merely draw men together in many varied activities, but should permit each person to find, near at hand, moments of seclusion and peace.”

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Lewis Mumford

"Planning for the Phases of Life" http://books.google.com/books?id=JypxP4R4cogC&q=%22One+of+the+marks+of+maturity+is+the+need+for%22+%22a+city+should+not+merely+draw+men+together+in+many+varied+activities+but+should+permit+each+person+to+find+near+at+hand+moments+of+seclusion+and+peace%22&pPA40#v=onepage, The Urban Prospect: Essays (1968)

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

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Lewis Mumford

My Works and Days (1979)

“Failing to divide its social chromosomes and split up into new cells, each bearing some portion of the original inheritance, the city continues to grow inorganically, indeed cancerously, by a continuous breaking down of old tissues, and an overgrowth of formless new tissue. Here the city has absorbed villages and little towns, reducing them to place names, like Manhattanville and Harlem in New York; there it has, more happily, left the organs of local government and the vestiges of an independent life, even assisted their revival, as in Chelsea and Kensington in London; but it has nevertheless enveloped those areas in its physical organization and built up the open land that once served to ensure their identity and integrity.”

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Lewis Mumford libro The City in History

Sprawling Giantism
The City in History (1961)

“The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.”

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Lewis Mumford

As quoted in Philosophers of the Earth : Conversations with Ecologists (1972) by Anne Chisholm