Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford, KBEwas an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
Date of Birth19 October 1895
CountryUnited States of America
government collaboration investment
To the extent that the scientist's capacity for pursuing the truth depends upon costly apparatus, institutional collaboration and heavy capital investment by government or industry he is no longer his own master.
life aggravation degradation
Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
expression humanity intuition
Every transformation of humanity has rested upon deep stirrings and intuitions, whose rationalized expression takes the form of a new picture of the cosmos and the nature of the human.
writing men tools
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.
life elderly littles
Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.
optimism possibility pessimist
I'm a pessimist about probabilities; I'm an optimist about possibilities.
mom baby people
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.
progress cacophony wonder
The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression.
cells heaven world
Henceforward, I shout to the heavens, I shall deliver no more lectures on behalf of good causes: I am the good cause that denies the need for such lectures. Avaunt, importuning world! Back to my cell.
drinking air water
(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.
children school emotional
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...
tasks waking buttons
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?
civilization eggs growth
By putting business before every other manifestation of life, our mechanical and financial civilization has forgotten the chief business of life: namely, growth, reproduction, development. It pays infinite attention to the incubator-and it forgets the egg!
self soul extinction
If mankind is to escape its programmed self-extinction the God who saves us will not descend from the machine: he will rise up again in the human soul.