Mumford Lewis

Aus Wiki1

Lewis Mumford (* 19. Oktober 1895 in Flushing, Queens, New York; † 26. Januar 1990 in Amenia, New York) war ein US-amerikanischer Architekturkritiker und Wissenschaftler. Eine nähere Kategorisierung als Historiker, Philosoph, Soziologe oder gar Schriftsteller wird dem interdisziplinären Charakter von Mumfords vielfältigem Schaffen kaum gerecht. Im deutschen Sprachraum ist Mumford vor allem durch seine Schriften zur Geschichte der Stadt und der Technik bekannt. (Aus Wikipedia - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford)

Stichwort: Technikkritik / Geschichte der Technik / Kultur und Technik

Zitate von Lewis Mumford (Quelle http://www.brainyquote.com)

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I would die happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, "This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!"

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 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.

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

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

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.

Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.

Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

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.