169 Quotes by Lewis Mumford

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.

In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer.

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

The rational conquest of the environment by means of machines is fundamentally the work of a woodman...Stone is a mass: but wood, by its nature, is already a structure.

Wood, then, was the most various, the most shapeable, the most serviceable of all the materials that man has employed in his technology: evan stone was at best an accessory.

The city, with language...remains man's greatest work of art, a place where 'time becomes visible,' and 'mind takes form.'

I'm a pessimist about probabilities, I'm an optimist about possibilities.