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The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.

— Lewis Mumford The Culture of Cities (1938)

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More quotes by Lewis Mumford

Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.

The Culture of Cities (1938)

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 City in History (1961)

Nothing is permanent: certainly not the frozen images of barbarous power with which fascism now confronts us.

The Culture of Cities (1938)

The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.

Technics and Civilization (1934)

In this situation the artist has a special task and duty: the task of reminding men of their humanity and the promise of their creativity.

In the Name of Sanity (1954)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lewis Mumford (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.