Life is the only art that we are required to practise without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner. - Lewis Mumford. View more images...

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. - Lewis Mumford. View more images...

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. - Lewis Mumford. View more images...

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind. - Lewis Mumford. View more images...

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. - Lewis Mumford. View more images...

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development - Lewis Mumford. View more images...