Cities quotes
4.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside cities — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"When cities were first founded, an old Egyptian scribe tells us, the mission of the founder was to 'put gods in their shrines.' The task of the coming city is not essentially different: its mission is to put the highest concerns of man at the center of all his activities."
"It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time."
"If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation."
"My Cape women are generally true to type - big hearted, motherly women who love the sea. My other characters, with the exception of the Portuguese, who I occasionally mention as Cape dwellers, are obviously drawn from the city types one sees in everyday life."
"The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture."
"O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?"
"City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself."
"When a country is in harmony with the Tao, the factories make trucks and tractors. When a country goes counter to the Tao, warheads are stockpiled outside the cities. There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe."
"Gotham City. Clean shafts of concrete and snowy rooftops. The work of men who died generations ago. From here, it looks like an achievement. From here, you can't see the enemy."
"In the end, we may be hurting the very people we should be concerned about - the inner-city poor, those who already have to live with many risks in their daily lives, those who do not have clout here in Washington."
"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."
"First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation."
"Peaceful circulation has been interupted by barbed wire and concrete blocks. For a city or a people to be truly free, they must have the secure right, without economic, political or police pressure, to make their own choices and live their own lives."
"I classify Sao Paolo this way: The Governor's Palace is the living room. The mayor's office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the back yard where they throw the garbage."
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
"Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city's food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way."
"It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws."
"A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and - above all - responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill."
"Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head."
"It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world"
