"A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
"Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes, does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was really a dream?"
4 likes
Source: My Works and Days. Book by Lewis Mumford. Chapter 2, 1979.
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Lewis Mumford
"Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past."
"What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself"
"The cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live."
"Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals."
"Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity."