Popular quotes about Cities! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The way our big cities change sucks. The beauty of cities was that they were edgy, sometimes even a little dangerous. Artists, poets, and activists could come and unify and create different kinds of scenes. Not just fashion scenes, scenes that were politically active. Big cities are getting so high-end oriented, business corporate fashion, fashion not in an artistic sense but in a corporate sense. For me that edgy beauty of cities is lost, wherever you go.
Patti SmithBut look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.
Jane JacobsAs a country, Americans have to find a way to keep our cities solvent. If large numbers of cities no longer have the necessary tax base, we have to find federal methods to intervene. If we don't, there's a risk of dozens of cities simply being left to their bankrupt fates - and I can't see how that serves anybody's interests in the long run.
Sasha AbramskyCompared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter.
Charles C. MannHow far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.
Henry David ThoreauEvery time I traveled to a new city, I would learn about local heroes I did not know about, and I would learn about their very impressive contribution to their cities. There are nuanced senses that only people from the region can understand, and no amount of globalization can change that. It's almost like a maxim of a sorts, when you think about language, the way that people speak in a location. It does happen with architects, in terms of how they engage cities.
Jimenez LaiWe often judge cities by great public buildings. But we admire great cities because people live there in a beautiful way. You have to think about how each person will live there; you can't just think about abstract ideas.
Daniel LibeskindSweden is a small country. All cities seem small after a while. I was hanging out at a rehearsal hall in Williamsburg and I don't know how many people I ran into just being there for a couple days. Music makes all cities smaller.
Anna TernheimWhile the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.
Daniel J. BoorstinYou know, the key issue is that city issues are not to be put in a box and say well, that's what the mayor wants. They're Canadian issues. Cities account for 75 percent of our GDP. If you don't have a plan for cities, it means you don't have a plan for the economy.
Naheed NenshiCities make people sick; they create living dead! Get away from the cities in every possible occasion! River does no harm to you; forest does no harm to you; wild flowers do no harm to you! When you are in nature, you are amongst the friends! Be clever, be in the nature!
Mehmet Murat IldanI say we don't need art in nature, because it's so perfect without us. We need it in the cities. But the cities have absolutely lost their own center. They think having ten cars and a big bridge is the way to happiness. It's not.
Marina AbramovicThe strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilisation's success and the primary reason why cities existwe must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete.
Edward GlaeserWe have reached a point where the value we do add to our economy is now being outweighed by the value we are removing, not only from future generations in terms of diminished resources, but from ourselves in terms of unlivable cities, deadening jobs, deteriorating health, and rising crime. In biological terms, we have become a parasite and are devouring our host.
Paul HawkenThe conflict between Japan and Chiang is little affected by the fall of the Wuhan cities and Sino-Japanese hostilities have just started.
Seishiro ItagakiAfter World War II, a lot of people moved to the cities for work and abandoned the old vineyards. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, wineries were paid to produce volume at a cheap price. That's when the Lambruscos and bad Chianti were popular.
Joe BastianichPoverty and the rule of race that is called apartheid drive the Transkeian migrant from security on the land to work in the cities, and then back again.
Ruth FirstWhenever we make changes in our surroundings, we can too easily shortchange ourselves, by cutting ourselves off from some of the sights and sounds, the shapes or textures, or other information from a place that have helped mold our understanding and are now necessary for us to thrive. Overdevelopment and urban sprawl can damage our own lives as much as they damage our cities and countryside.
Tony HissBut I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.
Antonin ScaliaWell, on tour I eat terribly, so I balance that by running a lot. And then I started to run with my fans in certain cities. It sounds very nerdy and un-rock n' roll, but I like it. It's fun, and it's better than meeting fans in weird, awkward circumstances. So I take them running with me.
Ellie GouldingYou are going to hear how he [Donald Trump] is going to address the 11 million, and some other issues as well, including sanctuary cities.
Kellyanne ConwayI had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.
Maya AngelouSometimes when I talk to little children I remind them of the fact that when I was growing up myself, I used to play with frog eggs and tadpoles and I used to walk in the field, I used to literally copy whatever my mother was doing on the land. And that may be the reason why I eventually developed the passion for green and for the Earth. So it is extremely important for adults and especially those who are in charge of cities to make sure that we do not lose touch with the land and with the environment. And especially our children.
Wangari MaathaiSlavery remained in the Deep South by other names - in prison programs with charges over nothing and eternal debt that threatened every African-American in the South right up through World War II. And that was after killing three-quarters of a million people, destroying cities, and creating hostility that exists to this day over the the Confederate flag and the racism it symbolizes, all brewing out of bitterness over a war that didn't have to happen.
David SwansonThe most delicate beauty in the mind of women is, and ever must be, an independence of artificial stimulants for content. It is not so with men. The links that bind men to capitals belong to the golden chain of civilization,--the chain which fastens all our destinies to the throne of Jove. And hence the larger proportion of men in whom genius is pre-eminent have preferred to live in cities, though some of them have bequeathed to us the loveliest pictures of the rural scenes in which they declined to dwell.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonMemory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.
Italo CalvinoThousands of people marched in cities around the country to demand that Donald Trump release his taxes. He dismissed them with a tweet: "Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies. The election is over."
John YangIt struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.
Colum McCannWhen ever the light of civilization faces upon you with a blighting power...go to the wilderness...Dull business routine, the fierce passions of the marketplace, the perils of envious cities became but a memory...The wilderness will take hold of you. It will give you good red blood; it will turn you from a weakling into a man...You will soon behold all with a peaceful soul.
Estwick EvansTraveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.
Italo CalvinoI like intersections. They're the nature of New York, and there's always the possibility that when you're at one you can meet someone new. Have I ever met anyone new at an intersection? No, but I like the idea of it. I like cities because if you're stopping on the corner to wait for a light to change, there's the possibility that you and somebody else can talk. And if you and that somebody else start to talk, then you can start to argue, and if you start to argue, you might start a revolution.
Vito AcconciOur large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music, and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins, with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he maybe beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers.
John RuskinI'm going to help the African-Americans. I'm going to help the Latinos, Hispanics. I am going to help the inner cities.
Donald TrumpAs people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment.
Diane AckermanThe composition of our society has been changing. We [world] are becoming a more urban population. Mega-cities, those with more than 10 million residents, are booming.
Hari SreenivasanAmerican cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.
John SteinbeckWell, Italy had been overrun by the War, there had practically been civil war, north and south of the Gothic Line, heavy bombing, the northern industrial cities had been bombed heavily and we had political disorder before 1948.
Gianni AgnelliAll of you are aware of the journey I've taken this past year and I just want to relay to all of the people that sent along their prayers and well wishes, my heartfelt thanks. It was truly overwhelming to me and my family the outpouring that we received from the Twin Cities community and from across the Midwest.
Fred HoibergCities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.
Jane JacobsCities like Detroit exist because they occupy important sites. In the case of Detroit, it sits on a river between two great lakes - very important and strategic.
James Howard KunstlerEurope becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony... In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism.
Oriana FallaciHaving viewed slum clearance projects in most major cities of the world may I state that you have conceived and created in the Johannesburg townships what is probably the most impressive and adequate resettlement activity in existence.
L. Ron HubbardIf you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.
Fred KentHonestly, you got to take care of the people that take care of you. I know that sounds like cliche, or borderline phony, but that's the case. The reason I've had the fans that I have is because I've been consistent over the years and kept coming back and doing the same runs. I'm never going to stop doing the cities I've gone through. I'm only going to add.
Gabriel Iglesias