Cities

"No town has greater right on you than the other. The best town for you is that which bears you."

"When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life."

"Not so long ago, I examined some maps showing juvenile delinquency, diptheria, tuberculosis and murder quotients in a number of cities from New Orleans to Los Angeles. The maps all looked alike. Disease, crime and delinquency were invariably grouped in the same parts of the cities — in the slum districts. That is the cause of crime, not the motion picture."

"Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime,— A rose-red city—half as old as time!"

"I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture."

"A city has to be a place where you can get everything – and do anything, or nothing."

"A city is … an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a spiritual sense."

"If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City ‘the Builder and Maker is God.’ Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all. We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there! Let us not, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those which are little! Not our city’s greatness, but virtue of soul is our ornament and defence. If you suppose dignity to belong to a city, think how many persons must partake in this dignity, who are whoremongers, effeminate, depraved and full of ten thousand evil things, and at last despise such honour! But that City above is not of this kind; for it is impossible that he can be a partaker of it, who has not exhibited every virtue."

"No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning."

"God made the country, and man made the town."

"The city is very different from the country, girl. It is a kind of shared consciousness that begins its work on you as soon as you enter it, if not well before, a consciousness that begins to separate you from the country possibly even before you decide to journey toward it. It encircles you with forces much greater than the walls and gates which imitate tinier villages or towns. People who come to it come seeking the future, not realizing all that will finally affect them in it is their own, only more or less aware, involvement with the past. The way we do things here—really, that’s all there is to be learned in our precincts. But in the paving of every wide, clear avenue, in the turnings of every dark, overhung alley, in the ornaments on every cornice, in the salt-stained stones of each neighborhood cistern, there are traces of the way things once were done—which is the key to why they are done as they are today."

"To anyone growing up in any large city, the immediate neighborhood becomes the world. The street on which one lives provides a kid with local identification somewhat similar to being branded by national origin. Streets have a status. They grow, get old and change in character. In large coastal cities, immigration has an effect on the profile of a street altering it as each new group enters, stays a while, assimilates and then moves away. Streets seem to have a discernible life. Some start out ostentatiously and gradually descend into slums while others begin as poor the disreputable neighborhoods and rise to ostentation through what city planners call gentrification."

"When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?"

"My troops are bound to me as a cow is bound to its calf; but like a son who, hating his mother, leaves his city, my princely sister holy has run away from me back to brick-built Kulaba. If she loves her city and hates me, why does she bind the city to me? If she hates the city and yet loves me, why does she bind me to the city?"

"Latin America is particularly susceptible to pockets of crime because of its speedy urbanization. Its cities grew faster than in most other parts of the world during the past 50 years, according to the Economist. By 2000, three-quarters of the population lived in towns and cities. That is about double the proportion in Asia and Africa. As the Economist explains, “that move from the countryside concentrated risk factors for lethal violence — inequality, unemployed young men, dislocated families, poor government services, easily available firearms — even as it also brought together the factors needed for economic growth.”"

"Round about [there will be] eighteen thousand [cubits]; and the name of the city from [that] day on will be Jehovah Himself Is There."

"The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo."

"For the man of antiquity, the image of the city expressed a supreme reality. Particularly for Greek thought, the clearly ordered, limited area was more highly appreciated than unpatterned limitlessness. It pictured even the totality of existence not as an endless All, but as cosmos, the beautifully shaped and controlled universe. For the Greek, then, the city was more than endless masses of land and people. The city, with her environs, her various buildings grouped harmoniously within the clear-cut borders of her walls; busy, flourishing stronghold regulated by a wise and just government — this image symbolized the goal of all Christian striving, redeemed existence."

"Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man."

"Good as the city -- there is nothing as good as this!"

"City air makes you free after a year and a day"

"The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city."

"The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual’s dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today."

"What's Rome to me, what business have I there?"

"Boston is among an increasing number of municipalities, universities, and private foundations that have announced plans to divest from fossil fuels. In late October, ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, Auckland, New Zealand; Copenhagen, Denmark; Glasgow, Scotland; Paris; Rio de Janeiro; and Seattle announced commitments to divest from fossil fuel companies and increase investments to make cities more sustainable. Also last month, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott signed a bill that requires the city’s three pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Those are in addition to divestment commitments made last year by Berlin; Bristol, England; Cape Town, South Africa; Durban, South Africa; London; Los Angeles; Milan; New Orleans; New York City; Oslo; Norway; Pittsburgh; and Vancouver, Canada. “Cities are at the forefront of tackling the climate emergency and there is real momentum to move investments away from fossil fuels and toward climate solutions,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is chair-elect of C40 Cities, a network of mayors working to confront climate change, said in a statement. “I will continue to encourage more cities to join the movement, and urge national governments and private finance institutions to mobilize more finance to invest directly in cities to support a green and fair recovery.”"

"How can we define the "city"? And what is a village? And where is the dividing line between a city and a village? The number of the inhabitants is certainly not the criterion, for we know of villages in Hungary with forty, fifty, and even sixty thousand inhabitants. To a large extent it is therefore the occupation of its residents which causally determines the character of a settlement. The village lives in closest contact with the land, the inhabitants are mostly peasants who work on their fields, meadows, pastures, and woods; homework is only supplementary. Except for the looms and dairies, the village has no collective working places, no factories, and no offices. It lacks a proletariat (apart from a few paupers) and an intelligentsia, with a few necessary exceptions such as the priest, doctor, and teacher."

"It shall be remembered that the first to be mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures as a builder of cities was at the same time the first murderer — Cain. (Gen. 4:17.)"

"Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke."

"Go through that city, and behold What intellect can yield, How it brings forth an hundred-fold From time’s enduring field. Those walls are filled with wealth, the spoil Of industry and thought, The mighty harvest which man’s toil Out of the past has wrought."

"How wonderful the common street, Its tumult and its throng, The hurrying of the thousand feet That bear life's cares along. How strongly is the present felt, With such a scene beside; All sounds in one vast murmur melt The thunder of the tide."

"I do own I have a most affectionate attachment for London—the deep voice of her multitudes "haunts me like a passion." I delight in observing the infinite variety of her crowded streets, the rich merchandise of the shops, the vast buildings, whether raised for pomp, commerce, or charity, down to the barrel-organ, whose music is only common because it is beautiful. The country is no more left as it was originally created, than Belgrave Square remains its pristine swamp. The forest has been felled, the marsh drained, the enclosures planted, and the field ploughed. All these, begging Mr. Cowper’s pardon, are the works of man’s hands; and so is the town—the one is not more artificial than the other."

"Any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!"

"I am a child of the city. I was born in one, but that alone is not enough to make a man want, even need, to live and die in one, not even the city of his birth is London, as mine is. Millions are born in cities and flee them, London included; others go on living in them and become more and more unhappy. I think I can understand what moves those who cannot endure city life, but that is largely because the things they cannot abide are the very things that made cities so attractive to me in the first place."

"To burn a city, there is needed only a child or a madman; but to rebuild it, architects, materials, workmen, money, and especially time, will be required."

"The greatest division of material and mental labour is the separation of town and country."

"The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo."

"Nations die first in the big cities."

"The most dangerous savages live in cities."

"Cities have always been the fire-places of civilization, whence light and heat radiate out into the dark, cold world."

"The size of a town rarely determines my pleasure. If a person does not enjoy a small town, it's likely he is too small-minded to delight in the ordinary."

"[Solon] being asked, namely, what city was best to live in, “That city,” he replied, “in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.”"

"Petite ville, grand renom."

"We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun."

"This country is known by its cities: those amazing aggregations of people and housing, offices and factories, which constitute the heart of our civilization, the nerve center of our collective being."

"Les villes sont le gouffre de l'espèce humaine."

"The people are the city."

"Without suburbs a city has no centre either."

"Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ, Hæ septem certant de stirpe insignis Homeri."

"The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city."

"In the busy haunts of men."