Lewis Mumford Quotes

Everybody in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

It is not human to be without shame and without desire.

If you treat an animal right, they don't run away. They're not like us. They run away from people they don't trust; most times we run away from ourselves.

Having failed to conquer myself, my best hope now is to arrange an alliance with myself.

I have an investment in not being crazy. I have a real investment in seeing things straight. This runs counter to that investment, so it required giving up an idea of myself, the idea being that I had control.

In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.

In this world, man has two significant possessions: intelligence and emotion. These two possessions govern our day-to-day life. But very often we see that emotion (ego) gets the upper hand in our life. We know that even if someone is extremely intelligent, when his emotion comes to the fore it will devour him. He is compelled to do what his emotion asks him to do.

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

Failure isn't so bad if it doesn't attack the heart. Success is all right if it doesn't go to the head.

There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.

We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.

I've learned when to get out. I've never wasted too much time with the wrong person, and that's one thing I'm proud of. The longer you're with the wrong person, you could be completely overlooking or not having the chance to meet the right person. And if it doesn't feel right, it isn't right. How do you know if something feels right? I think the great defining factor for me is whether I want more. When they drive away, do I wish they would turn around at the end of the street and come back? Or am I fine that they're going home?

If you have expectations, you try to put your standards on someone else's behavior. The fact is you can't control anyone but yourself, so creating standards, as opposed to expectations, keeps the ball in your court.

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

We know to much to command ourselves very far.

For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.

Being away from home gave me the chance to look at myself with a jaundiced eye. I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge, something I had always tried to hide, and I came home glad to start in here again with a love for Europe that I am afraid will never leave me.

To me He is all fault who hath no fault at all: For who loves me must have a touch of earth.

One interesting thing about greed is that although the underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, the irony is that even after obtaining the object of your desire you are still not satisfied. The true antidote of greed is contentment.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me.” – Janis Joplin

When forced, as it seems, by your environment to be utterly disquieted, return with all speed into your self, staying in discord no longer than you must. By constant recurrence to the harmony, you will gain more command over it.

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.