Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Everywhere I go I see increasing evidence of people swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making.

In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City.

It seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that there are an awful lot of people in Manhattan. And it's getting worse.

When you hear that China is overcrowded, that's an understatement. I was shocked at the number of people. Even in the rural areas. I was also shocked at the poverty and at the living conditions.

I loathe crowds. I especially don't like cities. A city involves biomass. And biomass gets to me.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.

When 125,000 people are gathered together on 10 square miles of land they must of necessity give up certain of their liberties. It is a sacrifice they must make for the sake of the advantages of city life.

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.

A city may be dirty on the outside but is clean on the inside. Many cities in the world are clean on the outside but dirty on the inside.

The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.

The city has become a serious menace to our civilization... It has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant.

Cities are 2% of the earth's crust, but they are 50% of the world's population.

Los Angeles, I don't like that town. Too decadent, and it's slimy.

I don't like concrete jungles.

The difficulty with big cities does not lie in skyscrapers or high-rises per se; rather, it is the values concealed within those buildings which lead to the loss of our humanity and our sense of spiritual emptiness.

Mumbai is becoming more and more of a nightmare.

See, New York is over the hill. It's swallowed up in its own garbage. And the people - I can't stand the people.

That's what I love about New York. So many people crowded together, pushing against one another. And that's what I hate about New York. So many people crowded together, pushing against one another.

Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community.

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

There is room enough indoors in New York City for the whole 1963 world's population to enter, with room enough inside for all hands to dance the twist in average nightclub proximity.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase.... the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside.