Urban Society Quotes

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.

At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.

The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities.

For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men.

The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.

The present age, for all its cosmopolitan hustle, is curiously suburban in spirit.

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.

In terms of the most unique thing we do socially, my vote goes to something we invented alongside cities - we have lots of anonymous interactions and interactions with strangers. That has shaped us enormously.

In The Sellout I tried to capture how we can talk and see race, how we see urbanity, and how we see our history.

Today, the practice of medicine in an urban, technological society rarely provides either the time or the environment to encourage a doctor-patient relationship that promotes healing.

New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.

There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.

The urbanized life has lead to the destruction of the legends.

I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.

The subway in New York is a great social experiment; there are so many races and ways of life sitting together on each car.

In New York, a Jew is a Jew, an Italian is an Italian, a Muslim is a Muslim: Nobody's going out of his way to treat you in a special way.

In the city, nudity means something; in the wild, it just exists.

It's easier in an urban world to cast the blame outward. So I've learned a lot about my own process in that way.

More than 300 languages are spoken in London. Religions are freely practiced. Rich and poor live on the same street, side by side. We've actually escaped many of the most difficult problems - integration and community cohesion.

In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.

The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right.

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.

In a word, man in London is not quite so good a creature as he is out of it.

A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, concerts and lectures. Yet you can partake of all these experiences and never say hello to anyone new. And one of the things that all religions do is take groups of strangers into a space and say it is OK to talk to each other.

A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.