Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969Quotes
One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.
—Philip K. Dick, 1972Divine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.
—Marcus Terentius Varro, c. 70 BCIn Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.
—Simon Hoggart, 1990By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCThe first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCA large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.
—Aldous Huxley, 1934No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
—Cyril Connolly, 1944Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BCCities are the abyss of the human species.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCThere is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.
—Kathleen Norris, 1931