Authenticity Quote by Lewis Mumford

“Genuine [economic] value lies in the power to sustain or enrich life”

Lewis Mumford

About This Quote

Source Essay: “The City in History,” 1961

True economic value lies in enhancing life’s sustainability and richness.

In simple terms: Value = life‑sustaining power.

Key Takeaway

Prioritize economic activities that improve life quality.

Themes

economics value sustainability human flourishing

Mood

reflective optimistic

Type

ethical inspirational

When to use this quote

policy making
business strategy
community planning

Key Concepts

development economics ecology human welfare

Questions to Reflect On

How can we measure economic success beyond profit?
What policies promote life‑enriching value?

A Different Perspective

Profit focus can ignore life‑sustaining goals.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.8 out of 5 (9 ratings)

Authenticity Economic Economic value Enrich Life Genuine Genuine Economic Life Lying Sustain Enrich Value Values

More by Lewis Mumford

Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.

Lewis Mumford

Image

Mechanical instruments, potentially a vehicle of rational human purposes, are scarcely a blessing when they enable the gossip of the village idiot and the…

Lewis Mumford

Image

However far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson; nothing is impossible.

Lewis Mumford

Image

Iron and coal dominated everywhere, from grey to black: the black boots, the black stove-pipe hat, the black coach or carriage, the black iron…

Lewis Mumford

Image

The self holds both a hell and a heaven.

Lewis Mumford

Image

By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations…

Lewis Mumford

Image

Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an…

Lewis Mumford

Image

Adventure is humdrum and routine unless one assimilates it, unless one relates it to a central core which grows within and gives it contour…

Lewis Mumford

Image

Safety razors make it hard to grow beards in America: America would be a better place if there were a few bearded, savage, terrible…

Lewis Mumford

Image

A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to…

Lewis Mumford

Image

Without leisure there can be neither art nor science nor fine conversation, nor any ceremonious performance of the offices of love and friendship.

Lewis Mumford

Image

Not sense data or atoms or electrons or packets of energy, but purposes, interests, and meanings, constitute the underlying facts of human experience.

Lewis Mumford

Image

When cities were first founded, an old Egyptian scribe tells us, the mission of the founder was to 'put gods in their shrines.' The…

Lewis Mumford

Image

“Forget the damned motor car and built cities for lovers and friends .”

Lewis Mumford

Image

Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to…

Lewis Mumford

Image

Explore all 146 Lewis Mumford quotes

More Authenticity quotes

“the property that grounded the self in Romanticism was sincerity, and in modernism was authenticity, then in postmod ernism it is visibility.10”

Chris Hedges

Image

Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Image

Real artists offer authenticity, not just money.

Rhymefest

Image

“I figure the more people think I'm just mildly weird, the less likely they are to know how weird I really am.”

Melanie Hooyenga

Image

I think people can read authenticity and they know when you're involved and when you're just slapping your name on something.

La La Anthony

Image

“I strive for authenticity even though it brings with it vulnerability and the inevitable judgment of others.”

L.R.W. Lee

Image

Children go where they find sincerity and authenticity.

Eric Cantona

Image

Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor…

Brennan Manning