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The artist has a special task and duty... reminding people of their humanity and the promise of their creativity.
Lewis Mumford
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Artists highlight the human experience and inspire creativity in others.

This quote by Lewis Mumford emphasizes the unique role of artists in society. They are not just creators but also remind individuals of their intrinsic humanity, encouraging them to explore and embrace their own creativity. In doing so, artists help to foster a deeper connection to what it means to be human and the potential that lies within each person.

Themes

ArtistHumanityCreativityDutyReminder

In practice

Example use cases

During an art exhibition opening, one might quote this to highlight the significance of the artists' contributions to society.

More from Lewis Mumford

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
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Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence.
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Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created."We effectively became "time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers" with the invention of the clock."
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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 have ever fathomed.
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The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.
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The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
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Quote by Lewis Mumford | QuoteProject