The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.
Interpretation
The ability to shape our environments and identities is a fundamental yet often overlooked human right.
David Harvey's quote underscores the importance of the freedom to influence both our physical surroundings and our personal development. He posits that while this freedom is vital to our existence, it is frequently disregarded or undermined, revealing a significant gap in our understanding of human rights and urban development.
In practice
In a speech advocating for urban reform, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of participatory planning.
We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.
I had explained that a woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan
And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on.
I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.
What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.
To have a faith, therefore, or a trust in anything, where God hath not promised, is plain idolatry, and a worshipping of thine own imagination instead of God.
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