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I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.

Jane Jacobs

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Jane Jacobs
Age: 89 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 4
Died: 2006
Died: April 25
Author
Economist
Journalist
Sociologist
Urban Planner
Writer
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Jane Butzner
Jane Butzner Jacobs
Extent
Intelligent
Place
Great
Time
Think
Thinking
People
Captives

More quotes by Jane Jacobs

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The best part of a Reg Hartt presentation is what he has to say.
Jane Jacobs
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...frequent streets and short blocks are valuable because of the fabric of intricate cross-use that they permit among the users of a city neighbouhood.
Jane Jacobs
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Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.
Jane Jacobs
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Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon. Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.
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What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? ... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia. What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable. The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.
Jane Jacobs
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The notion that you could discard the old world and now make a new one. This is what was so bad about Modernism.
Jane Jacobs
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Unfortunately [René] Lévesque had so little self confidence in Quebec and in the people themselves, that he fell for that and, yes, he'd say, you know, it might be ruinous for us economically.
Jane Jacobs
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A region is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution.
Jane Jacobs
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People who try to predict the future by extrapolating in a line of more of what exists - they are always wrong.
Jane Jacobs
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A border--the perimeter of a single massive or stretched-out use of territory--forms the edge of an area of 'ordinary' city. Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter-of-factly just as edges. However, a border exerts an active influence.
Jane Jacobs
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Subsidiarity is the principle that government works best most responsibly and responsively when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses. Fiscal accountability is the principle that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent to those providing the money.
Jane Jacobs
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[ René Lévesque] didn't understand why things do collapse. It's usually a very banal reason why things do collapse. It's not a grand reason, why they collapse economically, at least in the West.
Jane Jacobs
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I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.
Jane Jacobs
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Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities.
Jane Jacobs
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I have learned yet again (this has been going on all my life) what folly it is to take any thing for granted without examining it skeptically.
Jane Jacobs
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Americans don't really think that other places are as real as America.
Jane Jacobs
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One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education.
Jane Jacobs
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I get absolutely ruthless in my own way about not doing anything else when I am trying to concentrate on writing a book. I have to stick to it and concentrate.
Jane Jacobs
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Never underestimate the power of a city to regenerate.
Jane Jacobs
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Writing, printing, and the Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture.
Jane Jacobs