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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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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
Always
People
Predict
Exists
Line
Lines
Wrong
Future
Trying

More quotes by Jane Jacobs

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The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.
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I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.
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To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder.
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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.
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Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth.
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Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.
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There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.
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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.
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[If Quebec became sovereign] there would be one level of government that would be missing, one less level of government. The municipality would become the second level.
Jane Jacobs
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In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the city everyone does not-only those you choose to tell will know about you. This is one of the attributes of cities that is precious to most city people.
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Americans don't really think that other places are as real as America.
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The best thing is not to think about [separatism]. [People in Alberta] don't even want to engage in talking pros and cons and why people feel this way.
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There are still an awful lot of intelligent, clever constructive Americans and they are still doing clever constructive things.
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Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves.
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Privately run jails are a mark of American reinvented government that has been picked up by neoconcervatives in Canada.
Jane Jacobs
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Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?
Jane Jacobs
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Backward cities, or younger cities, or newly forming cities in supply regions, have to develop to a great extent on one another's shoulders. This is one of the terrible things about empires.
Jane Jacobs
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I still have a lot of family in America. I still have a lot of friends there. There is a lot that I admire there very much. When I find America getting too much criticized outside America, I want to tell them how many things are good about it.
Jane Jacobs
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Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.
Jane Jacobs
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I think it is fatal to specialize. And all kinds of things show us that and that the more diverse we are in what we can do, the better.
Jane Jacobs