“Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves.”
" Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon http://books.google.com/books?id=ZikGAQAAIAAJ&pg=P139", Overland Monthly, volume XI, number 2 (August 1873) pages 139-147 (at page 146); modified and reprinted in John of the Mountains (1938), page 77
1870s
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John Muir 183
Scottish-born American naturalist and author 1838–1914Related quotes

“We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear.”
Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Pub., 1993. p. 144. http://books.google.com/books?id=ee8W8jQIQBQC&pg=PA144
Context: We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear. The government has been paying farmers not to grow food for fifty years--while millions starve. Labor unions, business and government conspire to hold back the Microprocessor Revolution--because none of them know how to deal with the massive unemployment it will cause. (Fuller's books could tell them.) The utilities advertise continually that "solar power is at least forty years in the future" when my friend Karl Hess, and hundreds of others, already live in largely solar-powered houses. These propaganda advertisements are just a delaying action, because the utilities still haven't figured out how to put a meter between us and the sun.
“Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else.”
Book II, Chapter 1, p. 149
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

Life Won't Wait, written by Ozzy Osbourne and Kevin Churko.
Song lyrics, Scream (2010)

“We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.”
Source: 11/22/63

Variant: Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 9-12.

Amritanandamayi's Address Upon Receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York (2010)