“There is no city that is truly one other than this city that we [anahnti] are involved in bringing forth.”

“America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

“See the last chapter in Genesis where Cain, the murderer of his brother, went forth with his sons to found the city. The City is still murdering his brother.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

“Hooykaas (1972, p. 100) writes that especially commercial and industrial cities were intellectually dynamic, far more so than sleepy university towns. These cities also tended to be more tolerant of different religions and multilingual. Modern research has found that especially cities involved in Atlantic trade were institutionally dynamic.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

“It will bring about the extinction of the nation-state as we know it… I think it will be as big a deal as the creation of cities.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

“And when we have that drink together which we both so richly deserve, I hope we can discover a way in which the mayoralty can continue to benefit from your transparent love of London, a city whose energy conquered the world and which now brings the world together in one city.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

“And if the City falls and one survives
he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile
he shall be the City”

Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998) Polish writer

“The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

“Cities and Thrones and Powers,
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,
The Cities rise again.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

“The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher