The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contri… - Lewis Mumford

"In the 'Odyssey,' Homer enumerates the strangers that even a simple community would "call from abroad"- the "master of some craft, a prophet, a healer of disease, a builder or else a wondrous bard." In contrast to the original peasants and chiefs these are the new inhabitants of the city. Where they were lacking, the country town remained sunk in a somnolent provincialism."

Lonely courage played a part that mass obedience to the leader's command could never rival. Such courage produced heroes of the mind as well as of the battlefield, often in the same person.

The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.