The City Quotes

“If the plants have minds, as some people assume they do, they must be of that brooding, vegetative sort characteristic of those mystics who, quite forgetful of the active world, are absorbed in the contemplation of their own inner processes.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“[Our] restlessness and thirst for adventure is, for the most part, barren and illusory... We are seeking to escape from a dull world instead of turning back upon it to transform it.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“Boys' gangs are neighborhood institutions.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“The first newspapers were simply devices for organizing gossip, and that, to a greater or less extent, they have remained.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“In the urban environment literacy is almost as much a necessity as speech itself.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“The hobo is... merely a belated frontiersman, a frontiersman at a time and in a place when the frontier is passing or no longer exists.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“It is not because men are alike that they are social, but because they are different.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“Mind is an incident of locomotion.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“Our secret ambitions are seldom realized in our actual occupations.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“What then is the remedy for the existing condition of the newspapers? There is no remedy. Humanly speaking, the present newspapers are about as good as they can be... If the newspapers are to be improved, it will come through the education of the people.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment

“News story" and "fiction story" are two forms of modern literature that are now so like one another that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them.”
― Robert Ezra Park, The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment