A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.
Interpretation
A city offers immediate access to diverse experiences, ideas, and cultures.
In this quote, Margaret Mead emphasizes the vibrant and dynamic nature of city life, where residents can quickly access a plethora of experiences. Whether it's getting answers, tasting international cuisine, or enjoying a variety of music, a city provides a rich tapestry of cultural interactions that are readily available, fostering a sense of community and connectivity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about urban living and cultural diversity.
Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
EARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon.
American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.
Competition, by itself, always leads to cheating by the powerful, who try to establish pyramids of power, like feudalism. Yet, competition is the great creative force! So how do we save it from its own contradictions? By cooperation! By cooperating with each other, via politics, to make rules and prevent cheating, so that competition can thrive!
There are nuclear-weapons-free zones in several parts of the world already, except that they're not implemented fully, because the U.S. won't allow it.
The establishment will irritate you - pull your beard, flick your face - to make you fight. Because once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humor.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart
Some people operate in complete fear that they're gonna lose their stuff and their money. That sounds like hell to me. And then I guess some people operate with hands open, and maybe empty, but at least striving for a deeper understanding of what it means to care.
Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.
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