A Quote by Jacob Riis

The slum is the measure of civilization.

Jacob Riis

Quote Topics

Civilization Measure Slum

Quote Author

Jacob Riis
Danish - Journalist
May 3, 1849 - May 26, 1914

I was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project, where a computer with an internet connection was put in a Delhi slum. When the slum was revisited after a month, the children of that slum had learned how to use the worldwide web.

Sugata Mitra

Several generations of slum environment will produce a slum heredity.

Albion Fellows Bacon

The measure of any great civilization is its cities and a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and squares.

John Ruskin

You can be slum-born and slum-bred and still achieve something worth while; but it is a stupid inverted snobbishness to be proud of it. If one had a right to be proud of anything, it would be of a continued decent tradition back of one.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

William Dean Howells

Have you ever stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai? I'd warmly recommend it. It's super luxurious, and right next door, there's a classic slum. So you can do a quick slum tour and get back to your sanctuary without any inconvenience but with some excellent snaps.

Geoff Dyer

I have heard it said that the measure of a civilization is how it treats those who have hurt it. I think a further measure is how it treats those who deeply disappoint it.

Mark Goulston

A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

Ezra Pound

The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.

Jack McDevitt

What do we measure when we measure time? The gloomy answer from Hawking, one of our most implacably cheerful scientists, is that we measure entropy. We measure changes and those changes are all for the worse. We measure increasing disorder. Life is hard, says science, and constancy is the greatest of miracles.

David Quammen

How a society treats its disabled is the true measure of a civilization.

Chen Guangcheng

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.

Felix Frankfurter

Racism itself is difficult to measure. We can measure hate crimes - which are absolutely an indicator. We can measure reports of discrimination. We can measure the number of times hateful words are being used across the Internet. Those things all help us measure racism, but it can sometimes be nebulous.