“Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves.”

“[I]f we could imagine a world without slavery and abolish that institution, then we can face the troubles we have now. . . . Who was it that imagined a world where the Nazis could be defeated?There were those who looked upon that war machine and said: this can and must be destroyed.That resistance . . . began with an act of the imagination. Resistance begins with the imagination.”

“We are products of the past and we live immersed in the past, which encompasses us. How can we move towards the new life, how create new activities without getting out of the past and without placing ourselves above it? And how can we place ourselves above the past if we are in it and it is in us? There is no other way out except through thought, which does not break off relations with the past but rises ideally above it and converts it into knowledge.”

“Engineers do engineering, i.e. they build bridges. So engineering needs engineers. The economy does NOT need economists. Economists do not make economy, but they try it and that is why we have so much problems with some financial models.”

“As cities grow and technology takes over the world belief and imagination fade away and so do we.”

“Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?”