A city that is of one man only is no city, says Haemon in Sophocles' 'Antigone.' Only where differences are valued and opposition tolerated can be transmuted into dialectic: so in its internal economy the city is a place-to twist Blake's dictum-that depresses corporeal and promotes mental war.

In the city of the blind, whoever has one eye is lord.

A man is indeed a city, and for the poet there are no ideas but in things.

No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.

A State for one man is no State at all.

But today the united city has ceased to exist; there is no more communion of ideas. The town is a chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no common interest, save that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another.

Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.

... Whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to live in freedom and does no destroy it, may reckon on being destroyed by it. For if it should rebel, it can always screen itself under the name of liberty and its ancient laws, which no length of time, nor any benefit conferred will ever cause it to forget; and do what you will, and take what care you may, unless the inhabitants be scattered and dispersed, this name, and the old order of things, will never cease to be remembered...

"Only remember that cities, too, are like human beings. They are not made of stones and wood, solely. They are of flesh and bone. They bleed when they are hurt.
Every unlawful construction is a nail hammered into the heart of the Instambul. Remember to pity a wounded city the way you pity a wounded person".

Haemon: No city is property of a single man.
Creon: But custom gives possession to the ruler.
Haemon: You'd rule a desert beautifully alone.

"Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life, invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures?
Do you think the great city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best-built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?

Away! These are not to be cherish’d for themselves;
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them;
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world."

-from "Song of the Broad-Axe"

man is not truly one, but two

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.

A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.