The right to access to every building in the city by private motorcar, in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city. --Lewis Mumford

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

If a man is a fool, you don't train him out of being a fool by sending him to university. You merely turn him into a trained fool, which is ten times more dangerous.

If a policeman must know the Constitution, then why not a planner?
--William J. Brennan Jr., Supreme Court Justice (1906-1997).

Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be achieved. --Williams Jennings Bryan

If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. --Chinese Proverb

Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even should they rarely stick to their plan.
--Winston Churchill

I've often thought that if planners were botanists, zoologists, geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.
--William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice (1898-1980).

Plans are worthless. Planning is essential. --Dwight D. Eisenhower, general and president

Today's problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. --Albert Einstein

A thousand policemen directing traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go. --T.S. Elliott

Long range planning works best in the short term. --Euripides, poet (480-406 AD)

As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
--Antoine de Saint Exupery, poet and pilot (1900-1944)

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. --Benjamin Franklin

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. --Benjamin Franklin

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. --Milton Friedman

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. --Alexander Hamilton (1755 - 1804)

A hundred years after we are gone and forgotten, those who never heard of us will be living with the results of our actions. --Oliver Wendell Homes, U.S. Supreme Court justice

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. --James Joyce, writer

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. --Alan Lakein, writer

The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. --Abraham Lincoln

Poor planning or poor execution of plans is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality.
--Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense

Growth is inevitable. The question is not whether your part of the world is going to change, but how.
--Edward T. McMahon

Do not try to make circumstances fit your plans. Make plans that fit the circumstances.
--General George Patton (1947)

A good plan today is better that a perfect plan tomorrow. --George S. Patton

Americans are in the habit of never walking if they can ride.
– observation in 1798 by Louis Philippe, Duc d'Orleans

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. --Carl Sagan, scientist and writer

The outcome of the city will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy. --Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us. --Winston Churchill

A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time. -- Patrick Geddes

A plan is a list of actions arranged in whatever sequence is thought likely to achieve an objective. --John Argenti

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.
- Reubin Askew, former Governor of Florida

City planning finds its validation in the intuitive recognition that a burgeoning market society cannot be trusted to produce spontaneously a habitable, sanitary, or even efficient city, much less a beautiful one.
--Murray Bookchin, The Limits of the City (1986).

A plan which succeeds is bold. One which fails is reckless. --General Karl von Clauswitz

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.  --Chinese Proverb

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. - Douglas H. Everett

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. - Peter Drucker

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. - Abraham Lincoln