17th Century Quotes

• From the early days of European migration to America, in the 17th Century, the prototype of buildings was based on English precedent, even if mostly translated into the locally available material in abundance: timber.

  Harry Seidler

  America, Migration, Abundance

  90 Copy quote

• Each of us have things and thoughts and descriptions of an amazing universe in our possession that kings in the 17th Century would have gone to war to possess.

  Kary Mullis

  Kings, War, Gone

  65 Copy quote

• Borne out of this, starting around the 17th Century was the Baroque era. It is my view that it is one of the architectural peak periods in western civilisation.

  Harry Seidler

  Views, Starting Over, Eras

  65 Copy quote

• The data, however, do indicate that Christians who see Jews through a 17th-century lens, believing that most are thoroughly religious, are thoroughly wrong.

  Marvin Olasky

  Christian, Religious, Believe

  61 Copy quote

• I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera.

  Cecilia Bartoli

  Opera, Classic, Century

  60 Copy quote

• I would love to do a period piece - in the 18th or 17th century. To me, it would be such an incredible challenge because of the way people carried themselves. There are so many incredible stories within those centuries - just the language and the way they carried themselves and what they were going through.

  Amy Smart

  People, Challenges, Way

  "Interview: Amy Smart" by Vicki Hogarth, www.askmen.com.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modernity is the ensemble of changes - intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, aesthetic - that have altered the world drastically since roughly the 17th century, until which time the world was, in the above respects, far less different from the world of any previous epoch of recorded history than it is from the world of today. The modern predicament is the set of problems these changes have bequeathed us.

  George Scialabba

  Political, Intellectual, Different

  Source: thenewinquiry.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Reality, People, Mind

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.

  Fritjof Capra

  Men, Obsession, Obsessed

  17 Copy quote

• Order can arise from chaos without anyone or anything directing the process when unstable combinations of atoms perish and others persist. In the 17th century, Descartes applied this insight to cosmology, and long before Darwin presented his more rigorous ideas about variation and selection, people began to speculate more openly about the origins of life and the species in Epicurean terms.

  Catherine Wilson

  Origin Of Life, Order, Ideas

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world.

  Asra Nomani

  Religious, Government, Iran

  "The Case Against Wearing Hijab To Support Muslim Women". "All Things Considered" with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. December 22, 2015.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 17th century philosophers were not in a position to understand the mind as well as we can today, since the advent of experimental methods in psychology. It shows no disrespect for the brilliance of Descartes or Kant to acknowledge that the psychology which they worked with was primitive by comparison with what is available today in the cognitive sciences, any more than it shows disrespect for the brilliance of Aristotle to acknowledge that the physics he worked with does not compare with that of Newton or Einstein.

  Hilary Kornblith

  Psychology, Disrespect, Mind

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The spirit must be freed from tethers so strong and feelings never put to rest, so that the lift of life may give buoyancy to the soul. In many families, there are hurt feelings and a reluctance to forgive. It doesn’t really matter what the issue was. It cannot and should not be left to injure. Blame keeps wounds open. Only forgiveness heals. George Herbert, an early 17th-century poet, wrote these lines: ‘He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven, for everyone has need of forgiveness.’

  Thomas S. Monson

  Strong, Hurt, Bridges

  10 Copy quote

• Technologically I live in the 17th century. I have a very simple cell phone. I say I live through the kindness of strangers, because if they see something on the Net they type it out and send it to me.

  Iris Apfel

  Kindness, Simple, Phones

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Ignorance, Two, Scripture

  28 Copy quote

• Recently I was reading somewhere or other an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. Inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion.

  George Orwell

  Christian, Reading, Italian

  George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child's duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.

  C. Sommerville

  Children, Commitment, Self

  4 Copy quote

• Religion is a practical discipline and in the 17th century in the West, we turned it onto a head trip. But it's like dancing, or swimming, or driving, which you can't learn by texts. You have to get into the car and learn how to manipulate the vehicle.

  Karen Armstrong

  Swimming, Car, Discipline

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I live in the 17th century. I don't have a computer. I don't look at the internet. I use a cellphone, and that's about my only connection to the modern world.

  Iris Apfel

  Connections, Looks, Use

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

  Aaron Zigman

  Break, Century, Rachmaninoff

  6 Copy quote

• I'd share a pic if the digital camera battery wasn't as flat as 17th century Earth.

  Simon Haynes

  Technology, Cameras, Batteries

  5 Copy quote

• Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can't wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but heaven has to step it up a bit. They're basically getting by because they only have to be better than hell.

  Joel Stein

  Clouds, Luxury Hotels, Blue

  4 Copy quote

• Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.

  Charles Duhigg

  Risk, Experts, Agents

  4 Copy quote

• You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.

  Eric Hoffer

  Talking, America, Gauges

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think we as Americans know there's a much better alternative than the 17th century practice of burning rocks to power our economy.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Thinking, Rocks, Practice

  4 Copy quote