20th Century Quotes

• Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Damage Is Done, Earth, Century

  57 Copy quote

• If the history of the 20th Century proved anything, it proved that however bad things were, human ingenuity could usually find a way to make them worse.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Way, Century, Ingenuity

  28 Copy quote

• If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky.

  Carl Sagan

  Century, Biking, Tandem Bikes

  "Cosmos".

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.

  Elie Wiesel

  Education, Keys, Hatred

  18 Copy quote

• The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Discovery, Accomplishment

  8 Copy quote

• The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

  Stephen Ambrose

  War, Century, Made

  6 Copy quote

• Big machines are the awe-inspiring cathedrals of the 20th century.

  Daniel Kleppner

  Machines, Century, Bigs

  4 Copy quote

• The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Drama, Century, Has Beens

  "Great Performances (Leonard Bernstein: The Gift of Music)". TV Series, December 29, 1993.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Rivers, Mind, Environmental

  18 Copy quote

• Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Business, Social Unrest, Done

  "Ann Coulter, the pin-up model" by Elana Schor, www.theguardian.com. November 17, 2008.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• [During the 20th century] ... 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners.

  Rudolph Rummel

  Children, Men, Liberty

  9 Copy quote

• No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity; we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.

  Walter Lippmann

  Average, Sea, Way

  4 Copy quote

• Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Business, Journey

  19 Copy quote

• The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.

  William Lyon Phelps

  Life, Spiritual, Disease

  10 Copy quote

• The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence -- rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage, uncontrollable emotion, and a desperate search for identity. Out of adolescence, however, comes maturity in which physical growth with all its attendant difficulties comes to an end, but in which growth continues in knowledge, in spirit, in community, and in love; it is to this that we look forward as a human race. This goal, once seen with our eyes, will draw our faltering feet toward it.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Eye, Maturity, Feet

  4 Copy quote

• The 19th century was a century of empires, the 20th century was a century of nation states. The 21st century will be a century of cities.

  Wellington Webb

  Cities, Empires, Century

  9 Copy quote

• Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Health, Psychics, Disease

  A World Split Apart, delivered 8 June 1978, Harvard University

  86 Copy quote

  Show source

• Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

  Sam Ervin

  Science, Tests, Century

  9 Copy quote

• Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done.

  Russell Means

  Hero, Athlete, People

  23 Copy quote

• At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

  Brian Eno

  Art, Ambition, Painting

  7 Copy quote

• I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

  David Hockney

  Thinking, Doubt, Century

  "'Cooler than Warhol, more enduring than Freud'". Interview with Jonathan Jones, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was wrong to allow Stalin to shape the European landscape of the 20th century. It would be even more wrong to let him shape the landscape of the 21st century

  Lawrence Summers

  Europe, Would Be, Shapes

  8 Copy quote

• More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.

  Dennis Prager

  Tyrants, Done, Dictator

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Distraction is the most corrosive disease of the 20th century.

  James Victore

  Disease, Distraction, Century

  7 Copy quote

• The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Democracies Have, Australia Day

  Noam Chomsky (1997). “World Orders, Old and New”, p.89, Pluto Press

  71 Copy quote

  Show source