Century Quotes - Page 13

• Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods.

  John W. Campbell

  Men, Bird, Trying

  John W. Campbell Jr. (1955). “Who Goes There?: And Other Stories”

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• When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.

  Max Planck

  Teacher, Science, Dust

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• Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century?

  Thomas Homer-Dixon

  Smart, Average, Problem

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• We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period, provided we work slowly and consistently. Anthony Trollope, the nineteenth-century writer who managed to be a prolific novelist while also revolutionizing the British postal system, observed, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency fosters both productivity and creativity.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Running, Creativity, Daily Tasks

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• Men had made, we believe, fundamental changes in the doctrines, purposes, and practices of the Pristine Gospel and Church. There had been an apostasy, or a falling away from the true character of Christ's teachings in the centuries which followed the Apostolic age.

  Lowell L. Bennion

  Fall, Teaching, Believe

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• You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Winning, Two

  "Obama wants new approach after shutdown" by Tom Cohen, www.cnn.com. October 18, 2013.

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• Even theologians, even the great theologians of the thirteenth century, even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God.

  Henry Adams

  Saint, Assuming, Existence

  Henry Adams (1986). “Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres”, p.58, Penguin

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• The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Philosophy, Men, Political

  Vladimir Il'ich Lenin (1975). “Izbrannye Proizvedenii͡a V Trekh Tomakh”

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• We tried some experiments in mind reading which were not very successful. Think mind reading contrary to common sense, wise provision of the Bon Dieu that we cannot read each others minds, twould stop civilization and everybody would take to the woods. In fifty or hundred thousand centuries when mankind have become perfect by evolution then perhaps this sense could be developed with safety to the state.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Wise, Reading, Successful

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• After an interval of two and a half centuries, the tradition of mystic illumination renewed itself in Italy and Germany.

  James Mark Baldwin

  Illumination, Two, Germany

  James Mark Baldwin (1913). “From the earliest times to John Locke.- v. 2. From John Locke to the present time”

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• Participatory complexity may well be the key descriptor of the 21st century - in our economies, in our politics, and in our everyday lives.

  Jamais Cascio

  Keys, Everyday, May

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• The biggest potential and actual crises of the 21st century all have a strong, long, slow aspect with a significant lag between cause and effect. We have to train ourselves to be thinking in terms of longer-term results.

  Jamais Cascio

  Strong, Thinking, Long

  "SXSW: Futurist Jamais Cascio Sees GOP Filters, Alt Energy". Interview with Lewis Wallace, www.wired.com. March 10, 2008.

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• Helvetica was a real step from the 19th century typeface... We were impressed by that because it was more neutral, and neutralism was a word that we loved. It should be neutral. It shouldn't have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface.

  Wim Crouwel

  Real, Steps, Should

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• Absolutely delightful, at first for its unspoiled picture of late-nineteenth-century Japan as seen through the eyes of three remarkable but very different Americans, [the missionary William Elliot Griffis [1843-1928], the scientist Edward Sylvester Morse [1838-1925], and the writer Lafcadio Hearn], and then for the marvelous reconstruction of how Japan worked on their minds, radically changing their perceptions of the country and the whole relationship between East and West--between the barbarian and the civilized. The book is a tour de force.

  Edwin O. Reischauer

  Country, Book, Eye

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• Perfume has a long and fascinating history and the beautifully crafted bottles used to store it over the centuries demonstrate its importance. Each has mirrored the latest tastes in fashion technology, design and art.

  Judith Miller

  Fashion, Art, Technology

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• A century is about events. A decade is about people.

  George Friedman

  People, Events, Decades

  George Friedman (2011). “The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going”, p.1, Anchor

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• Innovation has stalled in the banking industry. While the rest of the world is in the digital age, banking remains stagnant. We are here to change this and bring banking to the 21st century. We will ensure our customers feel involved in the progress of this bank and are offering them a truly enjoyable banking experience – different from anything they have experienced before.

  Jay Sidhu

  Offering, Innovation, Age

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• An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Monday, Philosophy, Believe

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• I believe that in years to come, historians will see the beginning of the 21st century as the ‘golden age’ of real estate.

  David Lereah

  Real, Believe, Years

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• Ann Sjoerdsma has successfully blended the fascinating story of her illustrious father's scientific achievements [in wide-ranging] drug research, with an enjoyable historic account of the astounding progress of biomedical science during the second half of the 20th century.

  Arvid Carlsson

  Father, Achievement, Drug

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• No one sane would let a first-century dentist fill their children's teeth. Why then do we allow first-century theologians to fill our children's minds?

  Michael Dowd

  Children, Mind, Teeth

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• The greatest Marxist writer of the twentieth century, paradoxically, is also one of the greatest examples of the independence of the human spirit from its material limitations.

  James Joll

  Independence, Example, Spirit

  James Joll (1978). “Antonio Gramsci”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wit

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.228, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Eye, Thinking, Everyday

  "History as a System". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1962.

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• As a result of changes which, over the last century, have modified our empirically based pictures of the world and hence the moral value of many of its elements, the "human religious ideal" inclines to stress certain tendencies and to express itself in terms which seem, at first sight, no longer to coincide with the "christian religious ideal".

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Christian, Religious, Stress

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (2015). “The Divine Milieu”, p.3, Lulu Press, Inc

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