Century Quotes - Page 15

• Modern art did not just happen. It came as a result of a deep reversal of spiritual values in the Age of Reason, a movement that in the course of a little more than two centuries changed the world.

  Hans Rookmaaker

  Spiritual, Art, Two

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• What we need most is to restore and revive our humanity. We must create a society where people can live with dignity, a society where people can live in peace and happiness. People are tired of games played for power and profit. People are tired of hatred and conflict. They want to live with more wisdom and confidence, and in peace. It may seem like a long and distant path, but I am convinced that the 21st century must see a movement to sow the seeds of peace, happiness and trust in every person's heart. The seeds of a truly humane way of life. I am convinced this is the only path.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Tired, Heart, Humane Way

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• Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability.

  Hugh Herr

  Foundation, Fundamentals, Disability

  "The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance". TED conference, www.ted.com. March 2014.

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• Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man. That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Dream, Men, Style

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• For me, it's important to build good partnerships rather than score centuries. Once, you have those partnerships, you will also get centuries.

  Mahendra Singh Dhoni

  Important, Partnership, Score

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• By the end of the Twentieth Century, taxation will be reduced to a minimum, the entire world will be open to trade, and there will be no need of a standing army.

  Erastus Wiman

  Army, Needs, Taxation

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• Jay-Z and Kanye West are to authentic rap culture what diseased rates were to 14th century Europeans

  Dean Cavanagh

  Rap, Culture, West

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• The intertwining of corporations and government has become so extensive in this century that the notion of a democratic balancing act has become a dangerous illusion-and one of the cornerstones of the corporate mystique.

  Charles Derber

  Government, Corporations, Illusion

  Charles Derber (2014). “Corporation Nation: How Corporations are Taking Over Our Lives -- and What We Can Do About It”, p.34, St. Martin's Press

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• Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth.

  M. King Hubbert

  Two, Growth, Culture

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• What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

  Bertrand Piccard

  Inspire, Aviation, Should

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• The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil…. We [will] start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century.

  David Goodstein

  Running, Oil, Fuel

  David Goodstein (2005). “Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In the nineteenth century one had to give all sorts of guarantees and lead an exemplary life in order to cleanse oneself in the eyes of the bourgeois of the sin of writing, for literature is, in essence, heresy. The situation has not changed except that it is now the Communists, that is, the qualified representatives of the proletariat, who as a matter of principle regard the writer as suspect.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Writing, Eye, Order

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• American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Country, African Tribes, Missionary

  "The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, "The Great War: The Triumph of E. D. Morel", p. 157, 1957.

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• Human beings need community. If there are no communities available for constructive ends, there will be destructive, murderous communities... Only the social sector, that is, the nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, can create what we now need, communities for citizens... What the dawning 21st century needs above all is equally explosive growth of the nonprofit social sector in building communities in the newly dominant social environment, the city.

  Peter Drucker

  Cities, Organization, Community

  "Civilizing the City". Leader to Leader, No. 7, 1998.

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• The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests upon an extreme position in a continuum. The Cartesian tradition, formulated explicitly in the seventeenth century, but developed in "folk" and other versions throughout human history no doubt, holds that other animals are little more than unfeeling machines, with only humans enjoying "consciousness," however defined.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Animal, Doubt, Machines

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• THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY WAS DUE PRIMARILY TO A NEW BURST OF RELIGIOUS LIFE EMANATING FROM THE CHRISTIAN IMPULSE. . . . NEVER IN ANY CORRESPONDING LENGTH OF TIME HAD THE CHRISTIAN IMPULSE GIVEN RISE TO SO MANY NEW MOVEMENTS. NEVER HAD IT HAD QUITE SO GREAT AN EFFECT UPON WESTERN EUROPEAN PEOPLES. IT WAS FROM THIS ABOUNDING VIGOR THAT THERE ISSUED THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE WHICH DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SO AUGMENTED THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH AND THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

  Kenneth Scott Latourette

  Christian, Religious, Missionary

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• The element of heroic maleness had always been present in the concept of the artist as one who rides the winged horse above the clouds beyond the sight of lesser men, a concept seldom applied to those who worked with colours until the nineteenth century. When the inevitable question is asked, "Why are there no great women artists?" it is this dimension of art that is implied. The askers know little of art, but they know the seven wonders of the painting world.

  Germaine Greer

  Horse, Art, Men

  Germaine Greer (2001). “The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work”, p.105, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

  Boris Pasternak

  Sleep, Men, Thinking

  "Doctor Zhivago". Book by Boris Pasternak. Paraphrase of the 1958 translation, as quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978), 1957.

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• The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value.

  Simone Weil

  Ideas, Firsts, Weakness

  Simone Weil (1977). “The Simone Weil Reader”

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• In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.

  Simone Weil

  Men, Evil, Effort

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil, Translated by R. Rees, "The responsibility of writers," p. 168, 1968.

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• During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

  Simone Weil

  Girl, Spiritual, Eye

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil. Translated by R. Rees, "Morality and literature," p. 164, 1968.

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• The world's in a bad way, my man, And bound to be worse before it mends; Better lie up in the mountain here Four or five centuries, While the stars go over the lonely ocean.

  Robinson Jeffers

  Lonely, Stars, Lying

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (2001). “The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers”, p.564, Stanford University Press

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• There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

  William S. Burroughs

  Government, Law, Cities

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.416, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.

  John Stuart Mill

  Father, Training, May

  John Stuart Mill (2013). “Autobiography”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Running, Exhausted, Force

  John Maynard Keynes (1929). “The Economic Consequences of the Peace: The classic text on the Treaty of Versailles and post war Europe”, p.150, Harriman House Limited

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