Century Quotes - Page 21

• I got myself into a lovely little shall we say controversy with André Breton, by pointing out that the discipline of spontaneity, which he was asking his surrealist neophytes to adopt, was new for language but something that composers had been practicing for centuries.

  Virgil Thomson

  Discipline, Lovely, Asking

  Virgil Thomson (1984). “A Virgil Thomson reader”, Plume

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• I've never regretted I was born too soon. I'm proud to be a child of the twentieth century. I'm satisfied to join its ranks on our side and fight for a new world.

  Naz?m Hikmet

  Children, Fighting, World

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• Prophecy is rash, but it may be that the publication of D.T. Suzuki's first Essays in Zen Buddhism in 1927 will seem to future generations as great an intellectual event as William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century or Marsiglio Ficino's of Plato in the fifteenth.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Plato, Latin, Buddhism

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• Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention...All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Sarcasm, Emotional, Symphony

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• This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.

  E. O. Wilson

  Paradise, Planets

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• In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on as a heat engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Men, Nuclear, Neutrons

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.187, Penguin

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• Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.

  James D. Watson

  Jobs, Moving, Heart

  James D. Watson (2001). “A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society”, p.229, OUP Oxford

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• God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Laughter, Men, Feelings

  A letter to his wife Polly in October 1938. "Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard" by Russell Miller, p. 81, 1987.

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• Philo of Alexandria introduced in the first century what has been described as the 'Hellenizing of the Old Testament,' or the allegorical method of exegesis. By this, as Erdmann observes, the Bible narrative was found to contain a deeper, and particularly an allegorical interpretation, in addition to its literal interpretation; this was not conscious disingenuousness but a natural mode of amalgamating the Greek philosophic with the Hebraic doctrines.

  Philo

  Greek, Alexandria, Firsts

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• It is through the multitudinous mass of living human hearts, of human acts and words of love and truth, that the Christ of the first century has become the Christ of the nineteenth.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Heart, Firsts, Christ

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1872). “The National Thanksgiving: Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey: 1. Death and Life, December 10,1871; 2. The Trumpet of Patmos, December 17, 1871; 3. The Day of Thanksgiving, March 3, 1872”, p.15

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• Imitation of the art of earlier centuries, as that done by Picasso and Modigliani , is carried on not to perpetuate ancient values but to demonstrate that new aesthetic orders now prevail.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Order, Done

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.138, University of Chicago Press

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• If this is the degree of inflation planned for in advance, the real outcome is indeed likely to be such that most of those who will retire at the end of the century will be dependent on the charity of the younger generation. And ultimately not morals but the fact that the young supply the police and the army will decide the issue: concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the young.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Real, Fate, Army

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Part III. Freedom in the Welfare State, Chap. 19 : Social Security, 1960.

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• The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.

  Michel Foucault

  Broken, Silence, Syntax

  Michel Foucault, Keith Hoeller, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacob Needleman (1984). “Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry”

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• In one decade, women had gotten more protection against offensive jokes in the workplace than men had gotten in centuries against being killed in the workplace.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Workplace, Offensive

  Warren Farrell (1993). “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex”

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• Humans tend to start the process of change by acknowledging themselves. Thus blacks asserted black pride and 'black is beautiful;' women declared 'I am woman, I am strong'; men are saying 'I am man, I am okay.' After a quarter of a century of male bashing, that's not a bad start.

  Warren Farrell

  Beautiful, Strong, Pride

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• Just as women needed the help of the law to enter the workplace in the 20th century, men will need the help of the law to love their children in the 21st century.

  Warren Farrell

  Children, Men, Law

  "Father and Child Reunion". Book by Warren Farrell, 2001.

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• The US has unthinkingly embarked upon a neoimperial policy that must involve us in virtually every great war of the coming century-and wars are the death of republics. If we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the weapon of the weak-terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on US soil.

  Pat Buchanan

  War, Enemy, One Day

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• The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

  Irving Kristol

  Political, Events, Socialism

  "Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea". Book by Irving Kristol, September 20, 1995.

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• We find upon all occasions, the early Christian writers speak of the Father as superior to the Son, and in general they give him the title of God , as distinguished from the Son; and sometimes they expressly call him, exclusively of the Son, the only true God ; a phraseology which does not at all accord with the idea of the perfect equality of all the persons in the Trinity. But it might well be expected, that the advances to the present doctrine of the Trinity should be gradual and slow. It was, indeed, some centuries before it was completely formed.

  Joseph Priestley

  Christian, Father, Son

  Joseph Priestley (1871). “A History of the Corruptions of Christianity”, p.16

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• Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound changes.

  Pope Paul VI

  Men, Jewels, Profound

  "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus". Encyclical of Pope Paul VI, w2.vatican.va. June 24, 1967.

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• Cobden was the greatest statesman and prophet of the century. His speeches are an inspiration. A man whose disciple I am willing to confess I am.

  Richard Cobden

  Inspiration, Men, Speech

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• I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Character, Mean, Writing

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• We cannot continue to have an excellence gap with the rest of the world and intend to remain the [economic superpower] and [military superpower] of the planet. That's just not going to happen. We're in a position where unless we take action, we'll end up being the [France] of the 21st century: a lot of talk, but not a lot of strength behind it in terms of economic capability.

  Mitt Romney

  Military, Excellence, World

  Boston Globe, November 16, 2005.

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• I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st Century - still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world...

  Mitt Romney

  America, Leader, World

  "Romney suspends White House bid". news.bbc.co.uk. February 8, 2008.

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• I find Chinese debates about their political system domestically, but also about China's claims in the international system, to be among the most original and surprising and exciting of our time. The starting point is a system that none of us had anticipated, which I call Leninist capitalism, but also obviously because it is the most important emerging power. The question of China's relations with the United States in particular, and the rest of the world in general, is the question of war and peace in the 21st century.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  War, Political, Chinese

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