Contemporary Life Quotes - Page 2

• The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Religious

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• [Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928)

  Pierre Mac Orlan

  Photography, Artist, Documentaries

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• I wanted to revolutionise habits and contemporary life - to liberate nature, to free it from the authority of old theories and classicism... I felt a tremendous urge to re-create a new world seen through my own eyes, a world which was entirely mine.

  Maurice de Vlaminck

  Eye, World, Habit

  Maurice de Vlaminck (1967). “Dangerous corner”

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• The major impediment to experiencing the sacred depths of ordinary moments is the speed and distraction of contemporary life that moves to the imperatives of the global economic order.In addition, we increasingly live in a virtual world in which our reality is filtered through media and information technology.

  Sam Keen

  Moving, Technology, Reality

  Source: www.spiritualityandpractice.com

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• I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

  Richard Powers

  Technology, Thinking, Novelists

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• I suppose in a way most of my characters are non-consumers, not terribly interested in all the little baubles and artifacts of contemporary life.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Character, Littles, Way

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Independent, Punishment, Anxiety

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

  June Jordan

  Who I Am, America, Soul

  1969 'Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person', in the Evergreen Review, Oct.

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• I am making an Enlightenment Capsule for the audience to meditate inside - virtual reality in which people can experience ancient ideas from the East... But I'm not interested in using ancient things; rather I want to connect them with contemporary life through the technology we have now.

  Mariko Mori

  Technology, Reality, Ideas

  Interview with Kunié Sugiura, www.jca-online.com.

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• I suppose in our contemporary lives, our cumulative e-mails might constitute a kind of diary: that informal, moment-by-moment description of life as it goes by. . As I think of those notes now - what I wrote, what I said - it seems to me they danced across the surface just as my grandmother's diaries did - Anais Nin she wasn't, and I wasn't, either. Who is? Not even Anais Nin.

  Sue Miller

  Grandmother, Thinking, Diaries

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