Contemporary Quotes

• One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.

  Joseph Campbell

  Life, Humanity, Way

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.182, Anchor

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• If the individual is to be happy in the contemporary order, he must be open-minded with respect to new values and new arrangements.

  Thomas Cochrane

  Respect, Order, Tolerance

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• The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Past, Gaps, Generations

  Spiro T. Agnew (1970). “Frankly speaking: a collection of extraordinary speeches”

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• Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

  W. H. Auden

  Responsibility, Aristocracy, Poetic

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("American Poetry"), (p. 367), 1962.

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• Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.

  Orlando Bloom

  Pieces, Wanted

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• The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Flattery, Posterity

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Dreamtigers”, p.34, University of Texas Press

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• Many contemporary authors drink more than they write.

  Maxim Gorky

  Drinking, Writing, Drink

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• Do I think all contemporary Christian music is good? No.

  Amy Grant

  Christian, Thinking, Music Is

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• Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

  Abbie Hoffman

  Law, Justice, Expedience

  Abbie Hoffman (1982). “Square Dancing in the Ice Age”, p.218, South End Press

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• The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

  Edward Hopper

  Art, Mean, Ethos

  "Oral history interview with Edward Hopper". Interview with John Morse, www.aaa.si.edu. June 17, 1959.

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• A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.

  Arthur Koestler

  Ambition, Years, Hundred

  In 'New York Times Book Review' 1 April 1951

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• The intellectual debility of contemporary conservatism is indicated by its silence on all important matters.

  Christopher Lasch

  Silence, Intellectual, Important

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• Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.

  Christopher Lasch

  Smile, Buttons, Denial

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• What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

  Walter Scott

  Women, Diaries, Treasure

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• The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

  Gertrude Stein

  Art, Differences, People

  Gertrude Stein (2012). “Ida: A Novel”, p.326, Yale University Press

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• The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.

  Simone Weil

  Lying, Greatness, Civilization

  "The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind".

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• But, number one, I think traditional noir doesn't work in contemporary storytelling because we don't live in that world anymore

  Brian De Palma

  Thinking, Numbers, Noir

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• You know, I listen to contemporary music all the time

  Brian De Palma

  Listen To Your Heart, Contemporary Music, Knows

  Brian De Palma, Laurence F. Knapp (2003). “Interviews”, p.179, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.

  Russell M. Nelson

  Retirement, Challenges, Helping

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• Contemporary thinkers would say that man is continuously transcending himself.

  Gabriel Marcel

  Men, Thinker, Transcending

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• One cannot set out to make a work that's spiritual. What is a contemporary iconography for the spiritual? Is it some fuzzy space?

  Anish Kapoor

  Spiritual, Space, Iconography

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• However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

  Helen Dunmore

  Writing, Historical, Pleasure

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• The '90s are really the 'Sex and the City' woman, and I think, right now, the new contemporary woman is the 'Lipstick Jungle' woman.

  Candace Bushnell

  Sex, Thinking, Cities

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• The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

  Kit Williams

  Religion, Advertising, Ancient

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• Marks of Identity is, among other things, the expression of the process of alienation in a contemporary intellectual with respect to his own country.

  Juan Goytisolo

  Respect, Country, Expression

  "Understanding Juan Goytisolo". Book by Randolph D. Pope, 1995.

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