Medieval Quotes - Page 10

Thank goodness we don't live in medieval times, when people fought wars over ideas.

Wojciech Jaruzelski

War, Ideas, People

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In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.

Alfred North Whitehead

Reality, Class, World

Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.197, Simon and Schuster

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In medieval times, the Church used to sell 'indulgences' for money. This amounted to paying for some number of days' remission from purgatory, and the Church literally (and with breathtaking presumption) issued signed certificates specifying the number of days off that had been purchased. . . . And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history. . . .

Richard Dawkins

Rip, Numbers, Religion

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It [the scientific revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. . . . It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.

Herbert Butterfield

Real, Science, Historical

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In the index to the six hundred odd pages of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, abridged version, the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton do not occur yet their cosmic quest destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in universe and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook, as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet.

Arthur Koestler

Order, Names, Historical

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I don't know of a single instance of these Arab freedom fighters holding up pictures of bin Laden. I know many instances of them displaying American flags in Benghazi or painting 'Facebook' on their foreheads in Cairo. The idea of freedom . . . is absolutely contradictory to what bin Laden stood for, which was . . . taking Muslims back to some medieval theocracy and encouraging people to die not for freedom but to go to paradise and to kill innocent people along the way. The contrast is really striking.

Paul Wolfowitz

Ideas, People, Flags

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Mine was not an Enlightened mind, I now was aware: it was a Gothic mind, medieval in its temper and structure. I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful.

Russell Kirk

Organization, Perfect, Mind

Russell Kirk (1963). “Confessions of a bohemian Tory: episodes and reflections of a vagrant career”

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In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!

Steven Pinker

School, College, Intuition

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...the history of early-medieval Arabia is nearly all legend. Like Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and other founders of patriarchal religions, Mohammed lacks real verification. There is no reliable information about his life or teachings. Most stories about him are as apocryphal as the story that his coffin hangs forever in mid-air "between heaven and earth," like the bodies of ancient sacred kings.

Barbara G. Walker

Jesus, Kings, Real

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Can I get a fork?; There were no utensils in medieval times, hence there ARE no utensils AT Medieval Times- would you like a refill on your Pepsi? ;So there were no utensils but there was Pepsi?; Dude, I got a lot of tables to wait

Matthew Broderick

Cheesy Love, Waiting, Pepsi

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According to the Tax Foundation, taxes now consume more than 38% of the average family's budget. That is more than is spent on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined. Compare this to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor one-third of their output - and they were considered slaves. So what does that make us?

Daniel J. Mitchell

Average, Giving, Liberty

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We cannot wholly rely, as though it were Medieval times, [on the notion that] the only reality is what we see in front of us. There are germs. There are changes that are happening in our planet's ecology that are happening over such a long period of time that we cannot see the changes.

John Hodgman

Reality, Long, Germs

Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. October 21, 2008.

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Adolescence has been recognised as a stage of human development since medieval times--long, long before the industrial revolution--and, as it is now, has long been seen as a phase which centers on the fusion of sexual and social maturity. Indeed, adolescence as a concept has as long a history as that of puberty, which is sometimes considered more concrete, and hence much easier to name and to recognize.

Terri E Apter

Maturity, Names, Long

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Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought.

Kenneth E. Boulding

Escaping, Economics, Moralizing

"Economics As A Moral Science" by Kenneth E. Boulding, in "American Economic Review", 59 (1), (p. 12), March 1969.

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The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Philosophy, Reality, Views

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Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple... Real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with... My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king.

George R. R. Martin

Leadership, Wise, Kings

"George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview". Interview with Mikal Gilmore, www.rollingstone.com. April 23, 2014.

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The Christos-image
is most difficult to disentangle
from its art-craft junk-shop
paint-and-plaster medieval jumble
of pain-worship and death-symbol.

Hilda Doolittle

Jesus, Art, Pain

Hilda Doolittle (1998). “Trilogy”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

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I was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, and my childhood brain perceived medieval Catholicism as an action movie: There's this crazy omnipresent guy who can destroy you at any moment.

Grimes

Crazy, School, Childhood

"Grimes: 'Genesis'". Interview with Carrie Battan, pitchfork.com. August 27, 2012.

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In all times and in all places--in Constantinople, northwestern Zambia, Victorian England, Sparta, Arabia, . . . medieval France,Babylonia, . . . Carthage, Mahenjo-Daro, Patagonia, Kyushu, . . . Dresden--the time span between childhood and adulthood, however fleeting or prolonged, has been associated with the acquisition of virtue as it is differently defined in each society. A child may be good and morally obedient, but only in the process of arriving at womanhood or manhood does a human being become capable of virtue--that is, the qualities of mind and body that realize society's ideals.

Louise J. Kaplan

Children, Zambia, Childhood

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There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets.

Hector Hugh Munro

Names, May, Saint

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Travelling, gentlemen, is medieval, today we have means of communication, not to speak of tomorrow and the day after, means of communication that bring the world into our homes, to travel from one place to another is atavistic.

Max Frisch

Travel, Communication, Home

Max Frisch (1994). “Homo Faber”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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As you travel around medieval England you will come across a sport described by some contemporaries as 'abominable ... more common, undignified and worthless than any other game, rarely ending but with some loss, accident or disadvantage to the players themselves'. This is football.

Ian Mortimer

Sports, Football, Loss

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We are living in modern times throughout the world and yet are dominated by medieval minds.

Eqbal Ahmad

Mind, World, Modern

Eqbal Ahmad, David Barsamian (2017). “Confronting Empire”, p.87, Haymarket Books

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For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me.

Carolyn Parkhurst

Strong, Hurt, Knights

Carolyn Parkhurst (2008). “Lost and Found: A Novel”, Little, Brown

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Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.

Ricky Gervais

Humble, Practice, Atheism

"Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist" by Ricky Gervais, blogs.wsj.com. December 19, 2010.

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