Modern Life Quotes - Page 5

• In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world.

  Andrew Weil

  People, World, Disease

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• They say atomic rad-i-ation can hurt your reproductive organs. My answer is, so can a hockey stick. But we don't stop building them.

  Johnny Carson

  Hurt, Hockey, Answers

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• The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Say Anything, Awful, Sacrilegious

  William F. Buckley, Jr. (2016). “A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century”, p.129, Crown Forum

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• Those who give up cigarette smoking aren't the heroes. The real heroes are the rest of us - who have to listen to them.

  Hal Boyle

  Giving Up, Real, Hero

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• This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as "regulations" but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.

  Robert Benchley

  Night, Office, Tables

  Robert Benchley (1970). “Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• It must be a source of great chagrin to those in charge to think of so many people being able to stick a stamp on a letter and drop it in a mail box without any trouble or suffering at all. They are probably working on a system this very minute, trying to devise some way in which the public can be made to fill out a blank, stand in line, consult some underling who will refer him to a superior, and then be made to black up with burned cork before they can mail a letter.

  Robert Benchley

  Thinking, People, Suffering

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• Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.

  Robert Benchley

  Children, Class, Bulgaria

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.25, Glendower Media

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• My program is to leave the fools to nature. She has diseases with which to deal with them.

  Bruce Barton

  Disease, Fool, Program

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• A $10 million windfall? At today's prices, I'd feel almost as rich as I did one day in 1936 when I found a dime on the sidewalk and blew the whole wad on 20 Mary Jane candy bars, a box of jujubes, and a double feature.

  Russell Baker

  One Day, Dimes, Bars

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• We can't test these absolute limits on humans. We can't blast them with sound. However, we can do that to animals because they don't have the same political base that we do.

  John Baird

  Animal, Political, Sound

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• We [Americans] are game-playing, fun-loving creatures; we are the otters of the universe.

  Richard Bach

  Fun, Games, Otters

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• The Egyptians had the locusts and in the Middle Ages there was the Black Death with the rats, but tourists are the plague of our century and we'll not survive this one.

  Richard Conniff

  Black, Age, Tourists

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• But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.

  William Carlos Williams

  Art, Lying, Writing

  William Carlos Williams (1920). “Kora in Hell: Improvisations”

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• When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Character, Glasses

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• The ablest men in all walks of modern life are men of faith. Most of them have much more faith than they themselves realize.

  Bruce Barton

  Life, Faith, Men

  Bruce Barton (1927). “What Can a Man Believe?”, McClelland & Stewart

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• Are they moved by a sense of human need for silence, for reflection, for inner seeking? So they want to get away from the noise and tension of modern life, at least for a little while, in order to relax their minds and wills and seek a blessed healing sense of inner unity, reconciliation, integration?

  Thomas Merton

  Blessed, Healing, Reflection

  Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.44, Macmillan

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• Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life.

  Jerry Saltz

  Artist, Years, Style

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• The fellow who says he'll meet you halfway usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line.

  Orlando Aloysius Battista

  Funny, Thinking, Lines

  Orlando Aloysius Battista (1981). “Quotoons: a speaker's dictionary”, Perigee

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• Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages - the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ's divinity - are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.

  Barack Obama

  Christian, Muslim Faith, Mind Blowing

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

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• We regard as 'scientific' a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories, and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussion and conclusions. The complexity and diversity of all the phenomena of modern life, the great possibilities and dangers linked with the scientific-technical revolution and with a number of social tendencies demand precisely such an approach, as has been acknowledged in a number of official statements.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Science, Views, Numbers

  Andrei D. Sakharov (1968). “Progress, coexistence, and intellectual freedom”

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• I wonder why you can always read a doctor's bill and you can never read his prescription.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Get Well Soon, Doctors, Bills

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• Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.

  Jacques Ellul

  Growing Up, Class, Numbers

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• The frenetic pace of modern life can lead to an obscuring or even a loss of what is truly human... Perhaps more than in other periods of history, our time is in need of that genius which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance.

  Pope John Paul II

  Faith, Inspiration, Loss

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• Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?

  Peg Bracken

  Memorable, Cutting, Two

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• Last year we said, 'Things can't go on like this', and they didn't, they got worse.

  Will Rogers

  Years, Goes On, Lasts

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1995). “Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers ...)”, M Evans & Company

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