Modern Quotes - Page 33

• The dilemma of modern society: the conflict between the need for capital formation at a high rate and the popular condemnation of interest and dividends as "unearned income" and "capitalist," if not as sinful and wicked.

  Peter Drucker

  Wicked, Income, Needs

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• Regarding social order, [Francis] Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F. A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century.

  Douglass North

  Fashion, Writing, Order

  "Orders of the Day" by Douglass North, reason.com. November 1999.

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• .. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.

  Irving Kristol

  Intelligent, Hayek, Periods

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• It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be 'treated as cattle'.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Strong, Government, Practice

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• Traditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and religion and work and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into others.

  Ivan Illich

  Meaningful, Men, Circles

  Ivan Illich, Lionel Rubinoff (1971). “Tradition and Revolution”, Macmillan of Canada ; New York : St. Martin's Press

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• That is the crux of modern conservatism - government taking strong measures to foster the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual independence.

  George Will

  Strong, Attitude, Government

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• Simple femininity is the most important thing about a woman, and it is a quality a great many women are in jeopardy of losing. Women are being emancipated out of their femininity in this modern age.

  Yul Brynner

  Simple, Important, Age

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• Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He is turned is back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Men, Boredom, World

  Carlos Castaneda (1984). “Fire from Within”, p.148, Simon and Schuster

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• Death and dying provide a meeting-point between the Tibetan Buddhist and modern scientific traditions. I believe both have a great deal to contribute to each other on the level of understanding and of practical benefit.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Believe, Understanding

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• Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present.

  Carl Jung

  Spiritual, Impact, People

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• I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

  Joni Mitchell

  Hero, Thinking, Artist

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• Our modern ideas of 'functioning' through things are really quite inhuman. We have this idea that no matter what is going on we still have to color between the lines, act normal.

  Julia Cameron

  Color, Ideas, Lines

  Julia Cameron (1999). “The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life”, p.77, Penguin

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• The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.

  Umberto Eco

  Running, Causes, Facts

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The man is the Piltdown Man of modern politics.

  Charlie Pierce

  Men, He Man, Modern Politics

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• Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence

  Anthony Daniels

  Childhood, Britain, Adolescence

  "Our Culture, What’s Left Of It". Frontpage Magazine interview, archive.frontpagemag.com. August 31, 2005.

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• The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality.

  Hannah Arendt

  Reality, Differences, Victory

  Hannah Arendt (2012). “Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There's a whole lot of America that looks at each other and says, 'Well, there's 340 million people living in America. Isn't there somebody other than a Bush or a Clinton who can be president in these modern times'?

  Jeb Bush

  America, People, President

  "Brian Schweitzer Mulling 2016 Presidential Bid" by Scott Conroy, www.realclearpolitics.com. October 18, 2013.

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• Paris is one of the largest, and certainly it is the pleasantest, of modern American cities.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Cities, Paris, American Cities

  Sinclair Lewis (1956). “Dodsworth”

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• The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dark, Thinking, Past

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• The legalized liquor business is the tragedy of our civilization. Alcohol is the greatest and most blighting curse of our modern civilization. The liquor seller is simply and only a privileged malefactor - a criminal.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Civilization, Alcohol, Tragedy

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• What disconcerts the modern world at its very roots is not being sure, and not seeing how it ever could be sure, that there is an outcome-a suitable outcome to evolution. Half our present uneasiness would be turned to happiness if we could once make up our minds to accept the facts and place the essence and the measure of our modern cosmogonies within a noogenesis.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Essence, Roots, Mind

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• The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration.

  Carl Sagan

  Inspiration, Doubt, Mind

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.61, Ballantine Books

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• There is one bit of advice given us by the ancient Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest; and lending money at interest - what we call investment - is the basis of our whole system.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Teacher, People

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.79, HarperCollins UK

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• For me, wellbehaved books with neat plots and worked-out endings seem somewhat quaint in the face of the largely incoherent reality of modern life; and then again fiction, at least as I write it and think of it, is a kind of religious meditation in which language is the final enlightenment, and it is language, in its beauty, its ambiguity and its shifting textures, that drives my work.

  Don DeLillo

  Religious, Book, Writing

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• Modern man is battered by the fundamental forces of his own psyche.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Force, Battered

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