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Anachronism Quotes

Browse 43 quotes about Anachronism.

Anachronism Quotes

“What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby... Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority. This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an 'exercise' undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbells is not a hobby. It is a confession of subservience, not an assertion of liberty.”

LeisureHobbiesMass ProductionAnachronism
Book:A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
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“A sour view of things, I grant you; but one borne out by the history of our age and of the age to come, when Trinity--not the Christians' but Oppenheimer's--will turn Alamogordo sand to glass. In the future, dead cities will molder behind rusting thorns no prince can ever penetrate; dirty bombs will engender tribes of lepers--not by germs, but by deadly atoms; and radioactive isotopes will be left to cool for an age or more, sealed in burial chambers with a pharaoh's curse.”

MisanthropyAnachronismHumanity Sucks
Book:American Meteor
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“Anyone who has read Yeats's wonderful Autobiography will remember his Sligo shabby, shadowed, half country and half sea, full of confused romance, superstition, poverty, eccentricity, unrecognized anachronism, passion and ignorance and the little boy's misery. Yeats was treated well but was bitterly unhappy; he prayed that he would die, and used often to say to himself: "When you are grown up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.”

PeopleWellsLittlesCountryRememberRomanceUsedDiesPassionHalfBoysPovertyWonderfulSeaChildhoodIgnoranceMiseryUnhappyTreatedConfusedSuperstitionsAutobiographyLittle BoysEccentricityShabbyYeatsAnachronism
Author:Randall Jarrell
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“September 11 was a day of de-Enlightenment. Politics stood revealed as a veritable Walpurgis Night of the irrational. And such old, old stuff. The conflicts we now face or fear involve opposed geographical arenas, but also opposed centuries or even millennia. It is a landscape of ferocious anachronisms: nuclear jihad in the Indian subcontinent; the medieval agonism of Islam; the Bronze Age blunderings of the Middle East.”

AgeFacesNightStuffMiddleCenturyConflictEnlightenmentIslamEastNuclearLandscapeIndianMiddle EastSeptemberIrrationalArenaMedievalSeptember 11JihadBronzeOld StuffAnachronism
Author:Martin Amis
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“The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war - which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.”

WorldWritingWarActionBeliefEnergyLostReligiousEmotionLeaderPrideShapesWorshipSpringDestroyedReligious BeliefAnachronism
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“There was a deliberate decision after the failure of the League of Nations to make the next attempt to establish a global political actor sensitive to geopolitical realities. The underlying idea was to provide major states, defined in 1945 by reference to the winners in the Second World War (now an anachronism), with assurance that they could take part in the UN without jeopardising their national interests. In this regard, the UN has succeeded, as none of the big countries has withdrawn, and the Organisation has managed to achieve virtually universal membership of all sovereign states.”

WorldIdeasWarCountryStatesBigsRealityPoliticalNextActorsNationsInterestDecisionAchieveMajorsUniversalRegardDefinedWinnerLeagueSensitiveWar Of The WorldsSovereignAssuranceDeliberateOrganisationSecond World WarMembershipNational InterestsGeopoliticalAnachronismLeague Of Nations
Author:Richard A. Falk
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“Regardless of the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it's a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice.”

MayFactsAcceptingCuttingSacrificeLosingCampaignsAdvertisingCrucialWorth ItLimbsAltarsFacts Of LifeAnachronism
Book:The Likeness: Dublin Murder Squad: 2
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“He shouldn't have said that," repeated Adrian, eerily serious. He leaned his face toward mine. "I don't care if he's not the emotional type or the complimentary type or what. No one can look at you in this dress, in all that fire and gold, and start talking about anachronisms. If I were him, I would have said, 'You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen walking this earth.”

IfsLooksSaidCareEarthBeautifulFacesTalkingFireEmotionalMinesSeriousTypeWalkingCreaturesGoldDressesDon't CareI Don't CareBeautiful CreaturesAnachronism
Author:Richelle Mead
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“One area of the Book of Mormon that does bother some is what they see as anachronistic doctrine; that the Book of Mormon has Christian doctrine prior to the coming of Christ; that it has seemingly New Testament doctrines appearing centuries before Jesus arrives, and it seems to be representing a form of Christianity existing in the New World where there doesn't seem to be much evidence of that archaeologically. Christianity is invisible in the New World prior to the coming of Columbus, and so those things seem like clear anachronisms to people looking at it in that way.”

PeopleWorldWayDoeBookSeemsChristianFormJesusChristChristianityClearCenturyHonestyEvidenceAreasInvisibleDoctrineBotherNew WorldTestamentNew TestamentRepresentingAppearingColumbusAnachronismChristian Doctrine
Author:Daniel C. Peterson
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“Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments... Rightwing pundits bemoan the evident intention of Obama and team to 'tell us what kind of car to drive'. Yet that is exactly what they intend to do...and rightly so. Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change.”

KindCoursesEconomyTeamCarIntentionInvestmentClimateClimate ChangeSettingSettingsIdeologyErasGlobal WarmingConsumptionEvidentHistoricFree MarketPunditsAnachronism
Author:Jeffrey Sachs
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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.”

WorldRealScienceChristianityModernRevolutionHistoricalMereInternalsMentalityEpisodesModern WorldMedievalRenaissanceReformationChristendomDisplacementEuropean HistoryAnachronismScientific Revolution
Author:Herbert Butterfield
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“The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears….”

WorldLongHandsFormSpeakCausesVoiceViolenceMankindDangerousConscienceEarsChaosOneselfBetrayalTemptationCompromiseRevolutionarySatanOver YouRepentInner VoiceMaking PeaceRenounceAnachronismPerfidySpartacus
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“If Mother Culture were to give an account of human history using these terms, it would go something like this: ' The Leavers were chapter one of human history -- a long and uneventful chapter. Their chapter of human history ended about ten thousand years ago with the birth of agriculture in the Near East. This event marked the beginning of chapter two, the chapter of the Takers. It's true there are still Leavers living in the world, but these are anachronisms, fossils -- people living in the past, people who just don't realize that their chapter of human history is over. '”

PeopleIfsWorldGivingYearsHumansLongStillsTwoPastMotherCultureTermRealizingEventsBirthThousandTenYears AgoAccountsEastChaptersAgricultureThousand YearsFossilsHuman HistoryLiving In The PastAnachronismLeavers
Book:Ishmael: A Novel
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“In any institution-factory, university, health center, or whatever-there are a variety of interests that ought to be represented in decision-making: the work force itself, the community in which it is located, users of its products or services, institutions that compete for the same resources. These interests should be directly represented in democratic structures that displace and eliminate private ownership of the means of production or resources, an anachronism with no legitimacy.”

ShouldMeanForceInterestCommunityDecisionProductsOughtResourcesInstitutionsStructureDemocraticUniversityProductionsVarietyDecision MakingFactoriesUsersOwnershipGlobalizationLegitimacyAnachronism
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?”

RealWholeHandsActorsAsksOur LivesSpecialStageMachinesSeasonsFunctionStructurePropertyCriticsBusyTheatreCustomsSurvivingMonumentQuaintOdditiesAnachronismTheatre Actors
Author:Peter Brook
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“I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a vital form. Not only does it allow for the kind of full-blown, richly detailed writing that I love . . . but it permits me to operate on many levels and to explore both the inner state of my characters as well as the worlds beyond them.”

WorldWritingWellsKindDoeStillsStatesCharacterFormLevelsNovelTraditionalRealisingPermitFashionableAnachronism
Author:Paule Marshall
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