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Century Quotes

“When you have schools that are operating in the 20th century, and we're trying to prepare our children for the 21st century, even those children know they are not educated in the right way.”

Knows Way Trying Children School Century Our Children Educated 21st Century Right Way 20th Century

Author:Donna Edwards

“The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives, and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century.”

People Knows Firsts Heart War Dies Numbers Century Security Died Decades Aids Agendas 21st Century 20th Century Rivals Hiv Hiv Aids

Author:Al Gore

“No one was more important to the game of baseball in the last half of the 20th century than Henry Aaron and no one writes about that supremely talented man, that tumultuous time and this treasure of a game better than Howard Bryant. Together, they are an extraordinary combination, and the book Bryant has written gets to the heart of the complicated and dignified, patient and consistent genuine hero that is Henry Aaron.”

Men Writing Heart Important Book Together Lasts Games Half Written Century Hero Baseball Extraordinary Patient Complicated Treasure Genuine Combination Consistent 20th Century

Author:Ken Burns

“Nietzche . . . he was a confirmed Life Force worshipper. It was he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant.”

World Running Force Century Tired Humble Flesh Servant 20th Century Worshippers Prometheus Craze

Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

“We cannot meet 21st Century challenges with a 20th Century bureaucracy.”

Challenges Century 21st Century Bureaucracy 20th Century

Author:Barack Obama

“20th century poetry is a piñata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.”

Earth Poetry Break Century Poet Strikes Poetry Is 20th Century

Author:Diane Glancy

“I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.”

“Not being able to address the attribution of change in the early 20th century to my mind precludes any highly confident attribution of change in the late 20th century.”

Mind Able Century Late Addresses 20th Century Attribution

Author:Judith Curry

“I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.”

People Knows World Kind America Century New York Areas Catholic Who I Am Italian Impressed Urban 20th Century Decency Downtown Roman Catholic Italian American Skid Row

Author:Martin Scorsese

“We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.”

“In the 20th century, we had a century where at the beginning of the century, most of the world was agricultural and industry was very primitive. At the end of that century, we had men in orbit, we had been to the moon, we had people with cell phones and colour televisions and the Internet and amazing medical technology of all kinds.”

People Men World Kind Ends Technology Century Television Industry Internet Moon Phones Medical All Kinds Cells Colour Primitive 20th Century Cell Phone Orbit Medical Technology

Author:David Gerrold

“The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - "Is this all?"”

“The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century.”

States America United United States Century Latin Dictatorship 20th Century Latin America

Author:Carlos Fuentes

“Mention the gothic, and many readers will probably picture gloomy castles and an assortment of sinister Victoriana. However, the truth is that the gothic genre has continued to flourish and evolve since the days of Bram Stoker, producing some of its most interesting and accomplished examples in the 20th century - in literature, film and beyond.”

Film Literature Interesting Century Example Reader Truth Is Evolve Genre Accomplished 20th Century Castles Gothic Most Interesting Gloomy Sinister Stoker

Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.”

Century Late Adore 20th Century Classical Music

Author:Gregory Maguire

“The rate of technological and human physiological change in the 20th century has been remarkable. Beyond that, a synergy between the improved technology and physiology is more than the simple addition of the two.”

Humans Has Beens Two Simple Technology Century Rate Remarkable Technological 20th Century Physiological Physiology Synergy

Author:Robert Fogel

“The Warmth of Other Suns is a sweeping and yet deeply personal tale of America's hidden 20th century history - the long and difficult trek of Southern blacks to the northern and western cities. This is an epic for all Americans who want to understand the making of our modern nation.”

Want Long America Nations Difficult Cities Sun Modern Century Western Tales Warmth Southern Epic 20th Century Sweeping

Author:Tom Brokaw

“I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.”

Thinking Humans Made Self Values Half Moral Rights Progress Century Losing Concern Sight Relation Human Rights Self Respect 20th Century Respecting Others Concern For Others

Author:Alexander McCall Smith

“As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership.”

Littles President Views Century Passing Passings Accomplishment Staying 20th Century Acquaintance Staying Power

Author:Robert Dallek

“Television is, to my mind, the most insidious drug that the 20th Century has had to deal with.”

Mind Deals Century Television Drug 20th Century Insidious

Author:Terence McKenna

“During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, which are, especially in living things, combined together in intricate molecular assemblages.”

Made Earth Together Century Essence Structure Scales Substance Colour Atoms 20th Century Living Things Texture Intricate Microscopes Hardness Assemblage

Author:Martin Rees

“I won't mention the word tired. This is the 20th century and I can go around a little faster.”

Littles I Can Century Tired Faster 20th Century

Author:Geri Halliwell

“Taking photographs is generally an act of 'looking at the object, whereas 'being seen' or 'showing' is what is most interest to one who does a self-portrait...self-portraits deny not only photography itself but the 20th century as an era as well...an inevitable phenomenon at the end of the 20th century.”

Wells Doe Ends Self Interest Century Objects Photography Photograph Deny Eras Inevitable Phenomenon Portraits 20th Century Self Portrait Self Portrait Photography

Author:Yasumasa Morimura

“Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, is an eloquent and restrained portrait of one man's exile. It is a rare narrative in that it charts a life divided between England and Sudan. Without a doubt it is one of the finest Arabic novels of the 20th century, and Denys Johnson-Davies' translationdoes the original justice.”

Men Justice Novel Doubt Century Seasons England Originals Narrative One Man Divided Finest Portraits 20th Century Exile Johnson Eloquent Migration Sudan

Author:Hisham Matar

“I should say many things. Mexico has been one of the losers of the 20th century. We tried many different alternatives to development and unfortunately we have 40 percent of the population poor; we have a per capita income that is extremely low.”

Should Has Beens Different Poor Century Development Lows Percent Population Income Alternatives Loser Mexico 20th Century

Author:Vicente Fox

“By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites. Eighty percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can't read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago.”

“First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality.”

Firsts Looks Kind Forget Century Musician Structure Surprise Traditional 20th Century Exhaustion Surprise Me Traditional Music

Author:Pierre Schaeffer

“I've always been in love with the movies. They're the dreams of the 20th Century.”

Dream Century 20th Century Been In Love

Author:Arne Glimcher

“The phrase the violent bear it away fascinated the 20th century Irish-American storyteller Flannery O'Connor, who used it as the title of one of her novels. O'Connor's surname connects her to an Irish royal family descended from Conchobor (pronounced Connor), the prehistoric king of Ulster who was foster father to Cuchulainn and husband of the unwilling Derdriu. In the western world, the antiquity of Irish lineages is exceeded only by that of the Jews.”

Source: How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

“The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century.”

Knows World Mean Made Country Century Standards Miracle Seven Average Improvement Ingredients 20th Century Standards Of Living

Author:Howard Warren Buffett

“We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other. We witnessed the final stages of egoic madness in the 20th century, and even now it still is playing itself out. It has not quite come to an end yet.”

World Stills Ends Whole Fighting Century Stage Madness Finals Whole World 20th Century Fighting Each Other

Author:Eckhart Tolle

“Something I always wanted to do, to capture that later half of the '70s. It's like the early half of the '70s is still the '60s, in that there's still kind of a playfulness and inventiveness in terms of design and the things that were going on in the culture. The second half, it got much more commodified. It's possibly the ugliest era of architecture and clothes and design in the entire 20th century, from 1975 to '81 or '82.”

Kind Stills Wanted Culture Term Half Century Design Clothes Architecture Eras Capture 20th Century Playfulness Inventiveness

Author:Daniel Clowes

“Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.”

Thinking Made Ends Film Moral Century Directors Demand Treats Victim Excellence Mediums Propaganda 20th Century Spectators Manipulative

Author:Michael Haneke

“Most death now happens in hospitals. It's been medicalized. It happens away from where we deal with it directly. And that's a huge change. At the beginning of the 20th century most people died at home. Death was much more common.”

People Home Happens Deals Common Century Huge Died Hospitals 20th Century Huge Changes

Author:Joan Didion

“Hell is out of fashion --institutional hells at any rate. The populated infernos of the 20th century are more private affairs, the gaps between the bars are the sutures of one's own skull. . .”

Hell Century Fashion Rate Affair Bars Gaps 20th Century Skulls Dungeons Inferno Buchenwald

Author:J. G. Ballard

“When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.”

Men Firsts Different Land Century Battle British Instance Administration Defeated 20th Century Revolt Different Place

Author:Chinua Achebe

“The fact that women in the home have shut themselves away from the thought and life of the world has done much to retard progress.We fill the world with the children of 20th century A.D. fathers and 20th century B.C. mothers.”

World Children Done Facts Home Mother Father Progress Century 20th Century Retard

Author:Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“In the 20th century, evangelical Christians in America have naively accepted the role assigned to us by an anti-religious, anti-Christian consensus in our society. We have been relegated to a cultural backwater, where we are meant to paddle around content in the knowledge that we are merely allowed to exist.”

Has Beens Christian America Religious Roles Century Accepted Our Society 20th Century Consensus Evangelical Anti Religious Anti Christian

Author:Francis Schaeffer

“If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century... I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.”

Ifs Men Would Be Christian Religious Century Forgotten Repeats Traits Principal Precise 20th Century Pithy

Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“In the second half of the 20th century, people are becoming more limited: Vocabularies are smaller, thoughts are smaller, aspirations are smaller, everything is very scaled down. Everyone is typecast.”

People Half Century Becoming Aspiration 20th Century Vocabulary Becoming More

Author:Christopher Reeve

“Muslims have been an almost entirely benevolent force in the 20th century. They did not wreak the havoc the Western powers wreaked on the world. They have not come anywhere near to the environmental degradation that we've done to the planet. So I think Muslims need to be seen in the proper light. They're mostly decent, hardworking people, people with deep family values, and they want to live in peace.”

“The Hawk and the Dove is a wonderful idea for a book, wonderfully carried out. Nicholas Thompson has used illuminating new material to present each of his protagonists in a convincing, respectful, but unsparing way. Even more valuable, he has used the interactions and tensions between Paul Nitze and George Kennan to bring much of American 20th century foreign policy to life, with human richness ever present but with the big issues clear in all their complexity.”

“The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.”

“String theory is 21 st century physics that fell accidentally into the 20th century.”

Century Theory Physics Strings 20th Century String Theory

Author:Edward Witten

“The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence -- rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage, uncontrollable emotion, and a desperate search for identity. Out of adolescence, however, comes maturity in which physical growth with all its attendant difficulties comes to an end, but in which growth continues in knowledge, in spirit, in community, and in love; it is to this that we look forward as a human race. This goal, once seen with our eyes, will draw our faltering feet toward it.”

“The light may be fading on the 20th century, but the sun is still rising on America.”

May Stills Light America Sun Century Rising 20th Century Fading

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1999

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1999

“By the end of the 20th Century there will be a generation to whom it will not be injurious to read a dozen quire of newspapers daily, to be constantly called to the telephone... and to live half their time in a railway carriage or in a flying machine.”

Ends Half Generations Century Internet Machines Newspapers Flying Dozen Free Speech 20th Century Telephones Carriages Railway Flying Machines

Author:Max Nordau

“It is amazing how many of the horrors of the 20th century were a result of charismatic quacks misleading millions of people to their own doom. What is even more amazing is that, after a century that saw the likes of Hitler, Lenin and Mao, we still see no need to distrust charisma as a basis for choosing leaders, either in politics or in numerous organizations and movements.”

People Needs Stills Results Leader Millions Saws Century Movement Horror Organization Bases Likes 20th Century Distrust Doom Mislead Charisma Charismatic Mao Quacks

Book:Controversial Essays

Source: Controversial Essays

“I'm using myself as a typical 20th century model as I'm trying to make sense out of the world around me.”

World Trying Century Models Make Sense Typical 20th Century

Author:Robert Anton Wilson

“Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.”

Education Violence Century Keys Hatred Cycles 21st Century 20th Century Preventing Cycle Of Violence

Author:Elie Wiesel