“Beyond a narrow, elite audience, there is a pervasive sense from the side of the public that much contemporary art fails to connect - a failure not evident throughout centuries of earlier art.” ArtSidesAudienceFailingCenturyContemporaryElitesEvidentContemporary Art Author:John Walford
“Just as the Security Council was largely irrelevant to the great struggle of the last half of the twentieth century - freedom against Communism - so too it is largely on the sidelines in our contemporary struggles against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” LastsHalfStruggleCenturySecurityWeaponsMassDestructionInternationalTerrorismContemporaryCommunismIrrelevantCouncilTwentieth CenturyWeapons Of Mass DestructionMass DestructionProliferationSidelinesSecurity CouncilInternational Terrorism Author:John Bolton
“The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies.” WayWellsMayPlayMotivationClearWrittenModernCenturyMediaExampleTypePersonalityContemporaryManipulationSurprisingPettyAlliancesResonanceActualityGaddafiMubarak Author:Kevin Spacey
“When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis.” MightLastsReadingRealizingWrittenCenturyEmotionalDespairAnxietyGuiltProfoundOneselfInsightContemporaryPsychologicalAnalysisResentmentHostilityAccompanyDynamicsRepressedEmotional Power Book:The Discovery of Being Source: The Discovery of Being
“Chicago's downtown seems to me to constitute, all in all, the best-looking twentieth-century city, the city where contemporary technique has best been matched by artistry, intelligence, and comparatively moderated greed. No doubt about it, if style were the one gauge, Chicago would be among the greatest of all the cities of the world.” IfsWorldSeemsWould BeCitiesDoubtCenturyStyleGreedArchitectureTechniqueContemporaryNo DoubtChicagoTwentieth CenturyArtistryDowntownMatchedAll The BestGauges Book:Locations Source: Locations
“Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since that time, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. But every one of these - the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure - emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century.” FirstsMayEndsShowsChristianFormReligionThreeChurchAcceptingChristianityCenturyThirdsCatholicInstitutionsStructureComplexesScriptureContemporaryOrthodoxCreedsDiverseTestamentPremisesNew TestamentProtestantsChristian ChurchCanonApostolicUnanimity Author:Elaine Pagels
“Seeking the Cave is part travelogue, part literary history, and part spiritual journey. James Lenfestey is a lively and entertaining tour guide. Modest, funny, curious, and wide open to the world, he gives us perceptive glimpses of Chinese culture, ancient to contemporary, and into what it means to be a poet, both now and twelve centuries ago. The account of his quest to find Han Shan's cave is a delight from beginning to end.” WorldGivingMeanEndsSpiritualCultureJourneyCenturyPoetAccountsAncientDelightSeekingWideGuidesContemporaryCuriousChineseTwelveEntertainingQuestsModestGlimpseCavesLivelySpiritual JourneyChinese CultureTour Guides Author:Chase Twichell
“... while our men seem thoroughly abreast of the times on almost every other subject, when they strike the woman question they drop back into sixteenth century logic. They leave nothing to be desired generally in regard to gallantry and chivalry, but they actually do not seem sometimes to have outgrown that old contemporary of chivalry--the idea that women may stand on pedestals or live in doll houses,... but they must not furrow their brows with thought or attempt to help men tug at the great questions of the world.” MenWorldMayIdeasSometimesHelpingSeemsHouseSubjectsCenturyLogicRegardStrikesContemporaryHelp MeDollsBrowsPedestalChivalryGallantry Author:Anna Julia Cooper
“Contemporary philosophers are facing problems that were unthinkable only one century ago, such as whether space and time are mutually Independent, whether there is objective chance or only uncertainty, whether physics can explain chemical change, whether our behavior is fully determined by our genomes, whether ideation can change the brain, or whether either the economy or ideas are the ultimate roots of the social.” IdeasProblemSocialChanceSpaceBrainEconomyCenturyBehaviorRootsUltimateIndependentPhilosopherDeterminedPhysicsObjectivesContemporaryUncertaintyChemicalsTime And SpaceUnthinkableGenomeIdeation Author:Mario Bunge
“My art gives contemporary art a juvenile-delinquent phase. Its self-made style gleefully trashes conventions of beauty and society while pick-pocketing from the coolest underground styles and beliefs of the previous centuries.” GivingArtMadeSelfBeliefCenturyStylePicksContemporaryConventionsPhasesTrashSelf MadeJuvenileContemporary ArtDelinquents Author:Steve Olson
“Much more than a 20th-century village storyteller, Cees Nooteboom stands as an impressive and inimitable voice among contemporary writers.” VoiceCenturyContemporaryVillageStoryteller20th CenturyImpressive Author:Linda Simon
“Isaac Watts, of course, is a hymn writer in the tradition of Congregationalism who lived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. He is very interesting and important because he was also a metaphysician. He knew a great deal about what was, for him, contemporary science. He was very much influenced by Isaac Newton, for example. There are planets and meteors and so on showing up in his hymns very often. But, again, the scale of his religious imagination corresponds to a very generously scaled scientific imagination.” ImportantCoursesImaginationReligiousInterestingDealsCenturyExamplePlanetsTraditionScalesContemporaryVery InterestingNewtonHymnsShowing UpIsaacMeteors Author:Marilynne Robinson
“It's strange that in an age when we pride ourselves on our independence of thought we meekly submit without further question to the declaration of a clearly unbalanced nineteenth century philosopher that God is dead! That's cheeky, of course - and one rarely comes away from reading Nietzsche without learning something new and significant. He's certainly FAR more unsettling for faith than any contemporary atheist I know of.” KnowsAgeCoursesReadingCenturyStrangePrideIndependenceAtheistPhilosopherSignificantContemporarySomething NewSubmitDeclarationNineteenth CenturyUnbalancedGod Is DeadLearning Something NewCheekyIndependence Of Thought Author:George Pattison
“What I wanted to try and figure out was, okay, in contemporary 21st century life the alienation between the self and the land around you or the self and even the urban landscape. You name it.” TryingSelfWantedNamesLandCenturyFiguresOkayContemporaryLandscapeUrban21st CenturyAlienationUrban Landscape Author:DJ Spooky