“The increased abstraction in mathematics that took place during the early part of this century was paralleled by a similar trend in the arts. In both cases, the increased level of abstraction demands greater effort on the part of anyone who wants to understand the work.” WantArtLevelsEffortCasesGreaterCenturyDemandLogicMathematicsCertaintyUncertaintyReasoningTrendsAbstractionOntology Author:Keith Devlin
“The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. It's a problem that we will not be able to solve in the next few years, and it's likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.” IfsWorldYearsChildrenProblemAbleNextEnergyActingCenturyBalanceDemandResourcesOur ChildrenCrisisSolveSelfishAlternativesDecentOur FutureGrandchildrenOverwhelmedShrinkingChildren And GrandchildrenBeing SelfishEnergy CrisisActing Now Author:Jimmy Carter
“In relation to the earth we have been autistic for centuries. Only now have we begun to listen with some attention and with a willingness to respond to the earth's demands that we cease our industrial assault, that we abandon our inner rage against the conditions of our earthly existence, that we renew our human participation in the grand liturgy of the universe.” HumansHas BeensEarthUniverseExistenceAttentionConditionsCenturyDemandRelationEnvironmentalRageCeaseAbandonWillingnessParticipationAssaultAutisticLiturgy Book:Creative Energy: Bearing Witness for the Earth Source: Creative Energy: Bearing Witness for the Earth
“Indeed, as we begin the twenty-first century, the money and traditional economies are slowly destroying their own support system. Increasing demands of the two economies are surpassing the sustainable yields of the ecosystems that underpin them. For example, one-third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil at a rate that is undermining its long-term productivity, fully half of the world's rangeland is overgrazed and deteriorating into desert, and the world's forests have shrunk by about half since the dawn of agriculture and are continuing to shrink.” WorldFirstsLongTwoTermHalfSupportEconomyLandCenturyExampleDemandLosingThirdsTwentiesRateProductivityForestsTraditionalDesertDawnLong TermYieldDestroyingContinuingAgricultureShrinksEcosystemsUnderminingSupport SystemsSurpassingDeterioratingTopsoil Author:Stuart L. Hart
“Is it not our duty to find the symphonic formula which fits our time, one which progress, daring and modern victory demand? The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.” ProgressModernCenturyDutyVictoryFitDemandOur TimeFormulasDaringAirplane Author:Claude Debussy
“Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme.” MenShouldMindTwoCertainPracticeCenturyHe ManExpressionDemandEssentialsErrorsCompositionSmoothRestraintRhymeFreedom Of ExpressionPrecedentSpiritedStimulationEmploying Author:H. P. Lovecraft
“The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.” WayGivingHas BeensReasonSeemsAgeSchoolArtistCultureInfluenceCenturyEvolutionPeriodsDemandMadPropertyTendenciesCuriousLoudLogicalDividedAbandonedPopeRhymeNoveltyAccuracyPolishedFactionsSensationalBardsGiving WayGeorgians Author:H. P. Lovecraft
“For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections.” NeedsHumansIdeasPoliticalTermMoralSawsCenturyEvolutionDemandProjectsReflectionFoundationFamiliarExcellentHuman LifeEngagedAmbitiousGroundedLecturesTwentieth CenturyContinuityAnthropologyMead Author:Margaret Mead
“Technology and computers are very much at the core of our economy going forward. To be prepared for the demands of the 21st century-and to take advantage of its opportunities-it is essential that more of our students today learn basic computer programming skills, no matter what field of work they want to pursue.” WantMatterTodayOpportunityTechnologyEconomyCenturyFieldsStudentsSkillsDemandEssentialsComputerAdvantageNo Matter WhatPreparedCorePursueProgrammingBe Prepared21st CenturyComputer ProgrammingStudents Today Author:Todd Park
“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.” ThinkingMadeEndsFilmMoralCenturyDirectorsDemandTreatsVictimExcellenceMediumsPropaganda20th CenturySpectatorsManipulative Author:Michael Haneke
“Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.” LittlesStillsIdeasCenturyDemandLimitsOppositesIslamExtremesBelieverPlentyOrthodoxInteractionRegulationOutsidersBiblicalCommandmentsParticipationJudaismExpandingPursuedTheologicalThicketsProselytizing Author:Mary Catherine Bateson
“In the new science of the twenty-first century, not physical force but spiritual force will lead the way. Mental and spiritual gifts will be more in demand than gifts of a physical nature. Extrasensory perception will take precedence over sensory perception. And in this sphere woman will again predominate.” WayFirstsSpiritualScienceForceCenturyDemandPerceptionTwentiesSpheresSensoryPrecedencePhysical ForceSpiritual GiftsSensory Perception Author:Elizabeth Gould Davis
“We're Catholics before we're Democrats. We're Catholics before we're Republicans. We're even Catholics before we're Americans, because we know that God has a demand on us prior to any government demand on us. And this has been the story of the martyrs through the centuries.” KnowsHas BeensStoriesGovernmentCenturyRepublicanDemandCatholicDemocratMartyr Author:Charles J. Chaput
“To confound the tyranny of man there should exist for a century a third sex, both male and female, and stronger than men. This new sex would prove with the lash that men as well as women are made for its pleasure; and then you would hear men protesting against the tyranny of the hermaphrodite sex and admitting that strength should not be the sole rule of right. Just why do they refuse to grant the women the independence which they would demand from the third sex?” MenShouldWellsMadeSexPleasureCenturyDemandProveFemaleThirdsStrongerIndependenceMalesRefuseTyrannyGrantsSoleAdmittingLashesHermaphrodites Author:Charles Fourier
“We must face the fact that we are on the brink of times when man may be able to magnify his intellectual and inventive capability, just as in the nineteenth century he used machines to magnify his physical capacity. Again, as then, our innocence is lost. And again, of course, the innocence, once lost, cannot be regained. The loss demands attention, not denial.” MenMayFactsAbleFacesUsedCoursesLostLossAttentionCenturyDemandIntellectualCapacityMachinesInnocenceDenialCapabilityNineteenth Century Book:Notes on the Synthesis of Form Source: Notes on the Synthesis of Form
“The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement, we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences.” WarEnoughWholeRealityDesireGivenDifferencesAnswersFantasyCenturyReturnDemandConceptsPaidTerrorNostalgiaRealizationWitnessSensibleReconciliationTransparentTwentieth CenturyTotalityActivateAppeasementMuttering Author:Jean-Francois Lyotard
“Had today's technophobic zealots [environmental activists] been in charge in previous centuries, we would have to roll human progress back to the Middle Ages - and beyond, since even fire, the wheel and organic farming pose risks, and none would have passed the "absolute safety" test the zealots demand. Putting them in charge now would mean an end to progress, and perpetual deprivation for inhabitants of developing nations.” HumansMeanEndsAgeTodayNationsFireProgressRiskMiddleCenturyDemandTestsAbsolutesSafetyEnvironmentalDevelopingWheelsActivistPerpetualFarmingMiddle AgesDeprivationHuman ProgressZealotOrganic Farming Author:Paul Driessen