“In the 20th century, the Muslim world created a vision of religious nationalism. Turkey, for example, had to be ethnically Turkish. Kurds, Armenians, other minorities didn't have a place in such a vision of a nation-state.” WorldStatesNationsReligiousVisionCenturyExampleMinoritiesNationalism20th CenturyTurkeysTurkishMuslim WorldArmeniansKurds Author:Feisal Abdul Rauf
“When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.” WholeScienceStudyTeacherAdviceCenturyExampleDegreesPerfectionPhysicsDustBubblesParticlesTheoreticalGeometrySecuredJollyMaturedMunichTheoretical Physics Author:Max Planck
“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
“The greatest Marxist writer of the twentieth century, paradoxically, is also one of the greatest examples of the independence of the human spirit from its material limitations.” HumansSpiritCenturyExampleMaterialsIndependenceLimitationHuman SpiritTwentieth CenturyMarxist Book:Antonio Gramsci Source: Antonio Gramsci
“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
“The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century every case of a poor nation that worked its way up to a more or less decent, or at least dramatically better, standard of living has taken place via globalization, that is, by producing for the world market rather than trying for self-sufficiency.” WorldWayTryingSelfFactsPastNationsPoorCasesSuccessfulTakenEconomicCenturyExampleDevelopmentStandardsDecentGlobalizationStandards Of LivingEconomic DevelopmentSelf SufficiencySufficiencyEconomic GlobalizationPoor Nations Author:Paul Krugman
“The Berbers, among whom even today one finds light skins and blue eyes, do not go back to the Vandal invasions of the fifth century A.D., but to the prehistoric Atlantic Nordic human wave. The Kabyle huntsmen, for example, are to no small degree still wholly Nordic (thus the blond Berbers in the region of Constantine form 10 % of the population; at Djebel Sheshor they are even more numerous).” HumansStillsLightEyeTodayFormCenturyExampleDegreesSkinsBlueWavePopulationRegionsFifthInvasionBlue EyesPrehistoricConstantineNordicVandals Author:Alfred Rosenberg
“Cruel and paradoxical though it undoubtedly is, the record shows that yje most succesful 20th century monarchs have been those who were not actually born to succeed. King George VI was 41 when the abdication of Edward VIII propelled him suddenly and unexpectedly to take up the crown; and Queen Elizabeth II spent her first decade with no inkling thay she herself might one day have to reign. Taken together, these examples suggest that the best preparation for the job of sovereign is not to be prepared for it at all, ir not to be too well prepared for it, or for too long.” FirstsWellsLongHas BeensShowsMightTogetherJobsBornTakenRecordsCenturyExampleKingsOne DaySucceedPreparedDecadesPreparationQueensCrownsBe PreparedSovereignReign20th CenturyMonarchsParadoxicalIrsBritish HistoryQueen ElizabethAbdicationElizabeth Ii Author:David Cannadine
“Education has a tremendous power on man. Can't we see to which astonishing disciple the people of Sparte have submitted ("s'est plié", Fr.) for centuries, and this with a view to very petty purposes: purely outer greatness, the military predominace of Sparte. This example proves that man can everything on themselves when they want it ("peuvent tout sur eux-mêmes quand ils le veulent", Fr.); therefore it would only be a question of making them will the good.” PeopleMenWantPurposeViewsCenturyMilitaryExampleGreatnessProveDisciplePettyAstonishing Author:African Spir
“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.” FilmLiteratureInterestingCenturyExampleReaderTruth IsEvolveGenreAccomplished20th CenturyCastlesGothicMost InterestingGloomySinisterStoker Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon
“President Bush said that American workers will need new skills to get the new jobs in the 21st century. Some of the skills they're going to need are Spanish, Chinese, Korean, because that's where the jobs went. Who better than Bush as an example of what can happen when you take a job without any training.” NeedsSaidHappensJobsPresidentCenturyExampleSkillsTrainingWorkersChinese21st CenturyPresident BushKoreanNew JobAmerican WorkersNew Skills Author:Jay Leno
“Edgar Wayburn has worked to preserve the most breath-taking examples of the American landscape. In fact, over the course of more than a half-century, both as President of the Sierra Club and as a private citizen, he has saved more of our wilderness than any person alive.” PersonsFactsCoursesPresidentHalfAliveCenturyExampleCitizensBreathsClubsSavedLandscapePreservesWildernessSierraAmerican Landscape Author:William J. Clinton
“Some writing courses will advise you to write what you know. I've always thought this is very odd advice ... because it means, for example, that I should not be writing about Nicholas Flamel, because I didn't live in France in the 15th Century, I was not an alchemyst, am not immortal (despite the rumours) and do not know magic.” KnowsShouldWritingMeanCoursesMagicAdviceCenturyExampleDespiteFranceOddImmortalAdviseRumours Author:Michael Scott
“One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth-century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues: the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society, and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to.” PeopleTryingLife IsVirtueStudyCenturyExampleRegretHonorIdealsConvincedGreekClassicLatinHistoricGrounding Author:David McCullough
“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
“The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned. That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare states is only one example.” WayStatesFactsLawLeftBlackVisionGenerationsCenturyDangerPolicyExampleConsequenceSlaveryDiscriminationWelfareLiberalismSurvivedWelfare StateBlack Family Author:Thomas Sowell
“There is no - let me repeat - no example in the last quarter-century of a large, complex economy that has been successful with high taxes.” Has BeensLastsEconomySuccessfulCenturyExampleTaxesLet MeComplexesRepeatsQuartersHigh Taxes Author:Jonah Goldberg
“We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality.” ThinkingMenReasonAgeTodayEarthBeliefModernMiddleCenturyExampleTheoryRoundsAverageAppealsMentalityMiddle AgesTwentieth CenturySuperstitiousCredulityAverage ManGullibleRound Earth Author:George Bernard Shaw