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Century Quotes

“It was a real revolution. But with one missing feature. That is the feeling in a people that "We have done it once, and if the new lot let us down, we can do it again!" It was that proud, menacing confidence which made the French revolution special. But it's not around in 21st-century Europe. After 1989, the people handed over liberty to the experts. Will they ever want it back?”

People Ifs Want Made Real Done Feelings Can Do Liberty Special Century Missing Revolution Proud Europe Features Experts 21st Century French Revolution

Author:Neal Ascherson

“The fact is that men need women more than women need men; and so, aware of this fact, man has sought to keep woman dependent upon him economically as the only method open to him of making himself necessary to her. Since in the beginning woman would not become his willing slave, he has wrought through the centuries a society in which woman must serve him if she is to survive.”

Ifs Men Needs Facts Century Willing Method Slave Dependent

Author:Elizabeth Gould Davis

“In the century that has just passed, many of the intellectual elite went mad. It was as if, with the death of God, everyone suddenly turned into a saviour who wanted either to annihilate the obsolete world order or to establish a utopia. Naturally, there were writers among those who went mad. The fact that they had knowledge did not exempt intellectuals: there is madness everywhere. When one loses control over one's self, the result is madness.”

Ifs World Self Facts Wanted Order Loses Results Century Intellectual Madness Mad Elites Utopia Saviour Obsolete World Order

Author:Gao Xingjian

“If the amount of money going into the war economy were invested in landscape restoration, we would be in a far more positive position. It may get a little dire before we pull together, but I think when the prosperous nations, and in particular the US, realise they're wrecking their own kids' lives, there will be a mass change in value. It will be a difficult century, and ugly, but I don't think that in the end people are so stupid as to kill themselves off.”

“As best as can be determined, the world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last two millennia, and, if current trends continue, by the end of the century it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years.”

Ifs World Years Has Beens Two Ends Lasts Millions Century Currents Determined Global Warming Trends Hotter

Book:Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Climate Change - Is Time Running Out?

Source: Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Climate Change - Is Time Running Out?

“The last spectacle of which Christian men are likely to grow tired is a harbour. Centuries hence there may be jumping-off places for the stars, and our children's children's and so forth children may regard a ship as a creeping thing scarcely more adventurous than a worm. Meanwhile, every harbour gives us a sense of being in touch, if not with the ends of the universe, with the ends of the earth.”

Ifs Men Giving May Children Ends Earth Christian Lasts Universe Stars Grows Century Regard Our Children Tired Ships Worms Jumping Adventurous Harbour Jumping Off

Author:Robert Wilson Lynd

“Toward the end of his life, Gödel feared that he was being poisoned, and he starved himself to death. His theorem is one of the most extraordinary results in mathematics, or in any intellectual field in this century. If ever potential mental instability is detectable by genetic analysis, an embryo of someone with Kurt Gödel's gifts might be aborted.”

Ifs Ends Might Results Century Fields Intellectual Mathematics Extraordinary Analysis Instability Theorems Embryos

Book:The Ascent of Science

Source: The Ascent of Science

“A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!”

Ifs Kind May Stories Happens Century Position Reader Scene Succeed Careful Ghost Ghost Stories

Book:Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories

Source: Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories

“You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males.”

Ifs Reason White Century Army Assuming Males Reason Why Explanation Conspiracy Survived Zombie

Book:Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Source: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“If you want to get an interesting perspective do not think of Hugh as a traditional 20th century physicist but more of a Renaissance man with interests and skills in many different areas. He was smart and lots of things interested him and he brought the same general conceptual methodology to solve them. The subject matter was not so important as the solution ideas.”

“The real origin of science fiction lay in the seventeeth-century novels of exploration in fabulous lands. Therefore Jules Verne's story of travel to the moon is not science fiction because they go by rocket but because of where they go. It would be as much science fiction if they went by rubber band.”

Ifs Real Stories Would Be Fiction Novel Land Century Moon Band Science Fiction Lays Exploration Fabulous Rockets Rubber Rubber Bands

Author:Philip K. Dick

“If adapted to the unique requirements of various regions and peoples of the world, such economic pluralism could have a greater global impact over the next fifty years than the collectivist economics of Marxism and neo-Marxism have had during the half century just past.”

Ifs World Years Wisdom Past Next Politics Half Economy Greater Economic Century Unique Economics Impact Various Liberalism Fifty Regions Requirements Marxism Adapted Pluralism

Author:Robert Dickson Crane

“It is quite likely ... that the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual. Put simply, not only is the theological "Christ of faith" a synthetic construct of theologians, a symbolic "Uncle Sam" figure, but if you could travel ... back to First-Century Nazareth, you would not find a Jesus living there.”

Ifs Firsts Jesus Individual Christ Atheism Century Figures Historical Positive Atheism Uncles Constructs Theologian Symbolic Theological Synthetic Nazareth Uncle Sam

Author:Robert M. Price

“I believe that this Republic will endure for many centuries. If so there will doubtless be among its Presidents Protestants and Catholics, and very probably at some time, Jews. I have consistently tried while President to act in relation to my fellow Americans of Catholic faith as I hope that any future President who happens to be Catholic will act towards his fellow Americans of Protestant faith. Had I followed any other course I should have felt that I was unfit to represent the American people.”

Source: Letters of Theodore Roosevelt: The big stick, 1905-1909

“For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.”

Source: Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals

“I think that the Bible as a system of moral guidance in the 21st century is insufficient, to put it mildly. I feel quite strongly that we need a new moral lodestone if we can't rely on what is inside our own selves. Which I think, actually, is pretty reliable.”

Ifs Thinking Needs Feels Self Moral Century Guidance Rely 21st Century Insufficient

Author:Emma Thompson

“I don't know if I change my act from century to century. Sometimes I'm onstage doing imitations and references to people who have been dead for 50 years.”

People Ifs Knows Years Has Beens Sometimes Century Imitation

Author:Gilbert Gottfried

“The postwar [WWII] GI Bill of Rights - and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America's veterans - signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century. We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world.”

“If I could only live another century!”

Ifs Life Century If I Could

Author:Susan B. Anthony

“The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China.”

Ifs Made States Hands Government President Ability Economy Century Policy China 21st Century Romney Global Economy Bathtubs

Author:Jennifer Granholm

“The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.”

Source: A Happy Half-century: And Other Essays

“As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year.”

“And home pregnancy tests? They are so last century. Nowadays, I think there's an app that calls your iPhone to warn you that if you finish that third cosmo, you may wind up with a wombmate.”

Ifs Thinking May Home Lasts Century Wind Tests Thirds Pregnancy Iphone Apps Pregnancy Test

Book:Lizz Free or Die: Essays

Source: Lizz Free or Die: Essays

“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.”

Ifs World Seems Would Be Cities Doubt Century Style Greed Architecture Technique Contemporary No Doubt Chicago Twentieth Century Artistry Downtown Matched All The Best Gauges

Book:Locations

Source: Locations

“The woman's bill of rights is, unhappily, long overdue. It should have run along with the rights of man in the eighteenth century. Its drag as to time of official proclamation is a drag as to social vision. And even if equal rights were now written into the law of our land, it would be so inadequate today as a means to food, clothing and shelter for woman at large that what they would still be enjoying would be equality in disaster rather than in realistic privilege.”

“To ignore [the] great social facts -- political facts, if you please -- and over-emphasize the old moral responsibility of the 'domestic' mother is a hollow mockery and betrays a hopeless ignorance of industrial and urban conditions in the Twentieth Century. ... Everything that counts in the common life is political.”

“Women if you want to realise yourselves - you are on the eve of a devastating psychological upheaval - all your pet illusions must be unmasked - the lies of centuries have got to go - are you prepared for the Wrench?”

Ifs Want Lying Century Illusion Prepared Psychological Pet Realising Upheaval Wrenches

Author:Mina Loy

“Christendom never came from an unbroken grave. It would have been buried in that grave, as Judas thought it was going to be, and as the Jews thought it was going to be, except there had been a resurrection from the dead. Then you can explain Christendom, churches, and literatures, if Christ rose again; but otherwise they cannot be explained at all. Our whole civilization rests on the broken Cross of the Master, and it is incredible that a civilization like this, in a world advancing steadily for eighteen centuries, has been founded on a lie.”

“Music stays in the air. / It travels at the speed of breath / at the sound of light. / It is never not heard. / It can wait centuries if it has to.”

Ifs Light Waiting Sound Music Heard Air Century Breaths Speed

Book:Don't Explain: A Song of Billie Holiday

Source: Don't Explain: A Song of Billie Holiday

“Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.”

Ifs Humans Turns Space Vision Century Position Flight Exploration Space Exploration Space Flight

Author:Buzz Aldrin

“I think age, if you are healthy, I think age is largely a number. My mother lived to be 101. So I'm planning on another quarter century.”

Ifs Thinking Age Mother Numbers Century Healthy Planning Quarters

Author:Hugh Hefner

“The Anglo-American tradition is much more linear than the European tradition. If you think about writers like Borges, Calvino, Perec or Marquez, they're not bound in the same sort of way. They don't come out of the classic 19th-century novel, which is where all the problems start. 19th-century novels are fabulous and we should all read them, but we shouldn't write them.”

Ifs Thinking Way Should Writing Problem Novel Century Tradition Bounds Classic Fabulous 19th Century Linear Borges American Tradition Marquez

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“Well into the 19th century there were pronouncements from just about every branch of science and medicine that reading, writing, and thinking were dangerous for women. Articles in the Lancet declared that women's brains would burst and their uteruses atrophy if they engaged in any form of rigorous thinking. The famous physician J.D. Kellogg insisted that novel reading was the greatest cause of uterine disease among young women and urged parents to protect their daughters from the dreaded consequences of print.”

“If we remain determined to shape a new and better world of separate, sovereign nations, this new century will be a happier one.”

Ifs World War Nations Century Shapes Determined Sovereign

Author:Alan Caruba

“Of course, if there should be war, it wouldn't last long - not in the twentieth century; and no one wants it. There would be, perhaps, a few skirmishes on the frontiers, and then everything would be arranged diplomatically.”

Ifs Want Should Long War Would Be Lasts Courses Century Frontiers Twentieth Century

Author:Marie Van Vorst

“If the 21st Century is the era of knowledge and of knowledgeable human-force, then, to extol this force, Gujarat must form a strong bond with books.”

Ifs Humans Book Form Strong Force Century Empowerment India Eras 21st Century Knowledgeable Strong Bond Gujarat

Author:Narendra Modi

“If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.”

Ifs Lasts Memories Century

Author:Takeshi Kaneshiro

“Even by the twenty-second century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.”

Ifs Way Problem Would Be Century Position Scientist Twenties Conservative Crucial Elderly Doubted Administrative

Book:Rendezvous With Rama

Source: Rendezvous With Rama

“If you young people who today belong to the first generation of the 21st century make an effort now, you may be able to create a happier, more peaceful world. But you can't take for granted that it will happen by itself, you'll need to take action.”

People Ifs World Needs Firsts May Happens Today Able Action Young Effort Generations Century Peaceful Granted 21st Century Peaceful World

Author:Dalai Lama

“We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)”

Ifs War Ends Seems Form Certain Courses Chance Century Ocean Disaster Optimistic Inability Plague Complacency Famine Nuclear War Poisoning Forecasts Drastic Unforeseen

Author:John Holdren

“In most, if not quite all, parts of the world, the size, shape and longevity of the human body have changed more substantially, and much more rapidly, during the past three centuries than over many previous millennia.”

Ifs World Humans Body Past Three Century Changed Shapes Size Longevity Human Body

Author:Robert Fogel

“If somebody says, you know, to love your enemies, you could say, 'Well I'm going to love them to death.' We've done that sort of stuff so it can be done. But if you really start with love your enemies, and if you look at the tradition of the first Christian centuries, nobody ever seems to suggest well if they come after us to persecute us, is it alright to kill a few? Defensively, of course.”

Ifs Knows Firsts Wells Looks Done Seems Christian Courses Stuff Enemy Century Love You Tradition Alright Love Your Enemies

Author:John Dominic Crossan

“It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him.”

“Global warming is already acting upon us with an accelerated feedback and compounded effect that may be irreversible! We do not have eons or centuries or many decades. Most of us alive today may not even have the luxury of saying 'Après moi, le déluge' because we will be around to experience it ourselves. And if you think it will be 'interesting' or 'exciting,' ask the tsunami survivors if that's how they felt. This time the plutocratic drive to 'accumulate, accumulate, accumulate' may take all of us down, once and forever.”

Ifs Thinking May Today Political Asks Felt Interesting Acting Forever Alive Effects Century Exciting Decades Luxury Global Warming Survivor Feedback Live For Today Tsunami Irreversible

Author:Michael Parenti

“The institution of marriage, if you look at it over many centuries, has come and gone.”

Ifs Looks Gone Century Institutions

Author:Theodore Zeldin

“If the Savior had come back to earth at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., I doubt whether he would have recognized the Christian Church as the one that claimed descent from that which he had established, so far had it gone astray.”

Ifs Earth Christian Church Gone Doubt Century Savior Fifth Descent Christian Church

Author:Milton R. Hunter

“We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.”

“Barrie and the wonderful characters he created, Lewis Carroll, even French literature, like Baudelaire or over in the States, Poe, you open those books, you open The Flowers of Evil and begin to read. If it were written today, you'd be absolutely stupefied by the work. It's this incredible period where the work is timeless, ageless. So yeah, I just love all those guys. It's my deep passion in those great 19th century writers.”

“When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.”

Ifs Feels Art Enough Hands Love Is Century Mines Poet Holy Majors Supreme Idolatry Nineteenth Century Cromwell

Book:Three Plays for Puritans

Source: Three Plays for Puritans

“Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear he'll not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.”

Ifs Men Looks Half Wise Century Thirds Seven Greek Swear Sage

Book:Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis

Source: Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis