“It`s difficult to judge people from 100 years ago by today`s standards. But I go back into the early middle part of the 19th century also. The know-nothings were a Protestant movement, and they rejected Catholics and didn`t want Catholics brought into America.” PeopleKnowsWantYearsTodayAmericaDifficultMiddleCenturyMovementJudgingStandardsYears AgoCatholicRejectedProtestants19th Century Author:Steve King
“I think that life is incredibly violent and that individual people are incredibly violent on one level or another. I don't try to change life to suit my writing; in a certain way I'm a naturalist of the nineteenth century school.” PeopleThinkingWayWritingTryingSchoolLife IsCertainIndividualLevelsCenturyViolentSuitsLife ChangingNineteenth CenturyNaturalist Author:Richard Grossman
“Lincoln-sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing upon his weary shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other man of the nineteenth century laid down his life for the people whom living he had served as well-built upon his early study of the Bible.” PeopleMenYearsWellsStudyGreaterFourCenturyBuiltPatientBurdenShouldersFour YearsWearyNineteenth Century Book:A Square Deal Source: A Square Deal
“We decided we'd have to do something pretty drastic to make people realise that I wasn't going to parade about in ra-ra skirts for the rest of the century. And I'm not going to parade about in black evening gowns on tour!” PeopleBlackCenturyDecidedEveningRealisingSkirtsParadesGownsDrasticEvening Gowns Author:Clare Grogan
“The earthquake in Haiti was a class-based catastrophe. It didn't much harm the wealthy elite up in the hills, they were shaken but not destroyed. On the other hand the people who were living in the miserable urban slums, huge numbers of them, they were devastated. Maybe a couple hundred thousand were killed. How come they were living there? They were living there because of-it goes back to the French colonial system-but in the past century, they were living there because of US policies, consistent policies.” PeopleHandsPastNumbersClassCenturyPolicyHugeCoupleThousandHundredHarmDestroyedMiserableHillsConsistentWealthyElitesUrbanCatastropheEarthquakesHaitiDevastatedSlumsHuge Numbers Author:Noam Chomsky
“At the beginning of the 20th century, before the migration began, 90 percent of all African-Americans were living in the South. By the end of the Great Migration, nearly half of them were living outside the South in the great cities of the North and West. So when this migration began, you had a really small number of people who were living in the North and they were surviving as porters or domestics or preachers - some had risen to levels of professional jobs - but they were, in some ways, protected because they were so small.” PeopleWayEndsJobsLevelsNumbersCitiesHalfCenturyPercentWestSouthAfrican AmericanProtectedPreacher20th CenturySurvivingRisenMigrationGreat CitiesSmall Numbers Author:Isabel Wilkerson
“So, we've gone from covered wagons to going to the moon in just under 100 years. For all the centuries and thousands of years before us, people walked or rode horses, cows, camels or whatever. This so-called modern era, from the late 19th century through now, has been the period of the most amazing development, discovery, innovation and acceleration of change that humans have ever experienced. And it hasn't slowed down yet.” PeopleYearsHumansHas BeensGoneModernCenturyDevelopmentPeriodsMoonLateDiscoveryHorseInnovationErasCoveredCows19th CenturyMost AmazingCamelsWagonsAccelerationModern Era Author:Edgar Mitchell
“At the beginning of the 20th century, there were less than 3 billion people on the earth, closer to 2 billion. By all measures that we can come up with right now,. with the lifestyle and consumption pattern of the Western industrial civilization, we can probably sustain about 2 billion people on this earth. We already have over 6 billion. China and India are aspiring to come on as industrial nations, aspiring to the lifestyle of the Western world, and it simply can't happen.” PeopleWorldHappensEarthNationsCenturyCivilizationRight NowIndiaWesternPatternsCome UpChinaBillionsLifestyleConsumption20th CenturyWestern WorldChina And India Author:Edgar Mitchell
“Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church.” PeopleNeedsMindDifferentBodyRealitySpiritualitySidesChurchCenturyLateQuittingBurningRealmsStakesPhysicalityInquisition17th Century Author:Edgar Mitchell
“AIDS is the leprosy of the 21st Century. Where did Jesus hang out? With lepers. Jesus would love on people with AIDS.” PeopleJesusCenturyAidsHanging Out21st CenturyLeperLeprosy Author:Rick Warren
“In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We won"t be there to see it - but it"s why we live, why we work. It"s why we suffer. We"re creating it. That"s the purpose of our existence. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.” PeopleKnowsWayTwoPurposeSufferingGoalExistenceCenturyCreatingWorking ItNew WaysMillennium Author:Anton Chekhov
“Entertainment has seduced us into believing that we have a chance to live the life they live in the movies. Even the people in the movies don't live that life. It doesn't take 135 minutes to make a life, it takes almost a century. Everything doesn't depend on what happens in the next ninety seconds. Ever.” PeopleBelieveHappensNextChanceMinutesCenturyDependsEntertainmentLive LifeSecondsNinety Author:Seth Godin
“In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes - and nonessential programs have been cut - to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.” PeopleWorldHas BeensWarEffortPaySupportCuttingSacrificeEconomicCenturyMilitaryHigherConflictTaxesMajorsProgramIraqSpendingWar Of The WorldsVietnamWorld War IiContrastWorld War ITroops20th CenturyKoreanIraq WarKorean War Author:Robert Hormats
“For nearly a century, the South made itself believe that Negroes and white people were really communicating. So convinced of this were the white Southerners that they almost made the nation believe that they, and only they, knew the mind of the Southern Negro.” PeopleMindBelieveMadeNationsWhiteCenturySouthCommunicateConvincedSouthernSoutherner Author:Benjamin E. Mays
“Between 2001 and 2011, Brazil lifted 20 million people out of poverty and into its growing middle class, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century Botswana's gross domestic product per capita grew faster than that of any other country on the planet. The once-labeled 'Third World' is edging its way into the 'First World.'” PeopleWorldWayFirstsCountryLastsClassPovertyMillionsGrowingMiddleCenturyPlanetsProductsGrewThirdsFasterMiddle ClassQuartersOther CountriesGrossTwentieth CenturyThird WorldBrazilGross Domestic Product Book:Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth Source: Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth
“Living in Montgomery, I've been antagonized by the emergence of a narrative about our history that I believe is quite false and misleading, and actually dangerous. And the narrative that emerges when you spend time in the South - places likes Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana - is that we have always been a noble, wonderful, glorious region of the country, with wonderful, noble, glorious people doing wonderful, noble, glorious things. And there's great pride in the Alabamians of the nineteenth century.” PeopleBelieveCountryI BelieveWonderfulCenturyDangerousPrideSouthNobleLikesNarrativeGloriousRegionsEnd TimesSpend TimeMisleadGeorgiaNineteenth CenturyMississippiEmergenceLouisianaAlabamaMontgomery Author:Bryan Stevenson
“The landscape in Montgomery and in the South is just saturated with imagery. Markers are everywhere. There's a marker for the first Confederate post office, there's a marker for a ball that Robert E. Lee hosted, there's a marker for where Jefferson Davis had a meeting. We love reminding people about all that was going on in the mid-nineteenth century.” PeopleFirstsCenturyOfficeBallsMeetingsSouthPostsLandscapeImageryNineteenth CenturyRemindingSaturatedConfederateMarkersPost OfficeMontgomery Author:Bryan Stevenson
“The Bureau of Justice reports that one in three black male babies born this century will go to jail or prison - that is an absolutely astonishing statistic. And it ought to be terrorizing to not just to people of color, but to all of us.” PeopleThreeBlackBornJusticeCenturyColorBabyOughtPrisonMalesReportsJailAstonishingBlack MalesBaby Born Author:Bryan Stevenson
“I find it strange that - at least in my take on it - the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway. Humor is just an ingredient. It's always been in poetry. It kind of dropped out of poetry I think during the 19th and up to the mid-twentieth century. But it's found its way back. And it's simply an ingredient.” PeopleThinkingWayKindSeemsFoundCenturyStrangeTasteIngredientsTwentieth Century Author:Billy Collins
“GMO agriculture will probably save the world in this century. But in the developed world, where few people are haunted by the specter of famine, people are free to fetishize heirloom tomatoes and worry about the provenance of what sits on their dinner tables.” PeopleWorldWorryCenturyTablesDinnerAgricultureFamineSave The WorldTomatoesDinner TableGmosHeirlooms Author:Annalee Newitz
“Look back on the utopian dreams of the previous century, or even the century before that, where people thought machines would ultimately give us a quality of life where our needs would be taken care of so we could all basically be artists together in the evening, after we had fished, hunted, raised cattle - or whatever it was Marx imagined for us.” PeopleNeedsGivingLooksDreamWould BeCareTogetherArtistQualityTakenCenturyMachinesRaisedEveningQuality Of LifeCattleUtopianHunted Author:Astra Taylor
“I did a lot of work with early 20th century attitudes, the kind of superficial notions and behavior that prompt people who don't know history very well to think that "people were different back then" - but beneath all that are characters who react in ways that we can all recognize, and will always be able to recognize.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWayWellsKindDifferentCharacterAbleAttitudeCenturyBehaviorNotionSuperficial20th CenturyPrompts Author:James Vance
“These events are swirling around them. In the white community, people felt like they had no control over their neighborhoods, their destiny. In the black community, centuries of government and economic forces were pushing on them. I went in with a kind of arrogance, maybe, that came from living in a very intellectual family, and I left knowing that there was a lot about the way people lived that I didn't know about.” PeopleKnowsWayKindGovernmentLeftForceFeltBlackCommunityWhiteDestinyKnowingEconomicCenturyEventsIntellectualArroganceNeighborhoodPushingBlack CommunityPushing On Author:Sara Paretsky
“My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy.” PeopleWayBelieveKindPoliticalCan DoDemocracyCenturyPeriodsLateDirectInstrumentsAvailablePermanentLinksLinkedTwentieth CenturyTotalitarianismDisobedienceCivil DisobedienceDirect Democracy Author:Vandana Shiva
“I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.” PeopleIdeasCommunityCenturyExtremesAlternativesSurprisingShocked20th Century19th CenturyUtopianAdoptingCommunesCommunalism Author:Christine Jennings
“There are Harvard grads, free thinkers, feminists, abolitionists, well-to-do people who want to go write poetry and live on a farm and cook and laugh and have a good time. As they themselves described it, it was an "inward facing" community. They were focusing on making a better existence for themselves, which I think is also the driving force of 20th century communalism in the US, the thought being that the world is corrupt, and we're going to build this little garden of innocence.” PeopleThinkingWorldWantWritingWellsLittlesForceCommunityExistenceLaughingCenturyGardenFeministDrivingInnocenceCooksGood TimesFarmsThinkerInward20th CenturyHaving A Good TimeHarvardDriving ForceAbolitionistGradFree ThinkersCommunalism Author:Christine Jennings
“The best stuff that Cicero wrote, in the first century in Rome, were the Philippics, a series of speeches that he delivered against Marc Antony, whom he thought was irreparably dismantling the Republic of Rome. Those speeches are powerful because they're not only really pointed but they're thrillingly beautiful - and that's precisely what made them dangerous: the fact that people wanted to read them.” PeopleFirstsMadeFactsWantedBeautifulStuffPowerfulCenturyDangerousSpeechSeriesRepublicRomeAntony Author:John D'Agata
“In the 20th century, artists did a great disservice to fairies. They painted fairies in a way that was shallow and trite. So when people see my stuff, they suddenly realize the depth of fairies.” PeopleWayArtistStuffRealizingCenturyDepthFairyShallow20th CenturyDisservice Author:Brian Froud
“I think he [Vaclav Havel] is one of the great figures of the 20th century. He is one of the people that was able to be a part of overthrowing a dictatorial system by talking to people and understanding what the elements of democracy really are and respect for each other and elevating.” PeopleThinkingAbleUnderstandingTalkingDemocracyCenturyFiguresElements20th CenturyElevating Author:Judy Woodruff
“It's easy to say that reducing a song to 90 seconds on "American Idol" strips off so many things, and how it's the 21st century and music doesn't mean the same things to people and that it's so disposable.” PeopleMeanSongEasyCenturySecondsIdols21st CenturyReducingDisposableAmerican Idol Author:Alan Light
“It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and '60s style of propaganda.” PeopleStillsCenturyStylePropagandaDepressing21st CenturyVery Depressing Author:Bassem Youssef
“It is very easy for me to imagine in 200 years, people looking back at chemotherapy as proof that people of the 20th century were insane and just morons.” PeopleYearsEasyImagineCenturyProofInsaneLooking Back20th CenturyMoronChemotherapy Author:Chuck Klosterman
“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” PeoplePoliticalPoliticsIssuesCenturyHistoricalSooner Or LaterVersusBankingUsuryBankers And BanksBanks And Money Author:Lord Acton
“The 20th century was a turning point; it freed and emancipated women, broke the back of segregation, and began the struggle to give justice to gay and lesbian people. But the Christian church, in both Catholic and Protestant forms, resisted every one of those humanizing developments. The church was on the wrong side of all three of those fights.” PeopleGivingChristianFormFightingThreeSidesChurchJusticeStruggleCenturyDevelopmentGayCatholicBroke20th CenturySegregationProtestantsTurning PointsChristian Church Author:John Shelby Spong