“In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.” MeanPlayHumanityNaturalWealthRaceClassGenerationsModernMiddleCivilizationSucceedConversationIntelligentPopulationSelectionNatural SelectionNotoriousUpper ClassModern CivilizationFuture Of Humanity Book:Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings Source: Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings
“modern science was largely conceived of as an answer to the servant problem and ... it is generally practiced by those who lack a flair for conversation.” ProblemScienceAnswersModernConversationServantModern ScienceFlair Book:The Fran Lebowitz Reader Source: The Fran Lebowitz Reader
“For never has there been, in modern times, such a Homeric world, where so much value is pinned onto the utterance of name! Entire conversations, entire lives, are devoted to the act of naming people, and in Pakistan the affluent would be totally devoid of talk if they were unable to take names in vain. Caste and all its subclassifications are recreated every day in the structure of a conversation that knows which names to name.” PeopleIfsKnowsWorldWould BeValuesNamesModernConversationStructureVainDevotedPakistanUtteranceCastesModern TimesAffluent Author:Sara Suleri
“We're living in a state where no one can trust his telephone conversations, nor even his personal conversations in a room, in a bar or anywhere else.” StatesRoomsModernConversationBarsTelephonesModern Life Author:Walter Cronkite
“I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.” PeopleThinkingWayNeedsGivingBookDifferentEnoughStoriesLiteratureLanguageReligiousModernFitConversationStructureWestDifferent Ways Author:William P. Young
“The serious reader in the age of technology is a rebel by definition: a protester without a placard, a Luddite without hammer or bludgeon. She reads on planes to picket the antiseptic nature of modern travel, on commuter trains to insist on individualism in the midst of the herd, in hotel rooms to boycott the circumstances that separate her from her usual sources of comfort and stimulation, during office breaks to escape from the banal conversation of office mates, and at home to revolt against the pervasive and mind-deadening irrelevance of television.” MindHomeAgeRoomsBreakTechnologyModernTelevisionSeriousSourceReaderCircumstancesComfortConversationOfficeTrainDefinitionsPlanesHotelMidstRebelMatesUsualIndividualismHammersHerdsRevoltStimulationHotel RoomsBoycottIrrelevance Author:Eric Burns
“The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.” NeedsCausesModernCenturySkillsConversationComputerPhonesCellsGiantsTransformedImaginary20th CenturyCourtesyNarcissisticCell PhoneUrgencyBreakdownPhonyGadgetsCocoonsAtrophyFaxEscalation Author:Mary Schmich