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Modern Quotes

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Modern Quotes

“The modern world is reversing the old virtues of authority. They aimed deliberately to make men unworldly. They did not aim to found society on a full use of the earth's resources; they did not aim to use the whole nature of man; they did not intend him to think out the full expression of his desires. Democracy is a turning point upon those ideals in a pursuit, at first unconsciously, of the richest life that men can devise for themselves.”

Thinking Men World Firsts Whole Use Earth Desire Found Virtue Democracy Modern Expression Authority Resources Ideals Aim Pursuit Modern World Turning Points Nature Of Man

Author:Walter Lippmann

“The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.”

Way Secret Modern Morality Anxiety Ideals Roots Currents Terror Noble Russia Communism Consistent Soviet Dread Disguise Altruism Literal Embodiment Irrationality Soviet Russia

Book:Philosophy: Who Needs It

Source: Philosophy: Who Needs It

“If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.”

Ifs Feels Made Artist Term Modern Ideals Perfection Importance Notion Confusion Painter Masterpiece Qualms Qualms About

Author:Andre Malraux

“It has been a long road from Plato's Meno to the present, but it is perhaps encouraging that most of the progress along that road has been made since the turn of the twentieth century, and a large fraction of it since the midpoint of the century. Thought was still wholly intangible and ineffable until modern formal logic interpreted it as the manipulation of formal tokens. And it seemed still to inhabit mainly the heaven of Platonic ideals, or the equally obscure spaces of the human mind, until computers taught us how symbols could be processed by machines.”

“One of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.”

“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”

Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition

“Masculine ideals have become very confused in the modern world.”

World Modern Ideals Confused Masculine Modern World

Author:Andrew Dominik

“Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.”

Goal Modern Ideals Philosopher Plato Menace

Author:Moses Finley

“It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world.”

Source: The Four Faces of Peace and the International Outlook: Statements

“In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.”

May War Eye Modern Ideals Sake Harvest

Book:Writings, 1902-1910

Source: Writings, 1902-1910

“Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck.”

Modern Ideals Luck Democratic Inequality Merit Inheritance Democratic Ideals

Author:Thomas Piketty