“I should say many things. Mexico has been one of the losers of the 20th century. We tried many different alternatives to development and unfortunately we have 40 percent of the population poor; we have a per capita income that is extremely low.” ShouldHas BeensDifferentPoorCenturyDevelopmentLowsPercentPopulationIncomeAlternativesLoserMexico20th Century Author:Vicente Fox
“By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites. Eighty percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can't read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago.” WayYearsStillsRealEndsStatesFactsThreeBlackWhiteFiveFourProgressCenturyFiguresSixPercentAdultsYears AgoEducationalDecadesDespite20th CenturyLiteracyAnother WayEightyDisadvantagesSchoolingSurveysAssessmentIlliteracyAll State Author:Vin Suprynowicz
“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.” IfsWorldYearsHumansMeanTwoWarHappensHuman BeingsCenturyTerriblePercentHundredCapacitySevenOilImprovementThings HappenWar Of The WorldsShockProductiveTerrible ThingsFluEpidemicsGreat DepressionTwo WorldsUnleashed Author:Howard Warren Buffett
“There is some evidence that average wave heights are slowly rising, and that freak waves of eighty or ninety feet are becoming more common. Wave heights off the coast of England have risen an average of 25 percent over the past couple of decades, which converts to a twenty-foot increase in the highest waves over the next half century. One cause may be the tightening of environmental laws, which has reduced the amount of oil flushed into the oceans by oil tankers.” MayPastLawNextCausesWaterCommonHalfFeetCenturyAmountCoupleBecomingOceanHighestPercentEvidenceIncreaseEnglandTwentiesEnvironmentalAverageWaveOilDecadesHeightRisingFreakCoastNinetyEightyRisenOver The PastBecoming More Author:Sebastian Junger
“In fact, 37 percent of all United States Nobel Prize winners in the 20th century have been representatives of the Jewish community.” Has BeensStatesFactsCommunityUnitedUnited StatesCenturyPercentWinnerPrizePregnancyRepresentatives20th CenturyNobelNobel PrizeJewish CommunityNobel Prize Winners Author:Jon Porter
“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
“When you see that 76 percent of teachers are female, I think you have to acknowledge that there's a cultural bias, and it does date back to this nineteenth century idea that teaching is a form of mothering.” ThinkingDoeIdeasFormTeacherTeachingCenturyPercentFemaleAcknowledgeBiasNineteenth CenturyMothering Author:Dana Goldstein
“As I started reading about it, I saw that at the beginning of the 19th century, outside of New England - which was an unusually literate place - practically no one could read or write. And even in New England, the overall rate was only about 60 percent. That still means four out of 10 people couldn't put their name to a will.” PeopleWritingMeanStillsReadingNamesSawsFourCenturyPercentEnglandRate19th CenturyNew England Author:Robert Hass
“A movement got started for common schools, and by the end of the 19th century, 91 percent of Americans could read and write.” WritingEndsSchoolCommonCenturyMovementPercent19th Century Author:Robert Hass
“Even if we planted a tree on every square yard available in the planet by the end of the century we would only capture at most 10 percent of the CO2 we need to reduce. This does not mean that we should not plant trees; we should, for biodiversity's sake, and for our long-term future together with the other species.” IfsNeedsShouldMeanLongDoeEndsTogetherTermTreeCenturyPlanetsPercentPlantSpeciesSakeAvailableLong TermCaptureSquaresYardsBiodiversityPlant A TreeCo2Futures Together Author:Graciela Chichilnisky
“In the beginning of the 19th century, maybe forty percent of women and fifty percent of men could produce a signature, which meant that they'd had at least three years of education because it was in third grade that people started penmanship in the 19th century. And of course black people could get killed if they got caught teaching themselves to read in some parts of the country.” PeopleIfsMenYearsCountryThreeCoursesBlackTeachingCenturyProducePercentThirdsCaughtFiftyGradesFortyBlack PeopleThree Years19th CenturySignaturesThird GradePenmanship Author:Robert Hass
“At the turn of the twenty-first century, the richest 5 percent of people receive one-third of total global income, as much as the poorest 80 percent.” PeopleFirstsTurnsCenturyPercentThirdsTwentiesIncomePoorest Author:Zygmunt Bauman
“If you go back and you look at the presidency over the course of history, presidents tend to do what they campaigned on. In the 20th century, presidents between Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter accomplished 73 percent of the things that they said they would do as candidates. Part of that is because once they get into office, their credibility, their ability to do anything depends on doing the things that they said they would.” IfsLooksSaidCoursesPresidentAbilityCenturyDependsOfficePercentCandidatesAccomplishedThey SaidPresidency20th CenturyCredibilityJimmyCarterWilson Author:Evan Osnos
“There was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile industry around the same time as Henry Ford; there were something like 500 automotive companies that got funded, had the internal combustion engine, had the technology, and had the vision. Sixty percent of them folded within a couple of years.” YearsDoneCompanyVisionTechnologyStudyCenturyIndustryCouplePercentEntrepreneurInternalsEnginesSixty20th CenturyAutomobileCombustionAutomobile Industry Author:Eric Ries