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Present Day Quotes

Browse 237 quotes about Present Day.

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Present Day Quotes

“In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose – an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king – that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not – unless it was built before our time.”

ImaginationFantasyArchitectureFaeriePresent DayTolkien
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
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“She shrugged, looking as baffled by it as he felt. "I don't know. I wonder sometimes if people even know what love is anymore. Some days, when I'm watching my friends change lovers as unperturbedly as they change shoes, I think the world just got filled with too many people, and all our technological advances made things so easy that it cheapened our most basic, essential value somehow," she told him. "It's like spouses are commodities nowadays: disposable, constantly getting tossed back out for trade on the market and everyone's trying to trade up, up--like there is a 'trading up' in love." She rolled her eyes. "No way. That's not for me. I'm having one husband. I'm getting married once. When you know going in that you're staying for life, it makes you think harder about it, go slower, choose really well.”

LoveMarriageTechnologyTradePresent DayJessicaKaren Marie MoningHighlanderCianSpell Of The HighlanderJessi
Book:Spell of the Highlander
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“It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business.”

MenWantDoeBigsCommonHe ManProductsMassLuxuryShopsGoodsPresent DayBig BusinessCommon ManLuxury Goods
Book:An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution: The Economist
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“I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.”

ShouldWellsLittlesEndsCharacterMightNovelSeeingReaderOrdinaryAbnormalPresent DayOrdinary LifeDay LifeReluctanceMain CharactersAbnormalityArresting
Author:Patricia Highsmith
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“One faith, St. Paul writes (Eph. 4:5). Hold most firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church ... We must hold this for certain, namely: that the faith of the people at the present day is one with the faith of the people in past centuries. Were this not true, then we would be in a different church than they were in and, literally, the Church would not be One.”

PeopleWritingDifferentWould BePastCertainChurchCenturyUnityDenyCatholicismIdenticalPresent Day
Author:Thomas Aquinas
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“Five hundred years before Christ some physicians of ancient India, working under the influence of the Lord Buddha, advanced the art of healing to so perfect a state that they were able to abolish surgery, although the surgery of their time was as efficient, or more so, than that of the present day.”

YearsArtStatesAbleChristPerfectHealingLordFiveInfluenceHundredIndiaAncientEfficientPhysiciansSurgeryAbolishPresent DayAncient IndiaLord Buddha
Book:The Bach Flower Remedies
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“One of the most extraordinary things about industrial society of the present day is its idiot lack of memory. Tabloids and movies take the place of mental processes and revolts, crimes, despairs pass off in a dribble of vague words and rubber stamp phrases without leaving a scratch on the mind of the driven instalment-paying, subway-packing mass.”

MindProcessMemoriesCrimeDespairMassExtraordinaryLeavingDrivenIdiotPhrasesVagueStampsScratchesRevoltSubwayPresent DayRubberTabloidsExtraordinary ThingsPackingDribble
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“If you expect the present day school system to give history to you, you are dreaming. This, we have to do ourselves. The Chinese didn't go out in the world and beg people to teach Chinese studies or let them teach Chinese studies. The Japanese didn't do that either. People don't beg other people to restore their history; they do it themselves.”

PeopleIfsWorldGivingDreamSchoolTeachStudyChinesePresent DaySchool System
Book:Africans at the crossroads: notes for an African world revolution
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“All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers... Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about... Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion.”

PlaySuccessfulWrittenDramaAncientConclusionRealisticInvestigationGreeceDetectivesThrillersPresent DayAncient Greece
Book:Amedee, The New Tenant, Victims of Duty: Three Plays
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“Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.”

WorldNeedsMaySoulProblemAgeParticularConcernedAspirationRemedyRequirementsCentreAfflictionPresent DayDeliberationBahaBaha I
Author:Bahá'u'lláh
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“The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.”

DoeMatterFormEnergyBrainInformationActivityMusclesMaterialismLiverPresent Day
Book:Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
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“A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.”

GivingDifferentPhilosophyPastSpiritNamesProcessNaturalPoetRegardAriseContactInterpretationConceptionThinkerAnarchyAnarchismAnarchistFormationPresent DayConstituentsPast And PresentNatural ScienceForecastsPresent Life
Author:Peter Kropotkin
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“Persuasion is effected through the medium of the hearers, when they shall have been brought to a state of excitement under the influence of speech; for we do not, when influenced by pain or joy, or partiality or dislike, award our decisions in the same way; about which means of persuasion alone, I declare that the system-mongers of the present day busy themselves.”

WayMeanHas BeensStatesPainJoyDecisionInfluenceSpeechBusyMediumsExcitementAwardsDislikePersuasionPresent DayPartiality
Book:Treatise on Rhetoric: Literally Translated from the Greek
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“The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates - the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software.”

WorldAudienceTelevisionProductsHugeElementsPaperAnxietyNewsVoteMarketingWidePsychologicalMagazinesConsumersLandscapeZoneSoftwareCashBootsPassiveTechnologicalBallotsPresent DayElectorateReadershipWeaponryOpportunistPolling
Author:J. G. Ballard
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“I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round - but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows.”

IfsWorldSocialGrowsNumbersGroupsParticularMetsLuckyDemandDiseaseIncreaseWorkersRoundsVariousProfessionProportionHaltUnemployedSubwayProfessionalismPresent DayConductorSocial WorkerRigidityOligarchyIrrelevanceBricklayers
Author:Ted Nelson
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“There can be no doubt that the young of today have to be protected against certain poisonous effects inherent in present-day civilization. Five social diseases surround them, even in early childhood. There is the decline in fitness due to modern methods of locomotion; the decline in initiative due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; the decline in care and skill due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; the decline in self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of tranquilizers and stimulants, and the decline in compassion, which William Temple called "spiritual death.”

SelfCareTodaySpiritualYoungCertainSocialCompassionDoubtFiveModernChildhoodEffectsDisciplineCivilizationSkillsDiseaseTraditionMethodDuesNo DoubtTemplesSurroundDeclineProtectedInitiativeInherentSelf DisciplinePresent DayPoisonousAvailabilityEarly ChildhoodCraftsmanshipStimulantsSpiritual Death
Author:Kurt Hahn
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“Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward.”

WorldLooksPastSpiritIndividualPoorViewsStageRegretMarkIndependencePoint Of ViewArtisticSubstitutesGlamourPresent DayOld WorldIndividual FreedomFestivities
Author:Flora Thompson
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“Thousands of Americans, Englishmen and Frenchmen have visited Germany during the months after the national revolution and were able to testify as eye-witnesses that there is no country in the world where law and order are better maintained than in present-day Germany. That there is no country in the world where person and property are held in better respect than in our own, but that there is perhaps also no country in the word where a more rigorous fight is put up against those who believe that they are free to let loose their lower instincts to the detriment of their fellow-beings.”

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Author:Adolf Hitler
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“Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace and charity - what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong - a series of unprecedented horrors perpetrated by so-called Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadores, the American Indian wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt.”

FirstsWarChristianChristianityHorrorSlaverySeriesCharityIndianNaiveBeltsUnprecedentedPresent DayAmerican IndianInquisitionHiroshima
Author:William S. Burroughs
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“Consider, for example, and you will find that almost all the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing far the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.”

MenGivingChildrenLittlesWarExamplePrideLoversLongingKingdomsSicknessHolidayPlotSuspicionAgricultureTrafficJoyousMarryingTransactionsPresent DayPassed AwayGiving InMisersFlattererInsolentEducating ChildrenCanvassing
Author:Marcus Aurelius
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“The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.”

IfsThinkingWantEasyWealthSimplePsychologyImpossiblePersonalityDevelopmentVariousCuresStrifeRoyalVisualizationPresent DayWishful ThinkingDiscordReformersDissolutionDisinterestedIgnobleGullibility
Author:Agnes Repplier
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“The people to become enlightened in Atlantis lit the "flame of enlightenment" on earth for the first time. The members of the various mystery schools have kept the flame alive by passing on the secret techniques for attaining enlightenment from the time of Atlantis to our present day.”

PeopleFirstsSchoolEarthSecretAliveMysteryMembersEnlightenmentFirst TimeAncientVariousTechniquePassingPassingsFlamesEnlightenedLitPresent DayAncient EgyptAtlantisPassing On
Author:Frederick Lenz
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