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Zeitgeist Quotes

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Zeitgeist Quotes

“Virtue is under certain circumstances merely an honorable form of stupidity: who could be ill-disposed toward it on that account? And this kind of virtue has not been outlived even today. A kind of sturdy peasant simplicity, which, however, is possible in all classes and can be encountered only with respect and a smile, believes even today that everything is in good hands, namely in the "hands of God"; and when it maintains this proportion with the same modest certainty as it would that two and two make four, we others certainly refrain from contradicting. Why disturb THIS pure foolishness? Why darken it with our worries about man, people, goal, future? And even if we wanted to do it, we could not. They project their own honorable stupidity and goodness into the heart of things (the old God, deus myops, still lives among them!); we others — we read something else into the heart of things: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, more mistrustful wisdom.”

PeopleCommonAtheismMoralitySimplicityStupidityNihilismZeitgeist
Book:The Will to Power
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“How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4, 14). Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching', looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an 'Adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.”

ReligionFaithJesusChristianityHumanismLiberalismCatholicismMarxismWorldviewZeitgeistThe ChurchChristian Humanism
Author:Pope Benedict XVI
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“These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one. Royal Society members and French Encyclopædists are in the Chariot, availing themselves whilst they may of any occasion to preach the Gospels of Reason, denouncing all that was once Magic, though too often in smirking tropes upon the Church of Rome,— visitations, bleeding statues, medical impossibilities,— no, no, far too foreign. One may be allowed an occasional Cock Lane Ghost,— otherwise, for any more in that Article, one must turn to Gothick Fictions, folded acceptably between the covers of Books.”

ReasonFictionIdeologyZeitgeist
Book:Mason & Dixon
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“I don't know what happened, but in a pre-emptive strike, I'm offended on behalf of people who may have been offended even though that wasn't the intention. I'm also offended on behalf of people who may be allergic to apologies. Some people are probably offended by what I've written and I'm also offended on behalf of those people against myself.”

HumorHumourSatirePolitical CorrectnessWokeSocial CommentaryZeitgeistMonty PythonTaking OffenseOverly Sensitive
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Knighthood became an anachronism not because its weapons, but because its ‘idealism’ and irrationalism had become out of date. The knight did not understand the motive forces behind the new economy, the new society and the new state; he still persisted in regarding the middle class with its money and ‘narrow-minded’ commercial outlook as an anomaly. The men of the middle class knew much better where they stood with the knights. It amused them to join in the masquerade of the knightly tournaments and the ‘courts of love’, but they treated all such activities as mere sport; in their business activities they remained hard-headed and free from illusions in a world which was the very opposite of chivalrous.”

Middle ClassKnightsBourgeoisZeitgeist
Book:The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages
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“Eighty-five years after the storms of steel of the German-French fronts, sixty-five years after the peak of the Stalinist mass exterminations, fifty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, and just as long after the bombardments of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the swinging back of the Zeitgeist to the preference for middling circumstances is to be understood as a tribute to normalization. In this regard, it has an unconditionally affirmative civilizing value. Furthermore, democracy per se presupposes the cultivation of middling circumstances. As is well known, spirit spits what is lukewarm out of its mouth; in contrast, pragmatism holds that the temperature of life is lukewarm. Thus the impulse toward the middle, the cardinal symptom of the fin de siècle, does not have only political motives. It symbolizes the weariness of apocalypse felt by a society that has had to hear too much of revolutions and paradigm shifts. But above all it expresses the general pull toward the conversion of the drama of history into the insurance industry. Insurance policies anchor antiextremism in the routines of the post-radical society. The insurance industry is humanism minus book culture. It brings into shape the insight that human beings as a rule do not wish to be revolutionized, but rather to be safeguarded. Whoever understands this will bank on the fact that in the future contra-innovative revolts from out of the spirit of the insurance claim are most probable of all.”

InsuranceZeitgeist
Book:Not Saved: Essays After Heidegger
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“The smart voter is politically-fluid in that they don't rigidly believe that the same viewpoint, party manifesto or individual is the poultice for all maladies in every election. They attune themselves to the zeitgeist, search for potentially-reputable parties and candidates with suitable policies and cast their vote accordingly.”

VoteVotersZeitgeistPolitics ObservationVoters And VotingElection QuotesManifesto QuotesElection QuotationsZeitgeist MovementPolitically Active
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“One suspects that the haste with which some performers and some writers brush aside the traditional-jazz renaissance reflects their understanding of the devastating effect that an insistence on the traditional values would have upon the world of modern jazz to which they belong”

FearTraditionJazzMulticulturalZeitgeistMusique
Book:Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now
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“Mis-information is rampant in this great age of mass-information. While we have more access to learning than ever before in the history of the world, we’re actually getting dumber it seems. The amount of (mis)information at everyone's fingertips has lured us into a false sense of knowing. Whether it be information about science, politics, or theology, our society is suffering from an inability to research, process, filter, and apply. At the same time we seem entirely oblivious to the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) that is nihilistic and libertine, making everything relative and subjective. And Satan himself rushes to blur our vision, stirring up the dust of confusion. The church must respond by teaching the critical faculties of logic and spiritual discernment, embedded in a cohesive framework of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). We must obtain a reasonable faith that is consistent with historic Christianity and relevant for our post-modern age. Otherwise, those rejecting the blatant errors of religious fundamentalism will be susceptible to every wind of false doctrine and repackaged heresy imaginable. They will leave the orthodox faith and accept something that vaguely resembles Christianity, but in reality is a vile concoction of demonic lies.”

PoliticsInternetTheologyFundamentalismHeresyMisinformationZeitgeistFaith And ReasonFaith And ScienceSpirit Of The AgeChurch And Culture
Author:David D. Flowers
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“Novelists,’ said Ivo, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels any more, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist – as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think,’ said Ivo, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.”

WritingBooksLondonFashionableNovelsZeitgeist90sThe Nineties
Book:A Vicious Circle
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“This may seem like a strange thing to say, but these are post-9/11 fantasy. I've read post-9/11 SF already, but this is the first fantasy that had that feel fore me. I don't mea they have allegory, or even applicability. They're their own thing, not a shadow-play of our world. But they have that sensibility, in the same way that Tolkien was writing about Dark Lords in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin and Marion Zimmer Bradley was writing about Free Amazons during the seventies upswell of feminism.”

FantasyZeitgeistPost 9 11Daniel AbrahamLong Price
Book:What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction & Fantasy
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“Jedermann, selbst der Heilige, ist heute mobilisiert. Gerade das habe ich vielleicht am tiefsten empfunden. Mit jeder Form, die in den Schützengräben umkommt, mit jedem Strich, jeder Metapher und jedem Gebet, das vom Stahl zermalmt wird, verliert das Ewige eine Partie. Da ich mir bewusst bin, mich nicht von meiner Zeit trennen zu können, habe ich beschlossen, eins mit ihr zu sein. Nur deshalb mache ich vom Individuum so viel Aufhebens, weil es mir lächerlich und erniedrigt erscheint. Da ich weiß, dass keine Sache siegen wird, liebe ich die verlorenen”

ReligionZeitgeistSinn Des LebensNihilismus
Book:Der Mythos des Sisyphos
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“[The] tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns...We are now...only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that...such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed toward the adjustment of modern society to modern methods”

ScienceTimeCultureTechnologyProgressSocietyModernDevelopmentFutureCapitalismPatternsIdeologyCommunismFascismSocial ChangeZeitgeistTechnological ProgressSocioeconomicsAdaptionP2pZeitgeist MovementPeer To PeerTzmPeereconomyStructural ChangePeer To Peer ProductionSocioeconomic Change
Author:Ralph Linton
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“Wäre ich auf meine Muskelkraft angewiesen und ein Ringer oder Boxer geworden, so würde kein Mensch von mir verlangen, ich solle Muskelkraft für etwas Untergeordnetes ansehen. Wäre ich stark im Kopfrechnen und wäre Leiter eines großen Bureaus, so würde kein Mensch mir zumuten, die Stärke im Kopfrechnen als eine Minderwertigkeit zu verachten. Vom Dichter aber verlangt die jüngste Zeit, und manche junge Dichter verlangen es selber von sich, daß sie gerade das, was den Dichter ausmacht, die Erregbarkeit der Seele, die Fähigkeit sich zu verlieben, die Fähigkeit zu lieben und zu glühen, sich hinzugeben und in der Welt der Gefühle das Unerhörte und Übernormale zu erleben - daß sie gerade diese Stärke hassen und sich ihrer schämen und sich gegen alles wehren sollen, was "sentimental" heißen könnte. [...] Ich mache nicht mit.”

ZeitgeistKunstKünstlerErlebenEmpfindung
Book:Die Nürnberger Reise
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“Die Gesamtheit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische Struktur der Gesellschaft, die reale Basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer Überbau erhebt und welcher bestimmte gesellschaftliche Bewußtseinsformen entsprechen. Die Produktionsweise des materiellen Lebens bedingt den sozialen, politischen und geistigen Lebensprozeß überhaupt. Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewußtsein bestimmt. Auf einer gewissen Stufe ihrer Entwicklung geraten die materiellen Produktivkräfte der Gesellschaft in Widerspruch mit den vorhandenen Produktionsverhältnissen oder, was nur ein juristischer Ausdruck dafür ist, mit den Eigentumsverhältnissen, innerhalb deren sie sich bisher bewegt hatten.”

RevolutionZeitgeistMarxGesellschaftP2pSoziologieProduktionsverhältnisse
Book:A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
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“Кстати, ведь все.. выжившие или, точнее, выжитые из своих умов, выселенные, так сказать, из всех двенадцати кантовских категорий рассудка, естественно, принуждены ютиться в какой-нибудь тринадцатой категории, этакой логической боковушке, лишь кой-как прислонённой к объективно обязательному мышлению.”

HistoryIdentityZeitgeistKantIronie
Book:Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного
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“Everyone is so locked into the current way of doing things, they never see the larger picture or other, more responsible and efficient possibilities. A REAL economy is always wanting to limit consumption/manufacturing as much as possible by assuring the strategically "best" and "adaptable" productions at all times, while keeping balance with human needs and public health. It is a total shift in intent than what we have today.”

CultureChangeEconomySocietyRevolutionActivismEfficiencySociologyPublic HealthHuman NeedsZeitgeistProductionSocioeconomicsRoot CausesSocietal ChangeP2pZeitgeist MovementTzmPeter JosephMethods Of Production
Author:Peter Joseph
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“In the Germany of the l920s, the Weimar Republic, both orga­nismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.”

HumansCulturePsychologySawsHuman NatureMovementTheoryGrewIntellectualHungerGermanyProtestBiologyRepublicTrendsEcologyWholenessOutlookAlienationHolisticZeitgeistFragmentationGestaltSystems TheoryProtest Movements
Author:Fritjof Capra
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“Every man who speaks out loud and clear is tinting the "Zeitgeist." Every man who expresses what he honestly thinks is true is changing the Spirit of the Times. Thinkers help other people to think, for they formulate what others are thinking. No person writes or thinks alone--thought is in the air, but its expression is necessary to create a tangible Spirit of the Times.”

PeopleThinkingMenWritingPersonsHelpingSpiritSpeakClearAirExpressionHonestlyEvery ManHelping OthersLoudThinkerTangibleSpeaks OutZeitgeist
Book:So Here Then Cometh Pig-pen Pete; Or, Some Chums of Mine
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“The average person might articulate them differently, but we all think about interpersonal relationships in one way or another. Writers just express that in different ways and capture it in different ways. To some degree, we're all thinking about the same things. It's the zeitgeist. The trick, in a way, as a writer, is to hope that your interests in some sense link up with the culture around you.”

ThinkingWayPersonsDifferentMightCultureInterestDegreesAverageTricksOne WayDifferent WaysLinksCaptureAverage PersonZeitgeistInterpersonalInterpersonal Relationship
Author:Jennifer Egan
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“Steve Jobs did not start started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. He believed in making people comfortable with these machines, which is why he spent so much time thinking about how to design them a certain way, how to make them so user-friendly and interactive, and why he spent so much time studying the Zeitgeist.”

PeopleThinkingWayMindHumansIdeasJobsCertainStudyDesignComfortableComputerUnderstoodMachinesMarketingApplesFriendlyHuman MindUsersBicycleInteractiveScamsZeitgeistUser Friendly
Author:Alex Gibney
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