Modern Age Quotes

• Information is the oxygen of the modern age.

  Ronald Reagan

  Oxygen, Age, Borders

  21 Copy quote

• Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

  Ronald Reagan

  Wall, Humor, Oxygen

  The Guardian, June 14, 1989.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

  Jackson Pollock

  Airplane, Mean, Artist

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Life, Past, Men

  Jeremy Rifkin (1989). “Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History”, Touchstone

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing - he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.

  Lionel Trilling

  Writing, Judging, Giving

  Lionel Trilling, Leon Wieseltier (2009). “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays”, p.552, Northwestern University Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age; the search for freedom and self fulfillment of man.

  John F. Kennedy

  Powerful, Men, Self

  Kennedy, John F. (1962). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961”, p.548, Best Books on

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Popular revolt against a ruthless, experienced modern dictatorship, which enjoys a monopoly over weapons and communications, ... is simply not a possibility in the modern age.

  George F. Kennan

  Communication, America, Age

  25 Copy quote

• The wise man then followed a simple way of life-which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Wise, Simple

  26 Copy quote

• With all the blessings our modern age has given to us, let us not give up the things that promote the workings of the Holy Ghost.

  Neil L. Andersen

  Giving Up, Blessing, Age

  4 Copy quote

• The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before.

  Hannah Arendt

  Strong, Order, Envy

  10 Copy quote

• It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Punishment, Jail, Solitude

  5 Copy quote

• Why are so many of us enspelled by myths and folk stories in this modern age? Why do we continue to tell the same old tales, over and over again? I think it's because these stories are not just fantasy. They're about real life. We've all encountered wicked wolves, found fairy godmothers, and faced trial by fire. We've all set off into unknown woods at one point in life or another. We've all had to learn to tell friend from foe and to be kind to crones by the side of the road. . . .

  Terri Windling

  Real, Thinking, Fire

  4 Copy quote

• You mean Teletubbies? (Berith) The fact that you know what they’re called, Berith, truly scares me. (Jericho) As a demon of torture, it behooves me to know all things that are deeply annoying. You’d be amazed how many people in the modern age no longer fear zombies as much as Teletubbies. (Berith) Not really. I’d rather battle a brain-eating zombie any day than hear them sing. (Jericho)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Mean, People, Zombie

  4 Copy quote

• The Vedic literatures predicted that after the advent of Lord Caitanya five hundred years ago, there would be a Golden Age of ten thousand years, when the chanting of the holy names of God would completely nullify all the degradations of the modern age, and real spiritual peace would come to this planet.

  Mukunda Goswami

  Spiritual, Real, Years

  "Interview with George Harrison". September 4, 1982.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The notion of a healthy society, of capable people who are able to enjoy life, arose in the liberal, middle-class, leftist and non-religious segments of society. The euthanasia idea came from neither the radical right-wing nor the conservative corner. It was and remains part of the modern age and progressive thought.

  Gotz Aly

  Religious, Class, Wings

  7 Copy quote

• Film writing and concert writing are two very different things. In film writing I am serving the film and it tells you what to write. I have to stay within the parameters of the film. In writing concert music for the stage I can write anything I want and in this day and modern age rules can be broken.

  Aaron Zigman

  Writing, Two, Broken

  4 Copy quote

• In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Order, Ideas, Rivers

  "In the Air" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.newyorker.com. May 12, 2008.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

  David Lodge

  Age, Modern, Cathedrals

  David Lodge (1990). “Nice Work”, Penguin Group USA

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every age thinks it's the modern age, but this one really is. Electricity is going to change everything. Everything!

  Tom Stoppard

  Thinking, Age, Modern

  Tom Stoppard (2014). “The Invention of Love”, p.35, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.... It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.... Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

  Salman Rushdie

  Sibling, Moving, Air

  "Everybody needs to get thicker skins" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. July 10, 2008.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Data, Age

  4 Copy quote

• The drug of choice in the modern age is levity. We want everything to be light and bubbly. We just want to feel good.

  Matt Chandler

  Light, Choices, Feel Good

  11 Copy quote

• Simple femininity is the most important thing about a woman, and it is a quality a great many women are in jeopardy of losing. Women are being emancipated out of their femininity in this modern age.

  Yul Brynner

  Simple, Important, Age

  23 Copy quote

• I think if you look at the failure of journalism in the modern age, then I don't want to be called a journalist.

  Shane Smith

  Thinking, Age, Looks

  8 Copy quote

• There's this overly friendly sense of community built up by very isolated people, and there's this Lutheran humbleness that keeps people from talking about their own feelings and asking about yours. What does that do in this modern age where everyone takes pictures of their food, and they share every thought they've ever had in real time?

  Noah Hawley

  Real, Talking, People

  "Noah Hawley on the Life Span of Fargo, Ewan McGregor's Dual Role, and Adapting Cat's Cradle". Interview with Gazelle Emami and Matt Zoller Seitz, www.vulture.com. June 23, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source