20th Century Quotes

• Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Damage Is Done, Earth, Century

  53 Copy quote

• If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky.

  Carl Sagan

  Century, Biking, Tandem Bikes

  "Cosmos".

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• [During the 20th century] ... 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners.

  Rudolph Rummel

  Children, Men, Liberty

  8 Copy quote

• No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity; we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.

  Walter Lippmann

  Average, Sea, Way

  3 Copy quote

• The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Drama, Century, Has Beens

  "Great Performances (Leonard Bernstein: The Gift of Music)". TV Series, December 29, 1993.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.

  William Lyon Phelps

  Life, Spiritual, Disease

  8 Copy quote

• Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Business, Journey

  18 Copy quote

• Humanity as a whole has already gone through unimaginable suffering, mostly self-inflicted, the culmination of which was the 20th century with its unspeakable horrors. This collective suffering has brought upon a readiness in many human beings for the evolutionary leap that is spiritual awakening.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Self, Humanity

  Source: www.qiwithoutborders.org

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pick up any history book, and I suggest you begin with studying the 20th century, and you will find that a large part of the history of our species has all the characteristics we would normally associate with a nightmare or an insane hallucination.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Book, Insane, Hallucinations

  Source: www.qiwithoutborders.org

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Discovery, Accomplishment

  7 Copy quote

• History had been man's effort to accomodate himself to what he could not do. Amereican history in the 20th century would, more than ever before, test man's ability to accomodate himself to all the new things he could do.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Men, History, Effort

  3 Copy quote

• Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.

  Elie Wiesel

  Education, Keys, Hatred

  17 Copy quote

• It is amazing how many of the horrors of the 20th century were a result of charismatic quacks misleading millions of people to their own doom. What is even more amazing is that, after a century that saw the likes of Hitler, Lenin and Mao, we still see no need to distrust charisma as a basis for choosing leaders, either in politics or in numerous organizations and movements.

  Thomas Sowell

  Organization, People, Leader

  Thomas Sowell (2002). “Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Although the United States lost a quarter of a million men and women, civilians and soldiers, in World War II, that's considerably less than the Russians lost in soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad alone. It's important to convey to countries and to people and to generations who have no experience of the 20th century as it was lived in Europe just how catastrophic it was.

  Tony Judt

  Country, War, Men

  "Postwar". Interview With Julian Brookes, www.motherjones.com. December 20, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other. We witnessed the final stages of egoic madness in the 20th century, and even now it still is playing itself out. It has not quite come to an end yet.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Fighting, Finals, World

  Source: rayhemachandra.com

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Thinking, Rights, Sight

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.

  Edward Witten

  Music, Beauty, Real

  14 Copy quote

• The rate of technological and human physiological change in the 20th century has been remarkable. Beyond that, a synergy between the improved technology and physiology is more than the simple addition of the two.

  Robert Fogel

  Technology, Simple, Two

  15 Copy quote

• Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Health, Psychics, Disease

  A World Split Apart, delivered 8 June 1978, Harvard University

  83 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Military, War

  "Buy American. I Am." by Warren Buffett, www.nytimes.com. October 16, 2008.

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

  Alex Carey

  Wisdom, Democracies Have, Australia Day

  Alex Carey, Andrew Lohrey (1997). “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty”, p.18, University of Illinois Press

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Business, Social Unrest, Done

  "Ann Coulter, the pin-up model" by Elana Schor, www.theguardian.com. November 17, 2008.

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermonuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudoevents, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century-sex and paranoia.

  J. G. Ballard

  Dream, Sex, Moving

  16 Copy quote

• With the end of the Victorian era, we passed into what I feel I must call the terrible 20th century

  Winston Churchill

  Eras, Century, Ends

  Winston Churchill (1953). “Stemming the Tide: Speeches 1951 and 1952. Edited by Randolph S. Churchill”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Writing, People, Half

  The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski (2005). “The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future”, p.28, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source