20th Century Quotes - Page 3

• 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

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• Pretty much anything you laughed at in the second half of the 20th century can be traced back to Your Show Of Shows.

  Rob Reiner

  Half, Century, Shows

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement.

  Jules de Goncourt

  Drama, Reading, Passion

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• I think every age has a medium that talks to it more eloquently than the others. In the 19th century it was symphonic music and the novel. For various technical and artistic reasons, film became that eloquent medium for the 20th century.

  Walter Murch

  Thinking, Age, Artistic

  Interview with Michael Wohl, www.peachpit.com. November 1, 2001.

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• Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Men, Choices, Century

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century.

  Philip Shabecoff

  Nature, Environmental, Bombs

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• I don't look so closely at women's fashion, but from the 20th century on, people have had the freedom to express themselves and their individualities, and fashion is one of the most fundamental ways in which they do this, men and women are equally able to express themselves.

  Tadao Ando

  Fashion, Men, People

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• The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.

  Tony Blair

  Memories, War, Europe

  Tony Blair (2004). “Tony Blair in His Own Words”, Politicos Pub

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• Margaret Thatcher was a 20th century visionary who understood the power of individual freedom versus the tyranny of government collectivism. She was a loyal supporter and friend of the United States and her terms as prime minister were marked as the beginning of the resurgence of the economy of the United Kingdom.

  Joe Lhota

  Government, Loyal, Kingdoms

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• There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about.

  Penn Jillette

  Spring, Arrogance, Looks

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If we have learned nothing else from the 20th century, we should at least have grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences. Incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek.

  Tony Judt

  Perfect, Answers, Improvement

  Tony Judt (2010). “Ill Fares the Land”, p.109, Penguin

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• One of the most important secret societies of the 20th century is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world. It is the Round Table that ultimately orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

  David Icke

  Secret, Important, World

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• Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.

  Michael Haneke

  Thinking, Excellence, Directors

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• I won't mention the word tired. This is the 20th century and I can go around a little faster.

  Geri Halliwell

  Tired, Littles, Century

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• The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives, and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century.

  Al Gore

  War, Heart, Numbers

  "U.S. steps up global fight against AIDS" by John King, Richard Roth and Steve Salvatore, www.cnn.com. January 10, 2000.

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• 'Cyberspace' as a term is sort of over. It's over in the way that, after a certain time, people stopped using the suffix '-electro' to make things cool, because everything was electrical. 'Electro' was all over the early 20th century, and now it's gone. I think 'cyber' is sort of the same way.

  William Gibson

  Thinking, People, Way

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

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• I had started to feel that somewhere in the second half of the 20th century, the idea of page-turning as a good thing had been lost. You were getting books that were the equivalent of absolutely beautifully prepared dishes of food that didn't taste like anything much.

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Pages Turning, Ideas

  Interview with Tom Chatfield, tomchatfield.net.

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• Bill Clinton is the greatest president of the 20th century because I played touch football with him.

  Al Franken

  Football, President, Bills

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• The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.

  Ken Follett

  Literary Genre, Century, Thrillers

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• By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.

  Sylvia Earle

  Turtles, Sharks, Years

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• The 20th century was a century in which human rights were infringed upon in numerous parts of the world, and Japan also bears responsibility in that regard. I believe that we have to look at our own history with humility and think about our responsibility.

  Shinzo Abe

  Believe, Humility, Responsibility

  "U.S. 'only indispensable alliance'". Interview with Lally Weymouth, articles.chicagotribune.com. April 23, 2007.

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• The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

  Paul Davies

  Law, Revolution, Twins

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• Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Atlanta: those are all cities that really didn't get big, didn't hit their stride until the 20th century.

  Paul Goldberger

  Atlanta, Cities, Denver

  "The Next American System". The Blueprint America Interview, www.pbs.org. May 20, 2009.

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• With the end of the cold war, all the 'isms' of the 20th century - Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism - have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.

  Jack Kemp

  War, Democracies Have, Evil

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• 'Christian' used to be a throwaway word. People didn't used to use it much. People didn't start self-labeling or getting labeled Christian until the last part of the 20th century. Before that, you might identify as a Baptist, or a Southern Baptist or a Methodist. But there wasn't one identifier that put you in a fold with all the other believers.

  Penn Jillette

  Christian, Self, People

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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