Contemporary Society Quotes

• The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder

  John B. S. Haldane

  World, Wonder

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• Human trafficking is an open wound on the body of contemporary society, a scourge upon the body of Christ. It is a crime against humanity.

  Pope Francis

  Humanity, Body, Christ

  Address of Pope Francis to participants in the International Conference on Combating Human Trafficking, w2.vatican.va. April 10, 2014.

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• Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Integrity, Dry, Wonder

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• The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

  Kit Williams

  Religion, Advertising, Ancient

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• The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before - which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Mean, Technology, Intellectual

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 10), 1964.

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• Contemporary societies have lost the sense of the feast but have kept the obscure drive for it.

  Umberto Eco

  Food, Cooking, Obscure

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• Our contemporary society is experimenting with the diminishment of caregivers for children. Some children are raised through crucial stages of life by only one person. This one person, who strives to give the best, may be overwhelmed, busy, trying to raise many children. And even in homes with two parents, many children are essentially alone.

  Michael Gurian

  Children, Home, Two

  Michael Gurian (2010). “The Wonder of Children: Nurturing the Souls of Our Sons and Daughters”, p.238, Simon and Schuster

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• To believe that man's aggressiveness or territoriality is in the nature of the beast is to mistake some men for all men, contemporary society for all possible societies, and, by a remarkable transformation, to justify what is as what needs must be; social repression becomes a response to, rather than a cause of, human violence. Pessimism about man serves to maintain the status quo. It is a luxury for the affluent, a sop to the guilt of the politically inactive, a comfort to those who continue to enjoy the amenities of privilege.

  Leon Eisenberg

  Mistake, Believe, Men

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• Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Pain, People, Literature

  Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers' Congress (16 May 1967) as translated in "Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record" edited by Leopold Labedz, "The Struggle Intensifies", 1970.

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• In contemporary society [the typical lady] is an archaism, and can't hardly understand herself unless she knows her own history.

  Emily James Smith Putnam

  Typical, Contemporary, Knows

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• In our contemporary society, one so over-inundated with imagery, it is easy to overlook the power of a single frame to change the way we look at the world, or rally disparate hearts to a single cause. Yet, ours is a society shaped by this very phenomenon.

  Steve McCurry

  Heart, Looks, World

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• I first wrote down all the phenomena that have emerged in contemporary society that I thought were related to this theme ["sea of oblivion"], and then sorted them out by grouping them into islands of ideas.

  Yasumasa Morimura

  Islands, Sea, Ideas

  Source: u-in-u.com

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• In contemporary society secular humanism has been singled out by critics and proponents alike as a position sharply distinguishable from any religious formulation. Religious fundamentalists in the United States have waged a campaign against secular humanism, claiming that it is a rival "religion" and seeking to root it out from American public life. Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Philosophy, Roots

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• Consider in what way the industrial system developed upon capitalist lines. Why were a few rich men put with such ease into possession of the new methods? Why was it normal and natural in their eyes and in that of contemporary society that those who produced the new wealth with the new machinery should be proletarian and dispossessed?

  Hilaire Belloc

  Eye, Men, Ease

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• We must not fail to recognise that television can be a hugely positive influence in children's lives, one of the greatest educators in contemporary society and an increasing influence on all the children followed in 'Child of Our Time.'

  Robert Winston

  Children, Television, Influence

  "Seeing is believing" by Robert Winston, www.theguardian.com. January 7, 2004.

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• I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

  Ross Macdonald

  Writing, Life And Death, Needs

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• We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.

  Richard J. Foster

  Reality, People, Sick

  "Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline".

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• Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Time, Air, Names

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• In contemporary society, advertising is everywhere. We cannot walk down the street, shop, watch television, go through our mail, log on to the Internet, read a newspaper or take a train without encountering it. Whether we are alone, with our friends or family, or in a crowd, advertising is always with us, if only on the label of something we are using.

  Guy Cook

  Mail, Watches, Labels

  Guy Cook (2001). “The Discourse of Advertising”, p.1, Psychology Press

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• Thus, if a composer wants to produce music that is relevant to his contemporaries, his chief problem is not really musical, though it may seem to him to be so; it is a problem of attitude to contemporary society and culture in relation to the basic human problem of learning to be human.

  John Blacking

  Music, Attitude, Culture

  John Blacking (1974). “How Musical is Man?”, p.104, University of Washington Press

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• If we wish to discuss knowledge in the most highly developed contemporary society, we must answer the preliminary question of what methodological representation to apply to that society

  Jean-Francois Lyotard

  Wish, Answers, Representation

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• One of those blocks (that prevent the 'Middle East from entering the mainstream of modernity') is the orthodox tenet that the Koran and the scriptures contain all the knowledge required to deal with the problems of contemporary society.

  Arnold Beichman

  Block, Scripture, Middle East

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• The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people.

  C. L. R. James

  Depression, People, Profound

  "In the International Tradition:Tasks Ahead for American Labor" by C. L. R. James, 1944.

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• Today, journalists more than any other cohort of professionals, are responsible for the confusion that surrounds power and its criminality in contemporary society. As Janet Malcolm said in another context, 'Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.'

  Martin Walker

  Stupid, Media, Confusion

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• The lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic; it has completely lost touch with reality.

  Richard J. Foster

  Reality, Lust, Affluence

  Richard J. Foster (2010). “Freedom of Simplicity: Revised Edition: Finding Harmony in a Complex World”, p.3, Harper Collins

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