Modern Life Quotes - Page 6

• Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Oil, Clothes, America

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• I think the messiness and embodied nature of modern life just produces an enhanced signal for our attention.

  Richard Davidson

  Thinking, Focus, Attention

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• The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding room in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern life that the geography of the world had been changed to conform to it. We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Principles, World, Crowds

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1913). “Crowds: A Moving-picture of Democracy”

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• Commentators frequently blame MMORPGs for an increasing sense of isolation modern life. But virtual worlds are less a cause of that isolation than a response to it. Virtual worlds give back what has been scooped out of modern life. The virtual world is in important ways more authentically human than the real world. It gives us back community, a feeling of competence, and a sense of being an important person whom people depend on.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Real, Giving, People

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• Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.

  Richard Wilbur

  Men, Thinking, Sea

  1957 'Pangloss's Song', from Candide.

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• The single factor most responsible for the disruption of the family is the automobile. Its full effect cannot be assessed. Modern life, as we know, would be impossible without the ubiquitous motorcar. It broke up the old family and community.

  Alexander Lowen

  Community, Would Be, Impossible

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• O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife.

  Matthew Arnold

  Heart, Sick, Disease

  'The Scholar-Gipsy' (1853) l. 201

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• As the classes in modern life come together, we have become much more intensely class conscious. It's a very curious thing. But I deal with human beings with whom I've come in contact and have had a chance to closely observe. Their upper-classness is not a matter of particular fascination for me.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Class, Together, Fascination

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• Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.

  Jacques Ellul

  Mean, Reality, Civilization

  Jacques Ellul (2016). “Presence in the Modern World: A New Translation”, p.43, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.

  Daniel Pipes

  Determination, Voice, Goal

  "Voices of Islam". New York Post, September 23, 2003.

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• Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Stress, Life Is, Injury

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.64, Random House

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• Young normal tigers do not eat people. If eaten by a tiger you may rest assured he was abnormal.

  Will Cuppy

  People, May, Normal

  Will Cuppy, P. G. Wodehouse (2005). “How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes”, p.107, David R. Godine Publisher

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• A successful surgeon should be a man who, when asked to name the three best surgeons in the world, would have difficulty deciding on the other two.

  Denton Cooley

  Successful, Men, Names

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• You're getting old when you see a girl who looks like someone you used to know, and it turns out to be her daughter.

  Mike Connolly

  Girl, Daughter, Looks

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• Made by General Motors, on order from Sears Roebuck.

  Richard Condon

  Order, Made, General Motors

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• Football season: The only time of the year when a man can walk down the street with a blond on one arm and a blanket on the other without encountering raised eyebrows.

  Bennett Cerf

  Football, Men, Years

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• What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

  Johnny Carson

  Character, Plutonium, Dangerous

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• They say atomic rad-i-ation can hurt your reproductive organs. My answer is, so can a hockey stick. But we don't stop building them.

  Johnny Carson

  Hurt, Hockey, Answers

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• The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Say Anything, Awful, Sacrilegious

  William F. Buckley, Jr. (2016). “A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century”, p.129, Crown Forum

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• Those who give up cigarette smoking aren't the heroes. The real heroes are the rest of us - who have to listen to them.

  Hal Boyle

  Giving Up, Real, Hero

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• This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as "regulations" but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.

  Robert Benchley

  Night, Office, Tables

  Robert Benchley (1970). “Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• It must be a source of great chagrin to those in charge to think of so many people being able to stick a stamp on a letter and drop it in a mail box without any trouble or suffering at all. They are probably working on a system this very minute, trying to devise some way in which the public can be made to fill out a blank, stand in line, consult some underling who will refer him to a superior, and then be made to black up with burned cork before they can mail a letter.

  Robert Benchley

  Thinking, People, Suffering

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• Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.

  Robert Benchley

  Children, Class, Bulgaria

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.25, Glendower Media

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• My program is to leave the fools to nature. She has diseases with which to deal with them.

  Bruce Barton

  Disease, Fool, Program

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• A $10 million windfall? At today's prices, I'd feel almost as rich as I did one day in 1936 when I found a dime on the sidewalk and blew the whole wad on 20 Mary Jane candy bars, a box of jujubes, and a double feature.

  Russell Baker

  One Day, Dimes, Bars

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