Modern Man Quotes - Page 6

• Snobbery is not merely a silly human weakness but something basic in the mentality of modern man-a symptom which reflects the general sickness, the dislocation of social and cultural values in contemporary civilization.

  Arthur Koestler

  Silly, Men, Civilization

  Arthur Koestler (1955). “The trail of the dinosaur & other essays”

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• Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections; to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sacrifice, Men, Reflection

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1926-1929”, Ivan R Dee

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• Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction.

  George Will

  Powerful, Men, Humanity

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• Modern man believes he is fruitful and productive when his ego is aggressively affirmed, when he is visibly active, and when his action produces obvious results.

  Thomas Merton

  Believe, Men, Ego

  Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.27, Macmillan

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• Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.

  Walter Lippmann

  Past, Men, Records

  Walter Lippmann, Julien C. Sprott (2015). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”, p.163, University of Wisconsin Pres

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• Neckties satisfy modern man's desire to dress in art.

  Harry Anderson

  Art, Men, Desire

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• The notion of dream interpretation far antedates the birth of psychoanalysis, and probably served an important function in most, if not all, historical societies. In having lost this function, modern man has also lost the best part of his nature, which he obliviously passes on to the next generation of dreamers.

  Neel Burton

  Dream, Men, Historical

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• Modern man has both feet firmly planted in mid-air

  Francis Schaeffer

  Men, Air, Feet

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• The sun as the expression of old world energy is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who by virtue of his technological superiority creates his own energy source.

  El Lissitzky

  Men, Expression, Heaven

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• Francis Wheen takes a hugely enjoyable sweep through the tangled thickets of superstition and gullibility in which modern man likes to ramble. He takes particular delight in reminding us how easily fools are parted from their money and how many of them there are.

  Ferdinand Mount

  Men, Tangled, Fool

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• When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem

  Ernest Becker

  Religious, Real, Men

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.166, Simon and Schuster

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• Modern man is a hard driven nomad without any stability, not (as the Bible has it) a wanderer or a pilgrim, but a refugee-an escapist. Instead of meditation and reflection there is only speed, fear and “distraction.

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  Reflection, Men, Meditation

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• At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Men, Self, Might

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• Seek above all for a game worth playing- such is the advice of the oracle to modern man.

  Robert S. de Ropp

  Men, Games, Advice

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• Modern man is a hard-working human.

  Ed Wood

  Hard Work, Men, Modern

  "Fictional character: Dr. Alton/Narrator". "Glen or Glenda", 1953.

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• Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man.

  Robert Winston

  Men, Kind, Modern

  "Philip Roth was wrong" by Robert Winston, www.theguardian.com. December 16, 2005.

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• No matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.".

  Sigmund Freud

  Men, Civilization, Safety

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• Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Children, Motivation

  Joseph Campbell (1976). “The Masks of God: Primitive mythology”

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• When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Brother, Anger

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• Having been issued the false prospectus of happiness through unlimited sex, modern man concludes, when he is not happy with his life, that his sex has not been unlimited enough. If welfare does not eliminate squalor, we need more welfare; if sex does not bring happiness, we need more sex.

  Anthony Daniels

  Sex, Men, Doe

  "All Sex, All the Time". www.city-journal.org. Summer 2000.

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• A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Paper, May

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

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• Technologically, modern man does everything he can do-he functions on this single boundary principle. Modern man, seeing himself as autonomous, with no personal-infinite God who has spoken, has no adequate universal to supply an adequate second boundary condition; and man being fallen is not only finite, but sinful. Thus man's pragmatically made choices have no reference point beyond human egotism. It is dog eat dog, man eat man, man eat nature.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Dog, Men, Choices

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• I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Use, Pistols

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• We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Thinking, Expression

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.111, Open Road Media

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• Without repeating everything that we have already mentioned, it is appropriate first of all to emphasize the following point: for the Church, the first means of evangelization is the witness of an authentically Christian life, given over to God in a communion that nothing should destroy and at the same time given to one's neighbor with limitless zeal. As we said recently to a group of lay people, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.

  Pope Paul VI

  Christian, Teacher, Mean

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