Nineteenth Century Quotes

• The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

  Gertrude Stein

  Science, Doe, Literature

  Gertrude Stein (2013). “Wars I Have Seen”, p.66, Random House

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• Pacifist propaganda and the resolutions of the parliamentarians encouraged such treaties, and toward the end of the nineteenth century their number had increased considerably.

  Ludwig Quidde

  Numbers, Propaganda, Resolution

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• When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes.

  John Boyd Orr

  Creating, Revolution, Demand

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• Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

  Oscar Wilde

  Vulgarity Is, Two, Facts

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.156, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Let's bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth century dialogue.

  Samuel Goldwyn

  Funny, Witty, Century

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• The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation.

  Norman Lockyer

  Science, Civilization, Community

  Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, Sir Norman Lockyer (1906). “Education and National Progress”

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• [About Francis Baily] The history of the astronomy of the nineteenth century will be incomplete without a catalogue of his labours. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society, and his attention to its affairs was as accurate and minute as if it had been a firm of which he was the chief clerk, with expectation of being taken into partnership.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Taken, Science, Expectations

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• Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler-such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal-were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Character, Science, Race

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• The end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century are remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this country, especially in its more exact departments. Mathematics were at the last gasp, and astronomy nearly so; I mean in those members of its frame which depend upon precise measurement and systematic calculation. The chilling torpor of routine had begun to spread itself over all those branches of Science which wanted the excitement of experimental research.

  John Herschel

  Country, Mean, Science

  "Memoir of Francis Baily".

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• A man who has once looked with the archaeological eye will never see quite normally. He will be wounded by what other men call trifles. It is possible to refine the sense of time until an old shoe in the bunch grass or a pile of nineteenth century beer bottles in an abandoned mining town tolls in one's head like a hall clock.

  Loren Eiseley

  Eye, Beer, Science

  Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Night Country: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.68, Library of America

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• The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one's own rules.

  Joan Didion

  America, Secret, Desire

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• The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in "On Liberty." The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, People, Political

  "Friedman & Szasz On Liberty and Drugs". Interview with Randy Paige on "America's Drug Forum", www.druglibrary.org. 1991.

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• I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

  Margaret Fuller

  Knowing, America, People

  Quoted in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson,William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke (1852)

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• I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Historical, Bears, Dignity

  "History of England" by Thomas B. Macaulay, Vol. I, (Ch. 1), 1849-1861.

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• Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.

  Thomas Szasz

  Sex, Disease, Masturbation

  The Second Sin (1973) "Sex"

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• Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

  Margaret Fuller

  Nature, Rivers, Exception To The Rule

  Margaret Fuller, Margaret F. Ossoli (2008). “Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)”, p.122, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

  Margaret Fuller

  Spiritual, Women, Believe

  Margaret Fuller (2012). “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”, p.78, Courier Corporation

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• Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.

  Margaret Fuller

  Funny, Life, Meaningful

  Margaret Fuller (2012). “At Home And Abroad Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe”, p.159, tredition

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• In the nineteenth century, slavery was the greatest wrong, and government never stood so tall as when it was redressing that wrong.

  William Weld

  Government, Slavery, Century

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• When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century.

  Satyajit Ray

  Writing, Hands, People

  Satyajit Ray, Bert Cardullo (2007). “Satyajit Ray: Interviews”, p.106, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

  Robert Higgs

  Peace, War, President

  Robert Higgs (2005). “Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11”, Independent Inst

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• The emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen.

  Ellen Key

  Self, Movement, Affirmation

  Ellen Key (2016). “The century of the child”, p.32, Ellen Key

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• I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Complaining, Tradition

  The Observer, November 26, 1989.

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• If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.

  John Thorn

  Games, Ties, Events

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• The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Creating, Growth, Movement

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