Our Time Quotes - Page 8

• Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Ease, Our Love, Stealing

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

  Barack Obama

  Writing, Destiny, Opportunity

  "The Action Americans Need". www.washingtonpost.com. February 5, 2009.

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• Is our time up and on to the next fire / Got my fingers burnt and cut into the wire.

  Kim Wilde

  Cutting, Fire, Wire

  Song: Shangri-La, 1984

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• What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.

  Doris Lessing

  Fiction, Realizing, Social

  "Doris Lessing: Hot Dawns". Interview with Harvey Blume, Boston Book Review, February 1998.

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• The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Blow, Tasks, Institutions

  "The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg". Book by Frank Laurence Lucas (p. 34), 1962.

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• The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my Nation colleagues, and it was also the first time I found myself in the same trench as people like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeane Kirkpatrick: a shock I had to learn to get over. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Real, Party, Thinking

  Interview with Jamie Glazov, historynewsnetwork.org. December 23, 2003.

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• I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss!

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Revolutionary

  Arnold Schoenberg, Leonard Stein (1975). “Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg”, p.137, Univ of California Press

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• Treason implies responsibility for something, control over something, influence upon something, knowledge of something. Treason in our time is a proof of genius. Why, I want to know, are not traitors decorated?

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Responsibility, Genius, Want

  Antoine de Saint Exupery (1942). “Flight to Arras”

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• Perhaps one of the more noteworthy trends of our time is the occupation of buildings accompanied by the taking of hostages. The perpetrators of these deeds are generally motivated by political grievance, social injustice, and the deeply felt desire to see how they look on TV.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Political, Desire, Deeds

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.152, Vintage

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• Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Spring, Sunshine, Men

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1982). “Tales and Sketches”, p.833, Library of America

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• Alternative Lifestyles, the emotional fly-drive packages of our times, come equipped with a set of clothes, a choice of authors, a limited menu of sports and a discount coupon book of clichés.

  Ellen Goodman

  Sports, Book, Emotional

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

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• Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers.

  Gail Godwin

  Youth, Danger, Young

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• It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.

  Margaret Atwood

  Children, Growth, Doe

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• One of the greatest disasters of our time is our universal acceptance of the word "tolerance" as a great virtue.

  Zig Ziglar

  Acceptance, Tolerance, Virtue

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• The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Uplifting, Art, Bored

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (1982). “The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer”, Vintage

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• Even in the most market-obsessed society, we're still spending half of our time on something other than just getting cash.

  David Graeber

  Half, Cash, Obsessed

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Reading, Fake, Literature

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.42, Ultramarine Publishing

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• Celebrity is the religion of our time.

  Maureen Dowd

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• We will never know the extent of the damage movies are doing to us, but movie art, it appears, thrives on moral chaos. When the country is paralyzed, the popular culture may tell us why. After innocence, winners become losers. Movies are probably inuring us to corruption; the sellout is the hero-survivor for our times.

  Pauline Kael

  Country, Art, Hero

  Pauline Kael (1994). “For keeps”, E P Dutton

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• The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Communism, Communist, Myth

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.292, Random House

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• We are all products of our time, vulnerable to history.

  Han Suyin

  Vulnerable, Products

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• Our times are obsessed with finding fulfillment, so there are times when some people try too hard, and there are people who want to have the newest feelings just as there are those who want to have the latest model car. You can't play at love any more than you can be proud of your humility, or add water to your perfume and have it smell the same, but men and women both have been known to try.

  Merle Shain

  Humility, Men, Play

  Merle Shain (1973). “Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others”

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• There is no wrong suffering. There is imaginary, sham, feigned, simulated, pretended suffering. But the assertion that someone suffers for the right or wrong reason presupposes a divine, all-penetrating judgment able to distinguish historically obsolete forms of suffering from those in our time, instead of leaving this decision to the sufferers themselves.

  Dorothee Solle

  Decision, Leaving, Suffering

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

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• Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends, our bounties for our dependants, our riches for our children and relations, our praises for those who appear worthy of them, our time we give all to the world; we expose it, I may say, a prey to all mankind.

  Jean Baptiste Massillon

  Time, Children, Kindness

  Jean-Baptiste Massillon (1889*). “Sermons”

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• The Hitler movement is a stampede. It is something beyond reason, like a pulse beating, like a rush of blood to the head, like the sap rising from the twisted roots of a family tree. ... in many ways it is the most remarkable upheaval of our time, perhaps the most momentous.

  Anne O'Hare McCormick

  War, Blood, Roots

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