Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.
Enjoy the present day, trust the least possible to the future.
The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make of America one huge "Main Street," where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens. God grant that there may come a reaction, and that the great principles of Anglo-Saxon liberty may be rediscovered before it is too late!
The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.
By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence.
In times of uncertainty, we tend to move away from deterministic world views. And when we try to find moral footing for our actions, we compare ourselves to the foil of all foils, the Nazi period. It's a quest for moral certainty by saying, "Even if we're not doing great these days, at least we're not the Third Reich." Which can be consoling or alarmist. There's always a present-day agenda behind it.
Only by acknowledging the full extent of slavery's full grip on U.S. Society - its intimate connections to present day wealth and power, the depth of its injury to black Americans, the shocking nearness in time of its true end - can we reconcile the paradoxes of current American life.
It would be a mistake to assume that the present day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals.
If the believers of the present-day religions would earnestly try to think and act in the spirit of the founders of these religions then no hostility on the basis of religion would exist among the followers of the different faiths. Even the conflicts and the realm of religion would be exposed as insignificant.
Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.
Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is the decoration of the railroad station... There was never more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything connected with the railroads... Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work.
I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there are others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.
Critics have always questioned whether players like Pele from the 50s could play today. Lionel Messi could play in the 1950s and the present day, as could Di Stefano, Pele, Maradona, Cruyff because they are all great players. Lionel Messi without question fits into that category.
All present-day governments are fanatically committed to an easy money policy.
There is the problem of unpaid labor, such as housework, which represents millions and millions of unsalaried work hours and on which masculine society is firmly based. To put an end to this would be to send the present-day capitalist system flying in a single blow. Only we can't do it by ourselves; there have to be other kinds of attacks on the system. So a certain alliance with revolutionary systems is necessary, even masculine ones.
There are types of energy which lie outside the electromagnetic spectrum. Unfortunately, these research efforts have not been given recognition. For the most part, they have been performed by individuals without any support, whose work lies at the threshold of present-day science, and who are years ahead of science which is already established.
Thomas Jefferson despised newspapers, with considerable justification. They printed libels and slanders about him that persist to the present day. Yet he famously said that if he had to choose between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would cheerfully choose to live in a land with newspapers (even not very good ones) and no government.
In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah.
In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science.' The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.
I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That's what I still do today.
I believe there's a landscape that exists underneath everything that we can see in present-day stuff. And I think that makes life kind of a detective story.
Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward.
Thousands of Americans, Englishmen and Frenchmen have visited Germany during the months after the national revolution and were able to testify as eye-witnesses that there is no country in the world where law and order are better maintained than in present-day Germany. That there is no country in the world where person and property are held in better respect than in our own, but that there is perhaps also no country in the word where a more rigorous fight is put up against those who believe that they are free to let loose their lower instincts to the detriment of their fellow-beings.
Consider, for example, and you will find that almost all the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing far the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.
The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: