Twentieth Century Quotes

• We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow's nest of that ship.

  John Lennon

  Music, Our Generation, Nwo

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• We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Money, Doctrine, Littles

  The Guardian, November 20, 1991.

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• You don't have to get it right the first time.

  Barbara Sher

  Time, Firsts, Action

  Barbara Sher (2010). “I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It”, p.177, Dell

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• Life is like a parachute jump, you've got to get it right the first time.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Motivational, Life Is Like, Firsts

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• By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Birthday, Men, Age

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2015). “The New Industrial State”, p.39, Princeton University Press

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• We stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960's - a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils - a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.

  John F. Kennedy

  Opportunity, Today, Peril

  Speech accepting Democratic nomination in Los Angeles, 15 July 1960, in Vital Speeches 1 Aug. 1960, p. 611

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• We stand today on the edge of a new frontier.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Today, 1960s

  Speech accepting Democratic presidential nomination, Los Angeles, Cal., 15 July 1960.

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• Of course, if there should be war, it wouldn't last long - not in the twentieth century; and no one wants it. There would be, perhaps, a few skirmishes on the frontiers, and then everything would be arranged diplomatically.

  Marie Van Vorst

  War, Long, Would Be

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• Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.

  Rush Limbaugh

  President, Century

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• The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.

  Norman Mailer

  Events, Literature, Size

  A Fire on the Moon (1970) pt. 1, ch. 2

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• The cave art of Madison Avenue has been by far the most innovative and educative art form of the twentieth century.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Business, Caves

  "Culture Is Our Business". Book by Marshall McLuhan, 1970.

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• Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan." I looked at him and it was not a friendly look. "Never tease a woman about her weight, Jean-Claude. At least not an American twentieth-century one." He Spread his hands wide. "My deepest apologies." "When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Apology, Hands, Trying

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2002). “Burnt Offerings: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.63, Penguin

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• Christian art today should be twentieth-century art.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Art, Today

  Francis August Schaeffer (1973). “Art & the Bible: Two Essays”, Intervarsity Press

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• Science, the largest religion of the twentieth century, had become tarnished by images of exploding space shuttles, crack babies, and a generation of complacent Americans who allowed the television to raise their children. People were looking for something - I think they just didn't know what. And even though they were once again starting to open their eyes to the world of magic and the arcane that had been with them all the while, they still thought I must be some kind of joke.

  Jim Butcher

  Baby, Children, Eye

  Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 1-6”, p.14, Penguin

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• In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Believe, Struggle, Challenges

  Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn (2009). “Half the Sky”, p.17, Vintage

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• It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Past, Atrocities, Failing

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• Writers in the nineteenth century - people like George Eliot and Flaubert - were accustomed to addressing particular communities with which they shared not only linguistic meanings but also an experience and history. Those communities have progressively split in the twentieth century, and grown more heterogeneous, and writers emerging from minority communities have found themselves addressing audiences closer to their experience and history - a phenomenon derided by conservative white men as identity politics and multiculturalism in the arts.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Art, Men, Identity Politics

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.

  C. S. Lewis

  Girl, Prayer, Mean

  C. S. LEWIS (1961). “The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast”

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• the late twentieth century will go down in history, i'm sure, as an era of pharmaceutical buffoonery.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Eras, Century, Late

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Deadeye Dick”, Delacorte Press

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• Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Mother, Jobs, Successful

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• In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, "Please God, don't let me look poor." In the year 2000, they prayed, "Please God, don't let me look old." Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled. The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility.

  Tom Wolfe

  Years, America, People

  Tom Wolfe (2010). “Hooking Up”, p.1929, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology.

  Freeman Dyson

  Twenties, Firsts, Physics

  Freeman Dyson (2015). “Dreams of Earth and Sky”, p.1, New York Review of Books

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• If by the quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.

  Tom Robbins

  Interesting, Might, Next

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.20, Bantam

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• In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

  Erich Fromm

  God, Time, Men

  The Sane Society (1955) ch. 9

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• I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

  Werner Herzog

  Thinking, Reflection, Self

  "Mad German Auteur, Now in 3-D!". Interview with Chris Heath, www.gq.com. April 29, 2011.

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