Twentieth Century Quotes - Page 9

• In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the

  Raoul Vaneigem

  Death, Real, Men

  Raoul Vaneigem (1994). “The revolution of everyday life”, Left Bank Distribution

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• Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered - one does not usually lead to the other - but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the 20th century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed.

  Daniel D. Polsby

  Gun, Reality, Government

  "Armed against genocide" by Glenn Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2006.

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• Nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature....Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century.

  Michael Denton

  Theory Of Evolution, Able, Natural

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• To appeal to contemporary man to revert, in this twentieth century, to a pagan-like nature worship in order to restrain technology from further encroachment and devastation of the resources of nature, is a piece of atavistic nonsense.

  Norman Lamm

  Technology, Men, Order

  Seymour J. Cohen, Norman Lamm (1986). “Faith and doubt: studies in traditional Jewish thought”, Ktav Pub Inc

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• Psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century and a terminal product as well-something akin to a dinosaur or zeppelin in the history of ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and with no posterity.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Ideas, History

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• The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Science, Achievement

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• Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution - the 60's comes from it.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Clothes, Revolution, Language

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• And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism-that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism-you can't find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.

  Paul Ryan

  Jobs, Pitfalls, Looks

  "Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand's ideas: in the hot seat again". Speech at a 2005 Atlas Society event, atlassociety.org. April 30, 2012.

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• Nevertheless, during the sixty years of the twentieth century many problems have come increasingly into the realm of acceptable public discussion.

  Herman Kahn

  Years, Problem, Century

  Herman Kahn, Paul Dragoș Aligică, Kenneth R. Weinstein (2009). “The Essential Herman Kahn: In Defense of Thinking”, p.9, Lexington Books

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• The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Twenties, Firsts, Century

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• It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.

  Alex Carey

  Long, Achievement, Propaganda

  Alex Carey, Andrew Lohrey (1997). “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty”, p.21, University of Illinois Press

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• The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.

  Geoffrey Nunberg

  Writing, Italian, Use

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• The hope for the twentieth century rests on recognition that war and depression are man-made, and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from the nineteenth-century characteristics just mentioned (materialism, selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices) and going back to other characteristics that our Western Society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding a increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self discipline.

  Carroll Quigley

  War, Compassion, Men

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• Thanks to the discoveries of astronomers in the twentieth century, we now know that the heat death is a myth. The heat death can never happen, and there is no paradox.

  Freeman Dyson

  Discovery, Thanks, Heat

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• Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  War, Fighting, Bismarck

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• Today the governments of Latin America should be ashamed of not havingexterminated the indigenous, at the end of the twentieth century, because weexist at the end of this century. We are not myths of the past, ruins in thejungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims ofintolerance and racism.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Zoos, Latin, Past

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• It is surely indisputable that no single leader in the twentieth century exerted as great an influence on the course of world history as Lenin.

  Dmitri Volkogonov

  Leader, World, Influence

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• What happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page.

  James Fenton

  Pages, Century, Happened

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• Cartoonist Walt Disney has made the twentieth century's only important contribution to music. Disney has made use of music as language.

  Jerome Kern

  Important, Use, Language

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• News objectivity is a twentieth-century myth. We only complain about propaganda when we don't agree with it.

  Frank Miller

  Objectivity, Complaining, News

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• Photography is the dominant and fascinating and only authentic folk art of the twentieth century.

  John Rothenstein

  Photography, Art, Century

  "The world of Camera".

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• The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.'

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  New York, Stars, Dark

  I've Been to the Mountaintop, delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee

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• From the moment of birth, when the Stone-Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence called love, as its father and mother and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potential.

  R. D. Laing

  Love, Mother, Baby

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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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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• 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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