Modern Times Quotes

• I must settle for freedom in this modern time

  Leila Aboulela

  Modern, Settling

  Leila Aboulela (2015). “Minaret”, p.131, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• In modern times, what impresses one is not a simple and unassuming statement of the truth, but superficial showmanship and display.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.

  Howard Zinn

  Law, Cities, Population

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.233, Pan Macmillan

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• A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.’ (1923)

  John Gresham Machen

  School, Mean, Free Education

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• In modern times, if the sole measure of what’s out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Flow, Five Senses, Modern

  Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.30, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The worst type of freedom we are suffering from in modern times is the freedom to lead an immoral life.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• We have to get awakened to the fact that in recent decades, great destruction has been caused to our moral values as a result of our children, parents and families, getting influenced by the chaotic conditions of modern times.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Children

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• In his book Modern Times, the historian Paul Johnson referred to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini as the three devils of the twentieth century. Interestingly, Nietzshean dogma influenced each of them.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Atheist, Book, Devil

  Ravi Zacharias (2004). “The Real Face of Atheism”, p.25, Baker Books

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• Like Molière's M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of their craft has become evident only within recent times A renaissance of logical studies in modern times begins with the publication in 1847 of George Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic.

  Ernest Nagel

  Nature, Real, Science

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• There is no question that Francis was in advance of his age, as he anticipated all that is liberal and sympathetic in modern times: the love of nature, the love of animals, the sense of social compassion, the sense of the spiritual dangers of affluence.

  Henryk Skolimowski

  Spiritual, Compassion, Animal

  Henryk Skolimowski (1993). “A Sacred Place to Dwell: Living With Reverence Upon the Earth”, HarperElement

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• The Growth and Opportunity Project is the most successful reexamination of a national party in modern times. Te disciplined focus of Chairman Reince Priebus has turned its suggestions into realities that are changing the political setting of elections. No one should underestimate the boldness of these changes and the courage they took.

  Newt Gingrich

  Party, Successful, Opportunity

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• Wars between states and people seem to have existed under all historical systems for as long as we have some recorded evidence. War is quite clearly not a phenomenon particular to the modern world-system. On the other hand, once again the technological achievements of capitalist civilization serve as much ill as good. One bomb in Hiroshima killed more people than whole wars in pre-modern times. Alexander the Great in his whole sweep of the Middle East could not compare in destructiveness to the impact of the Gulf War on Iraq and Kuwait.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  War, Hands, Civilization

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• From the dim morning hours of history when the father was king and priest down to this modern time of history's high noon when nations stand forth full grown and self-governed, the law of coherence and continuity in political development has suffered no serious breach.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Morning, Kings, Father

  Woodrow Wilson (1895). “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics. A Sketch of Institutional History and Administration”

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• Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

  Hannah Arendt

  Responsibility, Keys, Effort

  Hannah Arendt (1973). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.53, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Past, Ideas

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• The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn to the suffering and death of Christ—the blood of Christ. This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death.

  John Piper

  Blood, Suffering And Death, Giving

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• The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce, first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages, was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

  James Buchan

  Years, Age, Firsts

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• The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Expectations, Progress, Limits

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", p. 30, 1978.

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• Once I'd heard 'Modern Times' by Bob Dylan, it really changed the way I wanted to make records.

  Elton John

  Records, Bob, Way

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• A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

  Dylan Moran

  Growing Up, War, Men

  "Dylan Moran Makes Sentences of Things". Interview With J.L. Sirisuk, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 13, 2013.

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• In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee - or laugh.

  Robert Orben

  Humor, Fighting, Two

  Robert Orben (2011). “2100 Laughs for All Occasions: Short, Sharp, Topical, and Funny--Arranged in Categories for Reading, Telling, Laughing”, p.7, Main Street Books

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• The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Funny, Book, Reading

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• One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.

  Idries Shah

  Believe, Past, People

  Idries Shah (1988). “Caravan of Dreams”, p.227, Octagon Press Ltd

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• One of the most feared expressions in modern times is 'The computer is down.'

  Norman Ralph Augustine

  Funny, Humor, Expression

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• Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.

  Marisha Pessl

  Feelings, Guilt, Affliction

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.166, Penguin

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