“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”

—  Charles Krauthammer

International Herald Tribune (31 October 1990), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), edited by Robert Andrews, p. 711
1990s, 1990

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to…" by Charles Krauthammer?
Charles Krauthammer photo
Charles Krauthammer 78
American journalist 1950–2018

Related quotes

Mark Twain photo

“…I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 115

Helen Garner photo

“Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.”

Helen Garner (1942) Australian author

In the title story Postcards from Surfers.
Garner describing her mother.
Postcards from Surfers (1985)

Larry Hogan photo

“Forty years ago, my dad gave up a safe seat in Congress to run for governor and, finally, forty years later, we're gonna have a Larry Hogan in the governor's mansion.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Governor-elect Larry Hogan victory speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBB6Wn_i7Q8" (4 November 2014).

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“The whole nation has come a long, long way in extending the frontiers of civil rights. If we are true to the facts, we must admit this. Twenty-five years ago, a year hardly passed when numerous Negroes were not brutally lynched by some vicious mob in the South. Today lynchings have about ceased. Twenty-five years ago, most of the states in the South had what was known as a poll-tax. The poll-tax system was cleverly contrived to keep many, many Negroes from becoming registered voters. Today the poll-tax has been eliminated in all but four states. And just a few weeks ago, Congress unanimously passed a bill amending the Constitution calling for an end to the poll-tax in all federal elections.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Nasreddin photo

“Nasruddin, four years ago you were here, and I asked that time also what is your age, and you told me forty years. Now this is absolutely inconsistent – how can you still be forty?”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Nasruddin said, "I am a man of consistency. Once forty, I remain forty always. When I have answered once, I have answered forever! You cannot lead me astray. I am forty, and whenever you ask you will get the same answer."
Osho, And The Flowers Showered (2003), ISBN 817182210X, p. 204

“Did you know it was a year ago today?”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

Set-enders

“The Western search for unifying truth did not come to an end with Christianity, any more than with the physical theories of forty years ago.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)
Context: Faced by the dire nihilism of our time, we need a greater honesty... The Western search for unifying truth did not come to an end with Christianity, any more than with the physical theories of forty years ago.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero photo

“Today things are better than a year ago. But within a year things will be even better.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Presidential press release on 29th December 2006, one day before an ETA bomb attack at Madrid airport, resulting in 2 deaths.
As President, 2006
Source: el Mundo http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2006/12/29/espana/1167368963.html.

“…a reluctance to recognise that today's safety and comfort were bought fifty years ago by means which today's intelligentsia find unacceptable, and from which they wish to distance themselves.”

George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here

Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. xxiii-xxiv.

“Forty-odd years ago, there was a countercultural moment, a brief, shining moment, as it were, when the eyes of a generation glimpsed the Eden beneath the veil.”

Tony Vigorito (1950) American writer

"The Syntax of Sorcery: An Interview with Tom Robbins" (2012) http://realitysandwich.com/150587/syntax_sorcery_interview_tom_robbins/ in Reality Sandwich.
Context: Forty-odd years ago, there was a countercultural moment, a brief, shining moment, as it were, when the eyes of a generation glimpsed the Eden beneath the veil.  However fleeting was this paradise, or however harsh has been its repression, its light nonetheless inspired a rowdy cohort of artists to carry its torch into the future. Tom Robbins is one of these unruly pioneers, and his frequently bestselling novels are so saturated in an uncontainable joie de vivre that they have remained virtually required reading throughout the years and decades since their initial publication.

Related topics