“The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.”

—  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 31

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 "The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one." by Nassim Nicholas Taleb?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb196
Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former t… 1960

Related quotes

Robert D. Kaplan photo

“Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

Robert D. Kaplan (1952) American writer

Robert D. Kaplan (2014), Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. p. 21

George Friedman photo

“Old institutions have shattered, but new ones have not yet emerged. The twenty-first century will be a period in which a range of new institutions, moral systems, and practices will begin their first tentative emergence. The first half of the twenty-first century will be marked by intense social conflict globally. All of this frames the international struggles of the twenty-first century.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 64

“America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth. We need something entirely different”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 30; cited in: Huey B. Long (1995), New Dimensions in Self-Directed Learning, p. 323

Eric Schlosser photo

“The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.”

Eric Schlosser book Fast Food Nation

Source: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Walter Isaacson photo

“I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Ray Kurzweil photo

“The twentieth century was like twenty years' worth of change at today's rate of change.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Irving Kristol photo

“The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995)
1990s

Angela Davis photo

“Acknowledging continuities between nineteenth century anti-slavery struggles, twentieth century civil rights struggles, twenty-first century abolitionist struggles—and when I say abolitionist struggles I’m referring to the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant mode of punishment, the abolition of the prison industrial complex—acknowledging these continuities requires a challenge to the closures that isolate the freedom movement of the twentieth century from the century preceding and the century following.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)

George Friedman photo

“The twenty-first century will be the American century”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 18
Context: The twenty-first century will be the American century.

“Socialism, I want to propose, is the hope for human freedom and justice under the unprecedented conditions of life that humanity will face in the twenty-first century.”

Michael Harrington (1928–1989) American political writer

Source: Socialism: Past and Future (1989), p. 1

Related topics