Quotes about age
page 35

“Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood. The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Historical Introduction, p.17
Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885)

Fate, Mathematics, Understanding, Learning

“I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Speech to the Constitutional Convention (28 June 1787); Manuscript notes by Franklin preserved in the Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006642.jpg Constitutional Convention of 1787

Men, God, Truth, Time

“Issues of quality, timeliness and change are the conditions that are forcing us to face up to the issues of enterprise architecture. The precedent of all the older disciplines known today establishes the concept of architecture as central to the ability to produce quality and timely results and to manage change in complex products. Architecture is the cornerstone for containing enterprise frustration and leveraging technology innovations to fulfill the expectations of a viable and dynamic Information Age enterprise.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Enterprise Architecture: The Issue of The Century, 1997, p. 1-2

Change, Time

“No matter how hard and wearisome an age this might be, it was certainly a very exciting one with regard to manifestations of the supernatural.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 5 (p. 54)

““We all do that. In every day life it’s called making excuses.” True, raw motives are too rough to swallow. By the time most people reach my age, they have glossed their motives so often and so well they fall completely out of touch with them.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 4, “Whisper” (p. 115)

Life, People, Motivation, Time

“I never thought of that, really, when I was younger, but when I started doing some of the autobiographical picture books, I realized that my family was a great treasure trove. We were pretty ordinary — we weren't really exceptional. I don't think my life growing up was really too much different from the average kid in Meriden, Connecticut at that time. But it's very different from young people today, so I like it that older people my age feel that it's helping them to remember their childhood. Little kids think it's like life on a different planet.”

Tomie dePaola (1934) American children's illustrator and writer

An Interview with Tomie dePaola http://katybeebe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/car-2000-05-12-b-013.pdf (May 2000)

Life, People, Books, Family

“Here you stand, after conquering mighty nations and subduing the world. I therefore think it foolish for me to goad you with words, as though you were men who had not been proved in action. Let a new leader or an untried army resort to that. It is not right for me to say anything common, nor ought you to listen. For what is war but your usual custom? Or what is sweeter for a brave man than to seek revenge with his own hand? It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance. Let us then attack the foe eagerly; for they are ever the bolder who make the attack. Despise this union of discordant races! To defend oneself by alliance is proof of cowardice. See, even before our attack they are smitten with terror. They seek the heights, they seize the hills and, repenting too late, clamor for protection against battle in the open fields. You know how slight a matter the Roman attack is. While they are still gathering in order and forming in one line with locked shields, they are checked, I will not say by the first wound, but even by the dust of battle. Then on to the fray with stout hearts, as is your wont. Despise their battle line. Attack the Alani, smite the Visigoths! Seek swift victory in that spot where the battle rages. For when the sinews are cut the limbs soon relax, nor can a body stand when you have taken away the bones. Let your courage rise and your own fury burst forth! Now show your cunning, Huns, now your deeds of arms! Let the wounded exact in return the death of his foe; let the unwounded revel in slaughter of the enemy. No spear shall harm those who are sure to live; and those who are sure to die Fate overtakes even in peace. And finally, why should Fortune have made the Huns victorious over so many nations, unless it were to prepare them for the joy of this conflict. Who was it revealed to our sires the path through the Maeotian swamp, for so many ages a closed secret? Who, moreover, made armed men yield to you, when you were as yet unarmed? Even a mass of federated nations could not endure the sight of the Huns. I am not deceived in the issue;--here is the field so many victories have promised us. I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

As quoted by Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html#attila, translated by Charles C. Mierow

Death, Men, Fate, War

“The historian…loaden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay; having much ado to accord differing writers and to pick truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth; curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties; a wonder to young folks and a tyrant in table talk, denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of virtue, and virtuous actions is comparable to him.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Page 89.
An Apology of Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595)

Truth, World, History, Parting

“This was her finest role and the hardest one to play. Choosing between heaven and a ridiculous fidelity, preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

Source: The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation, p. 83

God, Parting

“Who were the Macedonians? As an ethnic question it is the best avoided, since the mainly modern political overtones tend to obscure the fact that it really is not a very important issue. That they may or may not have been Greek in whole or in a part--while an interesting anthropological sidelight--is really not crucial to our understanding of their history. They made their mark not as a tribe of Greeks or other Balkan peoples, but as Macedonians. This was understood by foreign protagonists from the time of Darius and Xerxes to the age of Roman generals.”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

Source: In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (1990), p. 97

People, History, Understanding, Question

“The pure emotion, from a very early age, of seeing a film and feeling it take you over like a high… At first it was all the things I loved as a kid -- James Bond films and Spaghetti Westerns and things like that (which I still love). Then I started discovering the masters and finding out which films spoke to me and when they did -- the total immersion, the experience of being taking to another world for a couple of hours, opening your mind to new things and ideas on such an emotional level. How could you not fall in love with that?”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[indieWire, SnagFilms, Park City ‘08 Interview - “Donkey Punch” director Olly Blackburn, 7 January 2008, http://www.indiewire.com/article/park_city_08_interview_donkey_punch_director_olly_blackburn, 23 February 2012]

Love, World, Feeling, Idea

“I have climbed mountain Iwato of Higo in Kyushu to pay homage to heaven, pray to Kwannon, and kneel before Buddha. I am a warrior of Harima province, Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, age sixty years.
From youth my heart has been inclined toward the Way of strategy. My first duel was when I was thirteen, I struck down a strategist of the Shinto school, one Arima Kihei. When I was sixteen I struck down an able strategist Tadashima Akiyama. When I was twenty-one I went up to the capital and met all manner of strategists, never once failing to win in many contests.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), Introduction

Youth, School, Way, Mountain

“The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 17
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

“Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book One, Chapter V.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One

God, People, Law, Democracy

“Perhaps this sort of claptrap was good for the Stone Age, when people actually believed that if they prayed for rain they would get it. But we're a grown-up world now, and it's time to put away childish things. But people don't, because most of them don't even know what atheism is. It's not a negation of anything. You don't have to negate what no one can prove exists. No, atheism is a very positive affirmation of man's ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems. I'm thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can't cop out by foisting it off on God. Madalyn Murray's going to solve her own problems, and nobody's going to intervene. It's about time the world got up off its knees and looked at itself in the mirror and said: "Well, we are men. Let's start acting like it."”

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919–1995) Atheist activist

"Playboy Interview: Madalyn Murray", Playboy (October 1965)

Men, God, Children, People

“We made a mistake lowering the voting age to 18. I think it happened basically out of guilt.”

Chris Shays (1945) American politician

Thinking

“He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment.”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 14

Youth, World, Nature, Box

“These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Men, People, Religion, Country

“Amid the stirring and manifold activities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid indifferentism which is too honorable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 341.

World

“A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Confidence

“He [ Aristotle ] refers to many examples of changes now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time… He alludes,… to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption. The changes of the earth, he says, are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event to be forgotten…. He says [twelfth chapter of his Meteorics] 'the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it becomes land where it was sea, and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period.' The concluding observation is as follows: 'As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their operations, but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up and they perish; and the sea also continually deserts some lands and invades others The same tracts, therefore, of the earth are not some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the course of time.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 17
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

People, Spring, Thinking, Universe

“In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

People, Fear, Way, Science

“At the end of the Middle Ages, castles began to lose their military func tion, but not their psychological impact as a symbol of authority. Gun powder and cannons supported armies of mercenary troops, and the garrison forts built to house them adopted the crenellated walls of private aristocratic castles. By the sixteenth century, professional soldiers lived in barracks, a few officers and the governor had finer quarters, and kings and nobles merely directed the operations from distant palaces where battle ments had become purely symbolic decoration. The Battle of Crecy be tween France and England in 1346 is traditionally considered to be the first use of cannons on the battlefield. At first the noise and smoke cre ated by the explosion terrified horses and men, and wreaked more havoc than the projectiles. Early cannons could be more dangerous for the gun ners than for the enemy, but military engineers rapidly developed the weapons’ power and accuracy. A castle’s high walls and towers made easy targets for gunners whose power and accuracy reduced once formidable medieval buildings to rubble. Mining became more successful because the attackers could put explosives under the walls.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 5 : Impact and Consequences : The Afterlife of the Castle

Men, Support, Distant, Success

“At the repeated solicitations of my son Charley to procure him a berth as a midshipman in the navy, I take the liberty to address you the following lines, requesting you will be pleased to interest yourself in my son's behalf with Mr. Hamilton, so as to procure him the midshipman's berth in some of our frigates. Mr. Hamilton, I am sure, is a gentleman of great merit and of superior discernment in his department; consequently will duly appreciate the merits of a youth stepping forward in defense of his country. Though he is only sixteen years old, as a parent I can with confidence say [that] my son is of an engaging, aspiring disposition by nature, regardless of those little difficulties and trials that generally retard and dishearten those of his age in the pursuit of their favorite object. He has been educated for some years in Georgetown College and, consequently, has studied the languages for a certain space of time and is as well versed in arithmetic as most of his age generally are.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Charles Boarman, Sr. in a letter to Robert Brent, the mayor of Washington, D.C., asking for a letter of recommendation for his son's application to enlist in the United States Navy (1811)
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)

Youth, Education, Confidence, Nature

“The more I look around and listen I realize that I'm not alone. We are all facing choices that define us. No choice. However messy is without importance in the overall picture of our lives. We all at our own age have to claim something, even if it's only our own confusion. I am in the middle of growing up and into myself.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself, Introduction (2000)

“The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Men, Law, Support

“The gods of one age become the devils of the age to follow. The priests look forward to the age to come and see only the end of the world.”

Lon Milo DuQuette (1948) American occult writer

Source: Angels, Demons, & Gods of the New Millennium (1997), Chapter 4

God, World

“They [Lee’s uncles] were the horsemen and brawlers of another age, and their lives spoke its long farewell. Spoke too, of campaigns on desert marches, of Kruger’s cannon and Flanders mud; of a world that still moved at the same pace as Caesar’s and of that Empire greater than his – through which they had fought, sharp-eyed and anonymous, and seen the first outposts crumble….”

Laurie Lee book Cider with Rosie

Source: Cider with Rosie (1959), pp. 221-222.

World

“I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage
I found that just surviving was a noble fight
I once believed in causes too
I had my pointless point of view
And life went on no matter who was wrong or right.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Angry Young Man.
Song lyrics, Turnstiles (1976)

Life, Rage, Fight

“It is this which explains nationalism: the principle — so strange and eccentric in the age of agrarian cultural diversity and the 'ethnic' division of labour — that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of (and, one should add, acceptability in) a given high culture … is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Nationalism (1997)

“In France at least, the history of science and thought gives pride of place sciences, sciences of the necessary, all close to philosophy: one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason. The other disciplines, however - those, for example, that concern living beings, languages, or economic facts - are considered too tinged with empirical thought, too exposed to the vagaries of chance or imagery to age old traditions and external events, for it to be supposed that their history could be anything other irregular. At most, they are expected to provide evidence of a state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture, of intuition and blindness. But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well defined regularity.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Foreword to the English edition
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970)

Truth, History, Fashion, Knowledge

“Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age.”
Omne aevum curae; cunctis sua displicet aetas.

Ausonius (310–395) poet

Eclogae 2, line 10; translation from Hugh Gerard Evelyn White Ausonius ([1919-21] 1951) vol. 1, p. 165.

Life

“I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these forms and sources of error.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

People, Truth, Hope, Way

“When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair!
Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age?
We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”. pp. 16–17; opening
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People, Books, World, Education

“The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M. D.,'… appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'… His treatise… is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature. 'However trivial a thing,' he says, 'a rotten shell may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised,' &c.; 'and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 36
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Books, Art, Nature, Learning

“Wall Street, as you already know, is part of Marshall McLuhan's vision of the world in the Electric Age, that is, a global village dependent on oral-aural communication.”

George Goodman (1930–2014) American author and economics commentator

Source: The Money Game (1968), Chapter 10, Can Footprints Predict The Future?, p. 128

World, Communication, Parting, Dependency

“Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.”

Carl Schurz (1829–1906) Union Army general, politician

Address, Faneuil Hall, Boston (18 April 1859)

Star, Water

“For the game is everlasting only insofar as we keep returning to it for delights put into it by countless boys of all ages.”

Neville Cardus (1888–1975) English writer

Cricket (1930)

Game, Boy

“Your lordship, only worldly light in this age of ours, you can never be pleased with another man's work for there is no man who resembles you, nor one to equal you … It grieves me greatly that I cannot recapture my past, so as to longer be at your service. As it is, I can only offer you my future, which is short, for I am too old … That is all I have to say. Read my heart for "the quill cannot express good will."”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Letter to Tommaso dei Cavalieri (1 January 1533).

Light, Reading, Past, Future

“I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Life, Death, War, Youth

“It would take me very far back to tell the story of how I developed my consciousness of the evocative power of mural imagery. These are memories of my adolescence and early youth when I lived enclosed within four walls during the time of war. The suffering of the adults and all the cruel imaginings of my age, abandoned to its own impulses amid all the surrounding catastrophes, were drawn and etched all around me.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

War, Youth, Imagination, Suffering

“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.”

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

Speech to the state convention of the Illinois American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) (7 October 1965) http://www.aft.org/yourwork/tools4teachers/bhm/mlktalks.cfm, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986) 1960s

Life, Hope, Birth, Despair

“Under the stimulation of a "great age" or certain period of clarity in art a wider diffusion of genius becomes actual suggests to me that it is always potential.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 8

Art

“No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#136
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, May 9, 1996, "FDR's memorial hides character" http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-09/news/1996130096_1_memorial-felix-frankfurter-cigarette-holder at baltimoresun.com 1990s

Search, Sense

“I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Reg. v. Bradlaugh and others (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

Death, God, People, Religion

“Acting requires so much delving into yourself and exposing yourself, so it's sensible to be wondering, Do I still want to be doing this? But I enjoy the work, and everything is so solid at home. I don't care if they say I've had buttock implants. Or not. I don't care. Go ahead! That's the nice thing about getting to the age I am. I could have said I didn't care before -- but secretly I did. And now I really don't.”

Kate Beckinsale (1973) English actress

Allure magazine, March 2008.

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“The position of England, gentlemen, is a peculiar position in the world. England has inherited from bygone ages more, perhaps, of what was most august and venerable in those ages than any other European country, and at the same time that her traditions of the past are so rich and fruitful that all our minds and all our characters have both within our knowledge and beyond our knowledge been largely moulded by them. … geographically she stands with Europe on one side of her and America on the other, so she stands between those feudal institutions in which European society was formed, and which have given her hierarchy of class, and on the other side those principles of equality forming the basis of society in America.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Liverpool Liberal Association (6 April 1866), quoted in The Times (7 April 1866), p. 9.
1860s

World, Knowledge, Time, Past

“The king, in his wisdom, understood the spirit of the age, and shaped his plans accordingly.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

About Akbar. Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Wisdom

“The collapse of the Ice Ages hypothesis does not, of course, settle the debate about whether there are racial differences in genes for intelligence. If universities had their way, the necessary research will never be done. They fund the most mundane research projects, but never seem to have funds to test for genetic differences between races. I tell US academics I can only assume that they believe that racial IQ differences have a genetic component, and fear what they might find. They never admit that the politics of race affects their research priorities. It is always just far more important to establish whether squirrels enjoy The Magic Flute.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century (2012), p. 36, Box 4

Fear, Way, Intelligence, Universe

“In its own unhurried way, age soundlessly and with persistence treads ever closer behind us on slippered feet, catches up, and finally blends itself into us—all while we are still denying its nearness.”

Sherwin B. Nuland (1930–2014) American surgeon

[The art of aging: a doctor's prescription for well-being, 2008, Random House, 9, https://books.google.com/books?id=7JR_1wsxvz8C&pg=PA9]
The Art of Aging (2007)

Way

“… From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind.”

David Gross (1941) American particle physicist and string theorist

"David J. Gross - Biographical" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2004/gross-bio.html, Nobel Prize in Physics, nobelprize.org (2004)

Life, Secret, Books, Mathematics

“Not only that “every dog has its day”, but also that “every dog has its data” in the digital information age.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

Dogs

“I, some years back, knew a couple of men who did go and who had all kinds of allusions about the exotic Far East, one a young man, college age, the other an older man. And it was a shattering experience for them that they suppressed, because it told them about the reality of evil and the reality of man as a fallen creatures which they did not want to admit. And I think their suppression of the reality marks our age. We do not want, as an age, to know what evil is, unless, of course, it was Hitler and we killed him and now we just mope up on a few of these extremists.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Decadence and the New Age (March 10, 1989)

Men, Thinking, Reality, Evil

“Everything has a time; it’s not necessary that everyone gets a break at the age of 16. There are so many renowned actors and singers who have got their break much later in life. Don’t hurry and let the music remain pure.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

‘Don’t hurry’ http://www.khaleejtimes.com/article/20140716/ARTICLE/307169979/1057

Life, Music, Time

“The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages, may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude Lorraine's clothes and walk into the street, and the many who knew Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but I should at last meet with some one, more intimately acquainted with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited.It is thus in all the fine arts. A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's Lecture at the Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (25 July 1836), from notes, taken by C.R. Leslie
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Art, Reality, Appearance, Time

“The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 84
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men, Law

“My friend returned to the gallery, looked once more at the adorable imprint of the most innocent, the most passionate of caresses. A mirror hung near by, where he could compare his present with his former face, the man he was with the man he had been. He never told me and I never asked what his feelings were at that moment. Did he feel that he was too culpable to have inspired a passion in a young girl whom he would have been a fool, almost a criminal, to marry? Did he comprehend that through his age which was so apparent, it was his youth which this child loved? Did he remember, with a keenness that was all too sad, that other, who had never given him a kiss like that at a time when he might have returned it? I only know that he left the same day, determined never again to see one whom he could no longer love as he had loved the other, with the hope, the purity, the soul of a man of twenty.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
The Age for Love

Love, Youth, Sadness, Hope

“True, Reagan tied with Carter for the youth vote in 1980 and stole younger voters from Mondale in 1984, but other than that, young voters have consistently embarrassed themselves. Of course, back when Reagan was running for president, young voters consisted of the one slice of the population completely uninfected by the Worst Generation. Today's youth are the infantilized, pampered, bicycle-helmeted children of the Worst Generation. They foisted this jug-eared, European socialist on us and now they must be punished. Voters aged 18 to 29 years old comprised nearly a fifth of the voting population in 2008 and they voted overwhelmingly for Obama, 66 percent to 31 percent.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Repeal the 26th Amendment!" (10 November 2010).
2010

Children, Youth

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949), p. 292
Similar statements were included in "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946) (see above), published posthumously.
God in the Dock (1970)

Disease, Exercises, Hell, Sleep

“A cultured, sensitive, observant man is a pleasure to be with in any age.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 9 (p. 97)

Pleasure

“All these young minds the revolution has heated up and brought to flower before their time, before their age.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Flowers, Time

“What a period. What an age to have been alive in. Oh thank God I was born when I was.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

The Oaken Heart - the story of an English Village - Michael Joseph 1941 ISBN 095108562X
The Oaken Heart

God

“This is not an age of castles, moats, and armor, where people can sustain a competitive advantage for very long. This is an age that calls for cunning, speed, and enterprise.”

Richard D’Aveni (1953) American economist

Richard D'Aveni, in: "The Mavericks," Fortune, June 1995.

People, Speed

“Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts — lasts in you. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ, that, and only that, you are.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 2.

Life, World, Feeling, Change

“The members of the Japanese enlightenment of the early 1870's, Fukuzawa among them, now reasoned as follows: Japan can keep its independence only if it becomes stronger. It can become stronger only with the help of science. It will use science effectively only if it does not just practice science but also believes in the underlying ideology. To many traditional Japanese this ideology-the scientific worldview- was barbaric. But, so the followers of Fukuzawa argued, it was necessary to adopt barbaric ways, to regard them as advanced, to introduce the whole of Western civilization in order to survive. Having been thus prepared, Japanese scientists soon branched out as their Western colleagues had done before and falsified the uniform ideology that had started the development. The lesson I draw from this sequence of events is that a uniform 'scientific view of the world' may be useful for people doing science… However, it is a disaster for outsiders(philosophers, fly-by-night mystics, prophets of a new age, the (educated public"), who, being undisturbed by the complexities of research, are liable to fall for the most simpleminded and most vapid tale.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 160.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

People, World, Education, Way

“I found, once I passed the age of forty, that I have a good sense of humor. It’s only through that I can keep stuﬀ oﬀ and go through my life. If you sit and try to take on everything that is going on out there, you’re going to end up with problems. That’s where I feel music. And music becomes the way in which I express feelings. And, because it allows me to have contact with my emotions, it’s a constant catharsis, not just playing and writing. By doing that, you alleviate something inside of you. And who knows where that comes from?”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/

Life, Music, Way, Feeling

“I had an interesting day's reading yesterday, with the sudden sensation of being in close contact with what I was reading. […] But as for reading how curious it is: all these books, their lore of the ages, waiting to be embraced but usually slipping out of one's nerveless hands on to the floor. When one reads properly it is as if a third person is present.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 419, to William Plomer, 12 December 1957
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Books, Waiting, Reading, Personality

““I believe in God,” says my nan, in a way that makes the idea of an omnipotent, unifying frequency of energy manifesting matter from pure consciousness sound like a chore. An unnecessary chore at that, like cleaning under the fridge. I tell her, plucky little seven-year-old that I was, that I don’t. This pisses her off. Her faith in God is not robust enough to withstand the casual blasphemy of an agnostic tot. “Who do you think made the world, then?” I remember her demanding as fiercely as Jeremy Paxman would later insist I provide an instant global infrastructure for a post-revolutionary utopia. “Builders,” I said, thinking on my feet. This flummoxed her and put her in a bad mood for the rest of the walk. If she’d hit back with “What about construction at a planetary or galactic level?” she’d’ve had me on the ropes. At that age I wouldn’t’ve been able to riposte with “an advanced species of extraterrestrials who we have been mistakenly ascribing divine attributes to due to our own technological limitations” or “a spontaneous cosmic combustion that contained at its genesis the code for all subsequent astronomical, chemical, and biological evolution.” I probably would’ve just cried. Anyway, I’m supposed to be explaining the power of forgiveness, not gloating about a conflict in the early eighties in which I fared well against an old lady. Since getting clean from drugs and alcohol I have been taught that I played a part in the manufacture of all the negative beliefs and experiences from my past and I certainly play a part in their maintenance. I now look at my nan in another way. As a human being just like me, trying to cope with her own flaws and challenges. Fearful of what would become of her sick daughter, confused by the grandchild born of a match that she was averse to. Alone and approaching the end of her life, with regret and lacking a functioning system of guidance and comfort. Trying her best. Taking on the responsibility of an unusual little boy with glib, atheistic tendencies, she still behaved dutifully. Perhaps this very conversation sparked in me the spirit of metaphysical inquiry that has led to the faith in God I now have.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life, God, Alcohol, World

“Daly: In a sense, would you say that the age of biogenetics/cyberspace is the age of philosophy?
Žižek: Yes, and the age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 54

Life, World, Way, Question

“"Is that true," I asked, "that song?"
"It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth."
"And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?"
"The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical to personal well-being and comfort. We have a duty to understand everything, whether we like it or not–a duty I would scant if I could." At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

"At The End Of The Mechanical Age".
Sixty Stories (1981)

Truth, Understanding, Water, Chance

“The tendency of the families of wealth in every country to form a class by themselves, is deep-set in the human makeup. Rome carried the tendency one step further — she cemented the moneyed class in the various countries into an international combine. "Peace and order" were at last secure. An antitoxin against insomnia had been devised. Slave owners could now lay their heads on their pillows at night, without the fear of insurrection gnawing them through the night-watches. An uprising of the toiling masses, no matter how formidable, could be handled. Upon a rebellious district could be mobilized in shortest time six and twenty legions. The machinery of intimidation was complete. Man was undermost, and property paramount. The "Golden Age" — literally — set in. The Roman Empire, that apotheosis of property rights, fastened itself upon the world. Embracing all nations and tongues and climates, a motley crew, they had one cohering principle which swallowed up their diversities — the coherence of a common plunder.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), pp. 15-16

Money, World, Fear, Family

“We simply gow up. In Florence, at age fifty-four, I was a brash youth. Had I known the Duse was there her poet chap might have found dangerous competition, ha-ha. The only trouble is that now, nearing eighty, I keep discovering that damned war has made the world older than I. The world frowns now on youth in a vacuum, it insists youth be turned-to, utilized, exploited. No time for pranks. No more Vheissus.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Nine, Part II, Godolphin

War, Youth, World, Time

“Not for the first time Richard reflected that this age’s vaunted ‘communications industry’ had chiefly provided people and nations with the means of frightening to death and simultaneously boring to extinction themselves and each other.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 21 (p. 158).

Death, People, Communication, Time

“A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Psalm 90 st. 4.
1710s, "Our God, our help in ages past" (1719)

Sun, Night

“I'm only warming up. I had a fantastic season, I proved age is just a number, Everything is in your head. Whatever you want to do you will do it. It's a master mind game. If I want to make it I'll make it. If I want to do it I'll do it.”

Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) Swedish association football player

Talking about his age doesn't affect his game http://www.espn.in/football/soccer-transfers/story/2880702/zlatan-ibrahimovic-has-made-choice-amid-manchester-united-talk Attributed

Game, Season

“The life cycle of family size, at least in the U. S., has a very humped shape rather similar to that of income, though with a somewhat earlier peak. As a result, one might expect, and generally finds a fairly constant rate of saving in the central age group, but lower saving or even dissaving in the very young or old.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Franco Modigliani, " Life Cycle, Individual Thrift and the Wealth of Nations http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fichiers/enseig/ecoineg/EcoIneg_fichiers/ModiglianiNobelLecture1985(AER1986).pdf" Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 9, 1985, in: Nobel Lectures, Economics 1981-1990, Editor Karl-Göran Mäler, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992.

Life, Family