Quotes about age
page 41

Gerard Batten photo
Tucker Carlson photo

“Tucker Carlson began at The Weekly Standard. Tucker Carlson was a great young reporter. He was one of the most gifted 24-year-olds I’ve seen in the 20 years that I edited the magazine. His copy was sort of perfect at age 24.He had always a little touch of Pat Buchananism, I would say, paleo-conservativism.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

But that’s very different from what he’s become now. I mean, it is close now to racism, white — I mean, I don’t know if it’s racism exactly — but ethno-nationalism of some kind, let’s call it. A combination of dumbing down, as you said earlier, and stirring people’s emotions in a very unhealthy way.
Bill Kristol, January 25, 2018 ([Bill Kristol takes on Fox News, Tucker Carlson: ‘I don’t know if it’s racism exactly – but ethno-nationalism of some kind’, w:John Harwood, John, Harwood, January 25, 2018, NBC News, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/24/bill-kristol-takes-on-fox-news-tucker-carlson.html, CNBC])

Frederick Douglass photo

“Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Stephen King photo
Vasyl Slipak photo

“You know, he learned continuously! He took lessons even at age 42. He did it meticulously, without being ashamed or considering himself a star that can rest on his laurels. He had a need for self-improvement.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Orest Slipak, the brother of singer. Brother about brother. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 27 April. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/brother-about-brother

Hannah Arendt photo
Johann Gottfried Herder photo

“Should there not be manifest progress and development but in a higher sense than people have imagined it? … No one is in his age alone, he builds on the preceding one, this becomes nothing but the foundation of the future, wants to be nothing but that — this is what we are told by the analogy in nature, God’s speaking exemplary model in all works! Manifestly so in the human species!”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

"This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity" ["Auch eine Philosophie zur Geschichte der Menscheit"] (1774), as translated by Michael N. Forster, in Johann Gottlieb von Herder: Philosophical Writings (2002), edited by Michael N. Forster, p. 299

Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Giacomo Leopardi photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“The fundamental maxim of those who stand at the head of this Age, and therefore the principle of the Age, is this,—to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory, but that which they can understand and clearly comprehend.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

With regard to this fundamental principle, as we have now declared and adopted it without farther definition or limitation, this third Age is precisely similar to that which is to follow it, the fourth, or age of Reason as Science,—and by virtue of this similarity prepares the way for it. Before the tribunal of Science, too, nothing is accepted but the Conceivable. Only in the application of the principle there is this difference between the two Ages,—that the third, which we shall shortly name that of Empty Freedom, makes its fixed and previously acquired conceptions the measure of existence; while the fourth—that of Science—on the contrary, makes existence the measure, not of its acquired, but of its desiderated beliefs.
Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 19

Jerzy Vetulani photo

“Jurek had a feature rarely seen in an older adult – an unrestrained, almost childish curiosity of the world that fueled his activity in everyday life and did not allow him to age mentally. He liked to be on the move all the time, to go on trips, so as not to sit idle.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Irena Nalepa, a psychopharmacologist and long-time collaborator of Jerzy Vetulani. Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017). O mentorze, przyjacielu i niepokornym wirtuozie naukowej narracji http://kosmos.icm.edu.pl/PDF/2018/233.pdf (in Polish), Kosmos, 67 (2), s. 233–244, 2018.

Edward Bellamy photo
Elizabeth Warren photo
Joel Fuhrman photo

“There is an issue of vital importance that most well-meaning parents are not aware of: the modern diet that most children are eating today creates a fertile cellular environment for cancer to emerge at a later age.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Trying to prevent breast, prostate, and other cancers as an adult may not be totally possible because most risk factors cannot be changed at this late stage. The bottom line is that in order to have a major impact on preventing cancer we must intervene much earlier, even as early as the first ten years of life. In other words, childhood diets create adult cancers.
Introduction, p. xviii
Disease-Proof Your Child (2005)

Robert Barron (bishop) photo
Mark Satin photo

“The New World Alliance … was a short-lived precursor of the North American Greens. It was founded by Mark Satin (author of New Age Politics) after a nationwide Delphi-type survey among 500 academics, policy experts, and political activists interested in this emerging political paradigm. These new colleagues … were also exploring the relationship between personal and political transformation.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

"Preface." In Woolpert, Stephen; Slaton, Christa Daryl; and Schwerin, Edward W., eds. (1998), Transformational Politics: Theory, Study, and Practice. State University of New York Press, p. xi. ISBN 978-0-7914-3945-6. Woolpert had been a member of the Alliance, see p. xi, and Slaton had worked with the Greens, see McLaughlin quote below.
New Age and Green activism

Mark Satin photo

“From the United States there seemed to be not one but many different kinds of movements developing … as well as a number of ideologies that already then seemed to be in competition with one another: the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, the new-age politics of Mark Satin, the appropriate technology of Amory Lovins, the ecofeminism of Carolyn Merchant, to name some of those that I became acquainted with.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Jamison, Andrew (2001). The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation. Cambridge University Press, p. 5. ISBN 978-0-521-79252-3. The author is discussing the period of the late 1970s.
New Age and Green activism

Chinmayananda Saraswati photo

“Swami Chinmayananda being the first person to have translated the Gita in English, played an important role in propagating this text across the world to all age groups.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Sri Jayendra Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, in Chinmayananda spread the message of `Gita' http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2001-12-25/mumbai/27232673_1_gita-shankaracharya-swami
About Chinmayananda

Rukmini Devi Arundale photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
James K. Morrow photo

“A golden age, Londa calls it. She hopes it will return.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

“Golden ages rarely return,” I said “especially if they never existed.”
Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 16 (p. 366)

Alasdair MacIntyre photo

“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium.”

What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point.
Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 263

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

Adam Goldstein photo

“In complete shock. I really want to use words right now but I can’t get em. Fuck. We’re supposed to lose our friends to time, at an age when we’re ready to agree to the terms of having lived a long life. Not now.”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

John Mayer, musician Celebrity reactions to Adam Goldstein's death http://earsucker.com/2009/08/28/celebrity-reactions-to-adam-goldsteins-death/

Miley Cyrus photo

“Her voice is surprisingly rich for a girl in her early teens, and she has more personality than many pop starlets her age, especially those in the Disney stable.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Heather Phares of allmusic http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kzdgyl5nxp9b

Al-Biruni photo
Edward Coke photo
Pedro Albizu Campos photo
Totaram Sanadhya photo
Sai Baba of Shirdi photo

“More over, Sai Baba was a celibate, remaining in one place, performing miracles, admonishing his disciples, and keeping a fire perpetually burning at Shirdi. The functions of a Guru, ascetic and saint, Sai Baba adds that of Avatar as many of his devotees and followers consider him as major incarnation of this age.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Stated by Charles S.J.White.[Sinha, K.N., Sai Baba: A Ray from the Supreme, http://books.google.com/books?id=o7A_TxQzx8kC&pg=PA80, 1 January 1997, Abhinav Publications, 978-81-7017-349-6, 80–]

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Oswald Mosley photo
James Frazer photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!
Preface to the Second Edition (1869)
Essays in Criticism (1865)

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo
Heath Ledger photo

“I had such great hope for him. He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Mel Gibson, actor, whose on-screen eldest son, Gabriel Martin, was played by Heath Ledger in The Patriot. [In Quotes: Heath Ledger Tributes", http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7204267.stm, BBC News, Entertainment, bbc.co.uk (BBC), January 23, 2008, 2008-08-23]

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo
Jeff Buckley photo
Martin Amis photo
Jack LaLanne photo

“At age 70 the guy towed 70 boats carrying 70 people across the Long Beach harbor, with both arms and feet shackled.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

Robert Kennedy, in "Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity", p. 10

Jack LaLanne photo

“At 21 years of age Jack developed the first models of exercise equipment, and these are standards in gyms today.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

Robert Kennedy, in "Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity", p. 9

Jack LaLanne photo

“At 21 years of age he opened North America’s first modern gym.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

Robert Kennedy, in Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity, Foreword http://books.google.co.in/books?id=MqBWPgAACAAJ&dq=Live+Young+forever+Jack+Lalanne&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fIz5UvnrJ8jnlAW7mID4Dg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA, p. 9

Camille Paglia photo
Roger Federer photo

“His win today at the French Open, tying Pete Sampras’s record for major titles and the completion of a career grand slam firmly places him in a special place as the greatest player of all time. He has earned his place and he has proven he belongs. Roger is a champion for the ages.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Billie Jean King, winner of 39 Grand Slams, after Federer won the 2009 French Open Final http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/news?slug=reu-openfederergreat&prov=reuters&type=lgns

Nelson Mandela photo
John Nash photo
Richard Feynman photo
Will Cuppy photo

“During the Cretaceous Period many of the inland seas dried up, leaving the Plesiosaurs stranded without any fish. Just about that time Mother Nature scrapped the whole Age of Reptiles and called for a new deal. And you can see what she got.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Footnote: Here we see the working of another Law of Nature: No water, no fish.
The Plesiosaur
How to Become Extinct (1941)

John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo

“We can assert, with entire plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects — Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included — but sprung from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once universal religion, which antedated the Vedaic ages — we speak of that prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism.The religion which the primitive teaching of the early few apostles most resembled — a religion preached by Jesus himself — is the elder of these two, Buddhism. The latter as taught in its primitive purity, and carried to perfection by the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, based its moral ethics on three fundamental principles. It alleged that 1, every thing existing, exists from natural causes; 2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and sin their own punishment; and, 3, that the state of man in this world is probationary... However puzzling the subsequent theological tenets; however seemingly incomprehensible the metaphysical abstractions which have convulsed the theology of every one of the great religions of mankind as soon as it was placed on a sure footing, the above is found to be the essence of every religious philosophy, with the exception of later Christianity. It was that of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Jesus, and even of Moses, albeit the teachings of the Jewish law-giver have been so piously tampered with.”

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter III

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Janis Joplin photo

“Don't expect any answers, dear,
For I know that they don't come with age, no, no.
Well, ain't never gonna love you any better, babe.
And I'm never gonna love you right,
So you'd better take it now, and right now.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969)

Teal Swan photo
Will Durant photo

“Middle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 3 : On Middle Age

Will Durant photo

“Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 1 : Our life begins

Ernest Rutherford photo
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Cory Doctorow photo
Steve Jobs photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.””

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.
"The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

Kim Il-sung photo

“A free and peaceful new world without exploitation and oppression was the age-long dream and ideal of humanity”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

With the century, vol. 3

Alexander Hamilton photo
Benito Mussolini photo
China Miéville photo

“We know the axes on which we should judge, and age has never been one.”

The Dusty Hat (p. 203)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Marianne Williamson photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
William Quan Judge photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Victor Hugo photo
Victor Hugo photo

“Let us proclaim it aloud, let us proclaim it in our fall and in our defeat, this is the greatest of all ages! and do you know the reason why? because it is the mildest.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Victor Hugo photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Neil Young photo
John Denham photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Franz von Papen photo
Bill Withers photo
Tedros Adhanom photo
Ralph Nader photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Ruth Bader Ginsburg photo

“Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, "My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way."”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

Interview with Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio (2 May 2002)
2000s

William Blum photo
Anna J. Cooper photo

“Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day—respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 14

William Cobbett photo

“[T]he very best and most virtuous of all mankind, the agricultural labourers of this land, so favoured by God Almighty, and for so many ages the freest and happiest country in the world!”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘To the Labourers of England, on their duties and their rights’, Political Register (29 January 1831), p. 288
1830s

David Pearce (philosopher) photo

“From a young age, I've viewed the animals we abuse and kill as akin - functionally, intellectually and emotionally - to small children. Small children are vulnerable. Typically, they don't need "liberating."”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

Infants and toddlers in particular need looking after. The problem - when I was a teenager - was that most of interventions I could think of to alleviate wild animal suffering might easily make things worse in the long run. Thus if we sought to rescue herbivores, then obligate carnivores (and their young) would starve. If we were to phase out carnivorous predators altogether, then there would a population explosion of "prey" species. Lots of herbivores would then starve too. The food chain seemed an inexorable fact of the world - a fact as immutable as, say, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Only after reading Eric Drexler's classic "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology" did I gradually come to realize that there were technical solutions to all these problems - notably in vitro meat, immunocontraception, neurochips to modulate behaviour, nanobots to manage marine ecosystems, and ultimately rewriting the vertebrate genome.

" Interview with Pensata Animal https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/interviewoct2009.html", Pensata Animal, 25 Oct. 2009

William Cobbett photo
Anthony Fauci photo

“I feel like I'm 45. And I act like I'm 35. When I start to feel like I don't have the energy to do the job, whatever my age, I’ll walk away and write my book”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico

John Scotus Eriugena photo

“One man stands head and shoulders above his contemporary scholars: head and shoulders, some hold, above the Middle Ages: John Scotus Erigena.”

John Scotus Eriugena (810–877) Irish theologian

Helen Waddell The Wandering Scholars (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1927] 1954) pp. 77-78.
Criticism