Address given in Copenhagen "Physics in Denmark: The First Four Hundred Years" (6 March 1996) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/pais/index.html?print=1
Context: Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going. Awareness is spreading that our future cannot be a straight extension of the past or the present … The century now approaching its end has been one of indiscriminate violence, it has been perhaps the most murderous one in Western history of which we have record. Yet I would think that what will strike people most when, hundreds of years from now, they will look back on our days is that this was the age when the exploration of space began, the microchip was invented, revolutions in transport and communication virtually annihilated time and distance, transforming the world into a "global village," and relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and the structure of the atom were discovered, in brief that this has been the century of science and technology.
“Our own civilization has moved into an epoch of permanent crisis and upheaval, and we are beset with a plague of wizards.”
Source: Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987), p. 113
Context: An ancient Chinese curse runs, "May you live in interesting times." Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has rarely been more interesting times than these. Whenever history becomes unstable and destinies hang in the balance, then magicians and messiahs appear everywhere. Our own civilization has moved into an epoch of permanent crisis and upheaval, and we are beset with a plague of wizards. They serve an historic purpose, for whenever a society undergoes radical change, alternative spiritualities proliferate, and from among these a culture will select a new world view.
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Peter J. Carroll 45
British occultist 1953Related quotes
“Humanity is moving ever deeper into a crisis which has no precedent.”
From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: Humanity is moving ever deeper into a crisis which has no precedent. It is a crisis brought about by evolution being intent on completely integrating differently colored, differently cultured, and intercommunicating humanity, and by evolution being intent on making integrated humanity able to live sustainedly at a higher standard of living for all than has ever been experienced by any. Probably ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to make it; we do. It can only be accomplished, however, through a Design Science Revolution.
Those in supreme power, politically and economically, aren’t yet convinced that our Planet Earth has anywhere nearly enough life support for all humanity.
They assume it has to be either you or me, that there is not enough for both. Those with financial advantage reason that selfishness is necessary and fortify themselves even further.
Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 294
"This way to the promised land", Globe and Mail (April 10, 2003)
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 3
President Maduro's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts), 26 September 2018
As quoted in Sid Meier's Civilization V (2010).