“It is both a pointless and a churlish thing to praise the old days at the expense of the new, though there are a number of things a man might reasonably have preferred to commercial television and the hydrogen bomb.”

Odd Men In (1958)

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 "It is both a pointless and a churlish thing to praise the old days at the expense of the new, though there are a number…" by A. A. Thomson?
A. A. Thomson photo
A. A. Thomson 2
cricketer and author 1894–1968

Related quotes

Martin Heidegger photo
E.E. Cummings photo

“Simple people, people who don't exist, prefer things which don't exist, simple things.
"Good" and "bad" are simple things. You bomb me = "bad." I bomb you = "good."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Simple people(who,incidentally,run this socalled world)know this(they know everything)whereas complex people—people who feel something—are very,very ignorant and really don't know anything.
"Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)

Cesare Pavese photo

“Narrating incredible things as though they were real—old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible—the new.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Donald Rumsfeld photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

As quoted in "Tibet's Living Buddha" by Pico Iyer, p. 32.
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)

Werner Herzog photo

“Even in a pointless universe, pointless happiness and pleasures are surely preferable to pointless suffering.”

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 307

G. K. Chesterton photo

“It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.”

"Oxford from Without"
All Things Considered (1908)
Context: It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke — that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.

George Wallace photo

“Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Absurdities, Scandals & Stupidities in Politics (2006) by Hakeem Shittu and Callie Query, p. 106

Isaac Newton photo

Related topics