Quotes about century (3044 quotes, page 31)

“Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Variations of this have circulated among Irish and left-wing Eurosceptic groups. Delors explicitly denied making any such statement in 1992 and 1998 in the leadup to Irish referendums on the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. Commentators have found no evidence for it.
Attributions:
[Facing the threat of Brussels rule at our expense, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1991/1121/Pg014.html#Ar01400, 30 July 2019, The Irish Times, 21 November 1991, 14, subscription, Anthony, Coughlan]
[Proinsias, de Rossa, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1991-11-29/3/#para_191, 29 November 1991, Dáil Éireann debates, Maastricht Summit: Motion]
[Maastricht and neutrality : Ireland's neutrality and the future of Europe, John, Maguire, Joe, Noonan, 1992, Cork, People First/Meitheal, 19–20]
[Fox, Carol, Gearing up, 25554848, Fortnight, 1994, 334, 11–12: 12, 0141-7762]
[Joe, Higgins, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1997-10-16/24/#para_608, 16 October 1997, Dáil Éireann debates, Amsterdam Treaty: Statements (Resumed)]
Edward, Spalton, 4 July 2004, (Letter) Fashion statement, Daily Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3608033/Fashion-statement.html,
John, Boyd, Campaign Against European Federalism, Europe for Peace Conference, Manchester, 5 March 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20070809083941/http://www.gmdcnd.org.uk/events/europeconference/amC.htm,
[Gibson, Dirk C., Commercial Space Tourism: Impediments to Industrial Development and Strategic Communication Solutions, 2012, Bentham Science Publishers, 9781608052394, 12, https://books.google.ie/books?id=hSkW9TW3omEC&pg=PA12, 21 July 2019]
The European Alliance of EU-critical Movements, EU Counter Summit Statement, London, 7 November 2015 http://teameurope.co/statements.html,
[The financial cost of signing up to PESCO, https://people.ie/news/PN-178.pdf, People's News, People's Movement, Dublin, 178, 20 December 2017]
Morning Star, Macron calls for joint EU army project to step up a gear, 27 August 2018 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/macron-calls-joint-eu-army-project-step-gear,
Refutations:
The Irish Times, subscription, 12 June 1992, 12, Colm, Boland, 'Interference' by Delors denounced https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1992/0612/Pg007.html#Ar00701,
[30001811, Ireland's Foreign Relations in 1992, Patrick, Keatinge, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 4, 1993, 72 [footnote]]
McKenna's case not a Euromyth, 15 May 1998, Patrick, Smyth, The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/news/mckenna-s-case-not-a-euromyth-1.152890,
Misattributed

Fight , War

“One of the greatest errors in the reconstruction of another era lies in our tendency to think of them as being like ourselves in feeling and attitudes. Actually, without considerable study on the part of a present-day man — if he were confronted by a fifteenth-century man — there would be no possible communication. I think it is possible through knowledge and discipline for a modern man to understand, and, to a certain extent, live into a fifteenth-century mind, but the reverse would be completely impossible.”

John Steinbeck book The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Appendix, letter to Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton (14 March 1958)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

Communication , Understanding , Knowledge , Thinking

“This is the public health crisis of the century, and doctors should not have barriers.”

Peter A. McCullough (1962) American cardiologist and medical professor

[The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/10/peter-navarro-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus/, Touting criticized study, White House presses FDA to authorize hydroxychloroquine — again, McGinley, Laurie; Dawsey, Josh, July 10, 2020]

Health

“Better a century of tyranny than one day of chaos.”

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) Sunni Islamic scholar and theologian, who lived during the era of the first Mamluks (1250-1328)

Kitab al-Siyasa al-Shar'iya, as quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, Oxford University Press, p. 19.

“Despite the important gains of antiracist social movements over the last half century, racism hides from view within institutional structures, and its most reliable refuge is the prison system.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter Five

“How futile it had all been, that superhuman gallantry! It had amounted, in the end, to nothing but a passionate gesture of negation—the negation of all that the centuries had taught themselves through long eons of pain.”

Vera Brittain book Testament of Youth

Source: Testament of Youth (1933), Chapter XII 'Another Stranger'

Pain , Passion

“We Croatians are suffering from an overdose of history during the past century. Of course we still have some nationalism. But the feelings are slowly cooling down.”

Zoran Milanović (1966) Croatian politician

Source: "'Germany Is a Role Model for Us'" in Speigel International https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-croatian-prime-minister-milanovic-germany-is-a-role-model-a-856179.html (17 September 2012)

History , Past , Suffering , Feeling

“For almost half a century, U.S. policy with respect to Cuba has failed—miserably.”

Lawrence Wilkerson (1945) Chief of Staff to Colin Powell

Source: U.S. Cuba Policy: Ending 50 Years of Failure, Prepared Testimony to the Committee on Finance United States Senate (11 December 2007)

“This century has seen world war for the first time. It has seen a world civilization threatened with self-destruction, not only through war but through the exploitation of all the kingdoms in nature...”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

Time , War , Nature , World

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Source: Articles, Come September (29 Sep 2002)

“The Method tends to be linear, almost like a 19th century mechanistic way of thinking in its search for a cause that produces the desired effect.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

From the essay Strasberg Legacy

Search , Thinking , Way

“Judah ... was not canalized for the exclusive benefit of the aristocracy and the wealthy merchants, as was apparently true of the Northern Kingdom in the eighth century. ... All private houses so far excavated reflect a surprisingly narrow range of variation in the social scale.”

William F. Albright (1891–1971) Orientalist, biblical scholar and archaeologist

"The Biblical Period" in The Jews (1949), p. 39, as cited in The Prophets (1962), p. 62

Housing

“The Church won't develop by European standards. For centuries we sent missionaries to other continents, now other continents are inspiring us and revitalizing our faith. I think that's a postive development.”

Werner Thissen (1938) Catholic archbishop

Source: In the Interview: Archbishop of Hamburg, Werner Thissen https://www.dw.com/en/in-the-interview-archbishop-of-hamburg-werner-thissen/av-16680253 (2013)

Faith , Thinking

“Early in the last century, the most powerful earthquakes ever to strike the stable heart of the continent rattled the Reelfoot Rift.”

Shawna Vogel science writer

Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)

Heart

“We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandoned the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty. It is now too late for us to become Arab Jews.”

Albert Memmi (1920) French writer

Source: "Who is an Arab Jew?" (1975)

Idea

“I can only say that I salute and welcome the fight against racism and all forms of discrimination. The realisation of a plural and multicultural world must be a priority in this 21st century.”

Marcel Utembi Tapa (1959) Congolese catholic archbishop

Source: DRC's Archbishop Utembi: I salute the fight against racism https://www.vaticannews.va/en/africa/news/2020-06/drc-archbishop-marcel-utembi-i-salute-the-fight-against-racis.html (17 June 2020)

World , Fight

“While "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" was a term of art dating to 1386, and had thus accumulated centuries of intellectual baggage, there's no reason to think the Framers had all that in mind.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

To End a Presidency (2018)

Art , Thinking

“[A]ttempting to organize and give structure to the study of legal silence has been a primary purpose of much of what I have written and taught over the past half-century.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Soundings and Silences (2016)

Study , Silence , Past

“The question whether individuals may insist on being heard by rulemakers, for whom they already (directly or indirectly) voted, has bedeviled administrative law since the turn of the century.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Constitutional Choices (1985), The Nature of the Enterprise, The Futile Search for Legitimacy

Law , Question

“And now, gentlemen, what is the condition of the great body of the people? In the first place, gentlemen, they have for centuries been in the full enjoyment of that which no other country in Europe has ever completely attained—complete rights of personal freedom.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 507

Freedom , Personality , People , Country

“Power is habit-forming. We grew addicted to it. Few things survive the centuries’ slow decay: senses grow dull; passions grow weak; and ideals die. Only the taste for power lives on as an excuse for survival.”

Jack Williamson book Star Bridge

Source: Star Bridge (1955), Chapter 20, “Prime Mover” (p. 275)

Passion , Sense

“Inevitably in this century we will have open borders. We are seeing it in Europe already. The movement of peoples across the globe will mean that borders are almost going to become irrelevant by the end of this century so we should be preparing for that and explaining why people move.”

John McDonnell (1951) British politician (born 1951)

Source: Borderless world inevitable, says Labour's John McDonnell https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35455023 BBC News (31 January 2016)

People

“Why from the plain truth should I shrink?
In woods men feel; in towns they think.
Yet, which is best? Thought, stumbling, plods
Past fallen temples, vanished gods,
Altars unincensed, fanes undecked,
Eternal systems flown or wrecked;
Through trackless centuries that grant
To the poor trudge refreshment scant,
Age after age, pants on to find
A melting mirage of the mind.
But feeling never wanders far,
Content to fare with things that are.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: At the Gate of the Convent (1885), "A Defence of English Spring", p. 58.

God , Truth , Age , Past

“People did not always love the mountains. Just a few hundred years ago the high mountains were regarded as horrible, monstrous places filling people with terror and fear. The inhabitants near them were seen as awful demons, subhumans. But this attitude got transformed into just the opposite, especially by Romantic writers and painters in the nineteenth century. Seen by the Romantics, high mountains became places of impossible beauty, where the quality of light and the expansive solitary grandeur of the high peaks opened the heart of the individual. A man climbing a mountain became the image of self-conscious intelligence pitted against the eternal indifference of the forces of nature. Compared to these forces of nature, we are nothing save for the will that moves our limbs. Only that will is truly our own.”

Heinz R. Pagels (1939–1988) American physicist

Source: The Cosmic Code (1982), p. 271-272

Mountain , Intelligence , Indifference , Nature

“Some of the harm that humans cause to other humans and to animals is mediated by the destructive effect that humans have on the environment. For much of human history, the damage was local. Groups of humans fouled their immediate environment. In recent centuries the human impact has increased exponentially and the threat is now to the global environment. The increased threat is a product of two interacting factors–the exponential growth of the human population combined with significant increases in negative effects per capita. The latter is the result of industrialization and increased consumption.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)
Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 48

History , Animals

“The misery and suffering that abound everywhere, reveal clearly that you have wantonly rejected the lessons of life. Foolish man! Your repeated, wanton neglect to learn the lessons of centuries has wrecked your boasted civilisation upon the rocks of hatred and greed.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Sayings of Swami Sivanada (1947)

Suffering , Learning , Life

“The secret that our poets and philosophers have been trying to tell us for centuries, is that our longing is the great gateway to belonging.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bittersweet Introduction at p. xxvii

Secret

“If one rejects the Orthodox creed and the eastern ascetic experience of life in Christ, which has been acquired throughout the centuries, then Orthodox culture would be left with nothing but the Greek minor [key] and Russian tetraphony.”

Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896–1993) Russian monk, theologian and writer

Letter to D. Balfour.
Others

Christ , Life

“For centuries, the people have always been with the Church and the Church has always been by the people's side because it has always sought to serve the country and not the leaders.”

Stanisław Dziwisz (1939) Polish cardinal

Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz: “Europe was constructed, and continues to be constructed, upon Christian values” https://visegradpost.com/en/2020/05/18/cardinal-stanislaw-dziwisz-europe-was-constructed-and-continues-to-be-constructed-upon-christian-values/ (18 May 2020)

Country , People

“I have a problem in living which century I live. When I read those manuscripts, I'm taken away there. Sometimes I'm totally taken with them, with the monks and the ancient libraries and the ancient monasteries and then, when someone passes by me in their office and speaks English, I say, "What?" But then I realize I am in an English-speaking world.”

Getatchew Haile (1931–2021) Ethiopian-American philologist; scholar of the Ge'ez language

Preserving Words and Worlds https://onbeing.org/programs/columba-stewart-and-getatchew-haile-preserving-words-and-worlds/ (19 January 2009)

World , Reading , Problem

“Modern psychology recognizes what Jesus taught centuries ago: Hate divides the personality and love in an amazing and inexorable way unites it.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

Hate , Personality , Way , Love

“History has a long patience, and wait centuries and centuries to condemn the defamation of men.”

Alfonso Uribe Misas (1886–1984) Colombian lawyer, politician and writer

Aclaración Necesaria https://www.scribd.com/document/406270324/La-Verdad-sobre-la-muerte-de-Carlos-Gardel. From the book The Truth about the death of Carlos Gardel , compiled from the galley proofs of the work written by Alfonso Uribe Misas and that its publication was prohibited in 1938.

Waiting , History , Patience , Men

“Like God, however, ideology is dead. The bloody excesses of the twentieth century killed it.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 177

God , Dead

“To build unity requires recognizing the central role of young activists. They are vigorously fighting the attack on this century's Reconstruction. Their anger at today's ugly society often translates into a passionate drive for unity across color lines.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

Passion , Anger , Color , Fight

“In the early 1900s, while colonization continued, the original Mexican population of the Southwest was greatly increased by an immigration the continues today. This combination of centuries-old roots and relatively new ones gives the Mexican-American people a rich and varied cultural heritage.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

People

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”

T.S. Eliot book The Rock

The Rock, Part I (1934)

Life , God , Knowledge , Wisdom

“One could not overshoot a planet’s carrying capacity without disaster following—that was what Earth’s history since the nineteenth century existed to prove.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 621)

History

“When values have their foundation in man, they are very fragile. It's enough to look at the 20th century.”

Manuel Monteiro de Castro (1938) secretary of the Congregation for Bishops

Euthanasia similar to Hitler’s racial purging, says Nuncio in Spain https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/12276/euthanasia-similar-to-hitlers-racial-purging-says-nuncio-in-spain (8 April 2008)