Quotes about modernity (2750 quotes, page 26)

“To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)
Context: To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his Comick wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is alwayes great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets

Soul

“They are miserable and they don’t know why. They are puppets, undone. In short, they represent modern man. Their situation is not tragic, since it has no relation to a higher order. Instead, it’s ridiculous, laughable, and derisory.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)
Context: I found ancestors, like Shakespeare, who said, in Macbeth, that the world is full of sound and fury, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Macbeth is a victim of fate. So is Oedipus. But what happens to them is not absurd in the eyes of destiny, because destiny, or fate, has its own norms, its own morality, its own laws, which cannot be flouted with impunity. Oedipus sleeps with his Mummy, kills his Daddy, and breaks the laws of fate. He must pay for it by suffering. It is tragic and absurd, but at the same time it’s reassuring and comforting, since the idea is that if we don’t break destiny’s laws, we should be all right. Not so with our characters. They have no metaphysics, no order, no law. They are miserable and they don’t know why. They are puppets, undone. In short, they represent modern man. Their situation is not tragic, since it has no relation to a higher order. Instead, it’s ridiculous, laughable, and derisory.

“Modern man has lost the option of silence.”

William S. Burroughs book The Ticket That Exploded

The Ticket That Exploded (1962)
Context: The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.

Silence

“What vision must Negro writers have before their eyes in order to feel the impelling necessity for an about face? What angle of vision can show them all the forces of modern society in process, all the lines of economic development converging toward a distant point of hope? Must they believe in some `ism?”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

"Blueprint" 45
White Man, Listen! (1957)

Hope , Feeling , Distant

“There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)

Parting

“One has to look at the fundamental nature of the clerical regime in order to understand its true and ultimate intentions. Since its advent in 1979, the regime’s leaders – starting with Khomeini himself – set out to export their radical ideology to the region and beyond. The primary mission (raison d’être) of the regime is to convert other regimes to its own mold with the goal of establish a modern-day Islamic Shi’ite Caliphate. It is so stated and defined in its Constitution as well as that of the Pasdaran’s”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Revolutionary Guards
As quoted by Ahmad Zakaria, Al-Watan Daily: Interview With Reza Pahlavi Of Iran http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=197&page=4, Al-Watan Daily (Kuwait), Nov 27, 2007
Interviews, 2007

Understanding , Nature

“There is no doubt in my mind that the advent of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic in 1979, which turned my homeland into the cradle of modern day Islamic radicalism, was instrumental in opening the flood gates for the spread of militant anti-Western Islamic tendencies, not just in the Middle East region, but throughout the Islamic world. Moreover, it turned one of the World’s richest and most strategic countries into a launching pad for spreading state-sponsored terrorism in addition to becoming the Godfather of numerous sub-state entities that are today destabilizing the entire Middle East region.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Reza Pahlavi of Iran Speech at the University Club, Washington, D.C. http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=427&page=2, Jan. 27, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

World , Country

“What has been clear all these years is that the regime from the get-go was antagonistic; was trying to and continues to try to foment instability -- ultimately to force the region to succumb to some kind of a modern-day Shiite caliphate under Iranian regional hegemony; all of it perhaps backed by the very deterrent we talked about at the beginning of the interview: forcing the world to submit to that as a fait accompli. I find it a little bit difficult for a lot of people to sort of agree to some kind of a fait accompli and say, “Well, there's no way we can change the course of events and Iran will undoubtedly under this regime demand to have its way.” The question is the regime that is in Iran – the regime that has now taken our country hostage and is willing to do anything for its own survival -- and not to be confused with Iran as a country.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

People , World , Way , Question

“Contrast the world’s thirty-years of silence on the tyranny of this regime to the extremely loud and well-organized protests frequently directed at my father’s government in the 1970s. The difference could not be more distinct or disturbing. Then, the world seemed quite attuned to and concerned with the issue of human rights in my country. Today, with thirty-years worth of full graveyards and more on death row than ever before in Iran, the global silence on the stunning human rights atrocities committed by this supposedly religious regime has been astonishing and disappointing. It is quite frustrating for me and for many of my compatriots to conclude that the global standard on human rights seems to be capriciously administered and certainly has been discounted for Iranians since the establishment of the world’s only modern day theocracy.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Iran: Unleashing Her Potential Through Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=465&page=1, Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Oct. 12, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

Death , World , Disappointment , Silence

“Crimea is not a disputed territory. There has been no ethnic conflict there, unlike the conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia. Russia has long recognized the borders of modern-day Ukraine. On the whole, we have completed our talks on borders. The issue of demarcation still stands, but this is just a technicality.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Крым не является никакой спорной территорией. Там не было никакого этнического конфликта, в отличие от конфликта между Южной Осетией и Грузией. И Россия давно признала границы сегодняшней Украины. Мы, по сути, закончили в общем и целом наши переговоры по границе. Речь идет о демаркации, но это уже технические дела.
Interview with ARD Television http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-in-2008-crimea-is-not-disputed-territory-and-is-part-of-ukraine-2015-4, Germany, in Sochi, Russia, August 29, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080912164721/http://www.government.ru:80/content/governmentactivity/mainnews/archive/2008/08/29/2344019.htm
On Ukraine

“Zionism has gained my full sympathy and I appreciate it much higher than what is called nationalism in modern France. It is a progressive movement, a reawakening,
of which I expect a lot for the entire civilization.”

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) First Czechoslovak president

“If modern civilization man had to kill the animals he eats, the number of vegetarians would rise astronomically.”

Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914) German author

Animals

“The technology for using base motives to productive economic effect is reasonably well understood. Indeed, the history of the twentieth century encourages the thought that the easiest way to generate productivity in a modern society is by nourishing the motives of which I spoke earlier, namely, those of greed and fear. But we should never forget that greed and fear are repugnant motives. Who would propose running a society on the basis of such motives, and thereby promoting the psychology to which they belong, if they were not known to be effective, if they did not have the instrumental value which is the only value that they have?”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

IV. Is the Ideal Feasible?
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

History , Forgetting , Motivation , Way

“Whereas many socialists have recently put their faith in market socialism, nineteenth-century socialists were, by contrast, for the most part opposed to market organization of economic life. The mainstream socialist pioneers favored something that they thought would be far superior, to wit, comprehensive central planning, which, it was hoped, could realize the socialist ideal of a truly sharing society. And the pioneers' successors were encouraged by what they interpreted as victories of planning, such as the industrialization of the Soviet Union and the early institution of educational and medical provision in the People's Republic of China. But central planning, at least as practiced in the past, is, we now know, a poor recipe for economic success, at any rate once a society has provided itself with the essentials of a modern productive system.”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

IV. Is the Ideal Feasible?
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

Faith , Success , Past , Victory

“An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between the individual and the super-individual contents of life. Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality accommodates itself in the adjustments to external forces.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Original: (de) Wo die Produkte des spezifisch modernen Lebens nach ihrer Innerlichkeit gefragt werden, sozusagen der Körper der Kultur nach seiner Seele - wie mir dies heut gegenüber unseren Großstädten obliegt - wird die Antwort der Gleichung nachforschen müssen, die solche Gebilde zwischen den individuellen und den überindividuellen Inhalten des Lebens stiften, den Anpassungen der Persönlichkeit, durch die sie sich mit den ihr äußeren Mächten abfindet.
Source: The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), p. 409

Personality , Soul , Life , Question

“The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Original: (de) Die tiefsten Probleme des modernen Lebens quellen aus dem Anspruch des Individuums, die Selbständigkeit und Eigenart seines Daseins gegen die Übermächte der Gesellschaft, des geschichtlich Ererbten, der äußerlichen Kultur und Technik des Lebens zu bewahren - die letzterreichte Umgestaltung des Kampfes mit der Natur, den der primitive Mensch um seine leibliche Existenz zu führen hat.
Source: The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), p. 409

Fight , Problem , Life , Nature

“Public ownership is a middle-class program of a modernized and disguised form of capitalism. Common ownership by the producers can be the only goal of the working class.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Section 1.2
Workers Councils (1947)

“Three men did most to make Hinduism a modern faith. Of these the first was not recognized as a Hindu by the Shankaracharyas; the second was not recognized as a Hindu by himself; the third was born a Hindu but made certain he would not die as one. These three great reformers were Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar. Gandhi and Nehru, working together, helped Hindus make their peace with modern ideas of democracy and secularism. Gandhi and Ambedkar, working by contrasting methods and in opposition to one another, made Hindus recognize the evils and horrors of the system of Untouchability. Nehru and Ambedkar, working sometimes together, sometimes separately, forced Hindus to grant, in law if not always in practice, equal rights to their women. The Gandhi-Nehru relationship has been the subject of countless books down the years. Books on the Congress, which document how these two made the party the principal vehicle of Indian nationalism; books on Gandhi, which have to deal necessarily with the man he chose to succeed him; books on Nehru, which pay proper respect to the man who influenced him more than anyone else. Books too numerous to mention, among which I might be allowed to single out, as being worthy of special mention, Sarvepalli Gopal’s Jawaharlal Nehru, B. R. Nanda’s Mahatma Gandhi, and Rajmohan Gandhi’s The Good Boatman. In recent years, the Gandhi-Ambedkar relationship has also attracted a fair share of attention. Some of this has been polemical and even petty; as in Arun Shourie’s Worshipping False Gods (which is deeply unfair to Ambedkar), and Jabbar Patel’s film Ambedkar (which is inexplicably hostile to Gandhi). But there have also been some sensitive studies of the troubled relationship between the upper caste Hindu who abhorred Untouchability and the greatest of Dalit reformers. These include, on the political side, the essays of Eleanor Zelliott and Denis Dalton; and on the moral and psychological side, D. R. Nagaraj’s brilliant little book The Flaming Feet. By contrast, the Nehru-Ambedkar relationship has been consigned to obscurity. There is no book about it, nor, to my knowledge, even a decent scholarly article. That is a pity, because for several crucial years they worked together in the Government of India, as Prime Minister and Law Minister respectively.”

Ramachandra Guha (1958) historian and writer from India

[Guha, Ramachandra, REFORMING THE HINDUS, http://ramachandraguha.in/archives/reforming-the-hindus.html, The Hindu, July 18th, 2004]
Articles

Democracy , God , Faith , Study

“As a group, the secularists, especially the Leftists, have not summoned the courage to insist that in order to ensure the survival of the secular India state, Muslims should accept one common civil code, and that Article 370 of the Constitution, which concedes special rights to Jammu and Kashmir mainly because it is a Muslim-majority state, should be scrapped... Even so I find it extraordinary that those who call themselves modernizers and secularists-the two terms are interchangeable-should shirk the logic of their philosophy of life.”

Girilal Jain (1924–1993) Indian journalist

Girilal Jain, App. 1, Limits of the Hindu Rashtra, in : Elst, Koenraad: Ayodhya and after, Appendix I

Courage , Life

“Take the case of those Muslims who opposed Jinnah and his communalist demand for partition. While Aligarh was a hotbed of Pakistani agitation, the Deoband school advocated the gradual Islamization of the entire united India. The godfather of modern Islamic fundamentalism, Maulana Maudoodi, was one of the staunchest opponents of Partition. He claimed that the Muslims had a right to rule all of India.”

Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) Indian theologian, politician and philosopher

Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
About

School

“Moral globalisation is best understood not as a tide of convergence in which we are swept together into a single modernity, but instead as a site of struggle over whether, and to what extent, the cash nexus can be made to serve moral imperatives of equity and justice and which civilisational model – Chinese, American, or some other rival’s – will define the order of the twenty-first century.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

The Ordinary Virtues, p. 16

Justice

“The Thousand and One Nights, with its magnificent apparatus of genii and afrits, is the greatest work of fantasy that has ever been evolved by tradition, and given literary form. But it, alas, is not English, and has no English equivalent. The Western world does not seem to have conceived the necessity of fairy-tales for grown-ups — though it has been suggested that the modern detective story is an equivalent — and that is perhaps why it condemns them to a life of unremitted toil.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes

World , Life , Night

“In ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this definition, is the essential condition and guardian of religion...”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Religion , Time , Country , Freedom

“My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.”

Paddy Ashdown (1941–2018) British politician and diplomat

As quoted in "Farewell, Sarajevo" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/02/warcrimes.politics (1 November 2005), The Guardian

Time

“The more modern war becomes, the more essential appear the basic qualities that from the beginning of history have distinguished armies from the mobs. The first of these is discipline.”

William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim (1891–1970) former Governor-General of Australia

Source: Defeat Into Victory (1961), p. 451

War , Appearance , History

“Nazi infiltration of interest groups and also the creation of parallel organizations, which gave the impression of a party listening attentively to particular grievances. It also reflected a totalitarian aspiration, in the sense that Nazis believed that no area of life was to remain unpolitical, and a very modern view that an aggregation of interests would facilitate an eventual political takeover.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p.105

Sense , Life

“I do not believe that unless you can persuade parents that the family should still remain the unit in which discipline is applied, you will never get a conquest of the crime wave. ... We have created a better and happier state from the material point of view, but, at the same time, there is no doubt that the younger generation, especially just before leaving school, and between the ages of 17 and 19, are much more unruly than is right in a modern, civilized society.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Remark at the annual conference of the Conservative and Unionist Teachers' Association in London (17 June 1961), quoted in The Times (19 June 1961), p. 7
Home Secretary

School , Family , Time , Parent

“There are great economic opportunities ahead of us. If we are sensible, we can have rising production and rising standards of living without constantly rising prices. Why should we not aim to double our standard of living in the next 20 years, and still have our money as valuable then as now? The faster we modernize and expand our productive capacity, the more we shall be able to increase the national wealth.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Speech to the quarterly meeting of the National Production Advisory Council on Industry (28 May 1954), quoted in The Times (29 May 1954), p. 3
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Money , Wealth

“A large part of the problem of understanding how modern rebellions come about is the reporting of them. Euphoric moments are condensed to slogans on one hand and on the other into vivid narratives of the crimes of the fallen regime. What falls through the cracks is the process by which the actions of an often small dissident circle are translated into a mass movement involving a sufficient cross-section of society to sweep away a tyrant. If that clouds our understanding, so too does the tendency to limit our examination of rebellions to the facts of the revolutionary moment itself. Instead, what we should be doing is examining why populations ever accept dictatorships. In doing so, we may comprehend more about why they are then rejected, often so suddenly.”

Peter Beaumont (journalist) (1961) British journalist

How dictators fall https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/02/protests-how-dictators-fall, 2 Mar 2011, The Guardian.

Problem , Understanding , Parting

“Our aesthetic judgment demands harmony between the representation, and the represented and in this sense science is often more artistic than modern art.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Sense , Science , Art

“There are periods in the growth of science when it is well to turn our attention from its imposing superstructure and to carefully examine its foundations. The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the fundamental concepts of modern science...”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the First Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science , Books

“The old Dances of Death supplied what fails so much in our modern life—an artistic representation appealing to all classes of at least one experience common to the whole of humanity.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Life , Death , Dance

“Through its teaching, through the philosophy which it has rendered accessible and intelligible to the modern mind, the West will learn to understand and appreciate the East at its true value. Further, the development of the psychic powers and faculties, the premonitory symptoms of which are already visible in America, will proceed healthily and normally.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Intelligence , Learning , Understanding

“First of all, modern propaganda is based on scientific analyses of psychology and sociology. Step by step, the propagandist builds his techniques on the basis of his knowledge of man, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his conditioning — and as much on social psychology as on depth psychology. He shapes his procedures on the basis of our knowledge of groups and their laws of formation and dissolution, of mass influences, and of environmental limitations. Without the scientific research of modern psychology and sociology there would be no propaganda, or rather we still would be in the primitive stages of propaganda that existed in the time of Pericles or Augustus.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Vintage, p. 4
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Knowledge , Time , Law

“Education is central to advancement—of the country, of the individual. But the ulema have fought hard and long against what most today would consider education. For them religious education must take priority over modern, technical education. Only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge is to be imparted which strengthens one’s faith— in practical terms, only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge pursued which confirms one in the belief that whatever is written in the Quran and Hadis, whatever has been put out by the ulema over the centuries is true and the acme of wisdom as well as perfection. The education of women, in particular their being awakened to new values, their being trained for new professions, their being awakened to their rights—all this is anathema; it is held to be injurious to them, in fact it is declared to be the way to disrupting society and undermining Islam.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Faith , Study , Country , Perfection

“Two features would by now be obvious: (1) far from being a clear and definite code, the shariah is ambiguous; (2) it is ambiguous on the entire spectrum of issues. Two operational consequences follow: (1) this ambiguity is one of the bases for the unrivalled power of the ulema; (2) the ulema therefore sabotage every effort to codify the shariah as zealously as they fight back every effort to replace it by a modern code common to all.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Fight , Effort

“A great artist is born from a profound knowledge of the tradition and problems of painting. However, there are many works in which freshness and audacity surprise, as can be seen in popular art and in certain examples of modern art.”

Fernando Botero (1932–2023) Colombian artist

On the influence of culture on an artist in “Interview With Fernando Botero” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interview-with-fernando-botero_b_6795782 in HuffPost (2017 Dec 6)

Knowledge , Problem , Painting , Art

“In Spinoza, at the origin of the Modern world, metaphysical theory and the theory of science are given in complete agreement for the first time. They represent the alternative to the entire subsequent path of metaphysics and of the bourgeois theory of science. Spinoza lives as an alternative: Today this alternative is real. The Spinozian analytic of full space and open time are becoming an ethics of liberation in all the dimensions that this discourse constructs and makes available.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

World , Science , Time , Making love

“It may be observed, however, that Spinoza was not the first prominent monist and pantheist in modern Europe. A generation before him Bruno conveyed a similar message to humanity. Yet Bruno is merely a beautiful episode in the history of the human mind, while Spinoza is one of its most potent forces. Bruno was a rhapsodist and a poet, who was overwhelmed with artistic emotions; Spinoza, however, was spiritus purus and in his method the prototype of the philosopher.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (1933)

Beauty , History

“Baruch Spinoza, the excommunicated Jew, made the Jewish cultural position in the West not only tenable, but impregnable. But the same Baruch Spinoza was actually responsible for the cultural anti-Semitism of modern Europe. He shaped the strong anti-Jewish attitude of his greatest admirers, followers, and adepts Herder, Goethe, Hegel, and Fichte. They were outspoken Jew-haters. They admired Spinoza, but with their master hated his race and its world-picture.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (1933)

World , Strong , Hate

“Indeed, the most urgent, the most essential task is the education of children and youth... It is usually customary to confuse education with upbringing, but it is time to understand that school education, as it is established in most cases, not only does not contribute to the moral upbringing of youth, but acts inversely. In the Anglo-Saxon countries the schools are occupied mainly with the physical development of youth to the detriment of their mental development. But the excessive enthusiasm for sports leads to the coarsening of character, to mental degeneration, and to new diseases. True, not much better is the situation in home education under the conditions of the modern family. Therefore, it is time to pay most serious attention to the grave and derelict situation of children and youth from the moral point of view. Many lofty concepts are completely out of habitual use, having been replaced by everyday formulas for the easy achievement of the most vulgar comforts and status...The program of education is as broad as life itself. The possibilities for improvement are inexhaustible...We are on the eve of a new approach to and reconstruction of the entire school education... The quantity and speed of new discoveries in all domains of science grow so rapidly that soon contemporary school education will not be able to walk in step with and respond to the new attainments and demands of the time; new methods in the entire system of education will have to be devised...”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

19 April 1938

Sport , Home , Family , School

“It’s really challenging that idea of who is a hero, who has made contributions to society, but then also not historicizing it, so we’re really putting it in the present because that’s what modern media is so much about…”

Blair Imani (1993) American activist

On who is considered a feminist hero in “A Conversation with Blair Imani” https://www.readitforward.com/author-interview/a-conversation-with-blair-imani/ in Read It Forward

Idea

“The modern financial system is not perfect, but upon a detailed examination of the crime is unfair. Money is not a measure of labor, but a means of exploitation amusing the elite’s ambitions. It all depends on how profitable cash flows are, and not on the basis of the principle of measuring labor, on the basis of one’s own interests, usurping the distribution of money. Gestures and laws of this kind, and they all use this system and dream, must go to this hierarchy, gain control over the money in order to engage in usurpation of resources. After killing the dragon, they themselves want to become a dragon.”

Maxim Mernes (1996) Russian businessman, investor, blogger

About the state and technology

Money , Law , Dependency , Dreams

“Modern philosophy, an element due to which the surrounding reality and even the psychology of people are changing. The first ray of light in the kingdom of darkness was the Internet, after a smartphone was proved that a small device the size of a palm can completely replace the TV and computer. All people in the older generation remained alive in television manipulations, not wanting to join in the innovations. 50 years ago, smartphones and the Internet were just sketches of dreamers, as 200 years ago dreamers dreamed of flying ships, which we now call planes, but dreams became reality and now a new dreamer with a Japanese name plans to destroy the main pillar of the monopoly of world-owned corporations by creating an alternative currency .”

Maxim Mernes (1996) Russian businessman, investor, blogger

About the state and technology
Source: Экономика Цифровой Эры, LiveLib, ru, 2019-11-21 https://www.livelib.ru/author/1229982-maksim-mernes,

Light , Dreams , People , Reality

“The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Voicing opposition to the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950

Democracy , Housing , History , Loyalty

“The world described by modern physics has already moved far beyond our common sense and intuition, even beyond our imagination, and this is, of course, the richest resource for science fiction. I’ve tried to turn the magical world as demonstrated by modern physics into vivid stories. Most of my stories were based on and imagined along the lines of physics and cosmology.”

Liu Cixin (1963) Chinese science fiction writer

On how physics fits into his works in “In the Author’s Universe: Interview with Sci-Fi Author Cixin Liu” https://vocal.media/futurism/in-the-authors-universe-interview-with-sci-fi-author-cixin-liu in Vocal (2016)

Sense , Science , World , Imagination

“Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill-founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism.”

Willard van Orman Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"Two dogmas of Empiricism"
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

Truth , Science , Parting , Nature

“Modern humanity with some 5,000 years of recorded history has been experiencing growing pains, with no end in sight. It is high time for humanity to grow up and to transcend itself by embracing transhumanism.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Pain , Time , History

“A strange rage this modern mania to give a common manner to all minds and to destroy individuality.”

Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist

Source: Pène du Bois (1897), p. 97.

Rage

“Hindutva was a political argument made in a poetic register. It was an argument with and against an unnamed Gandhi at an opportune moment when he seemed finished with politics. Hindutva was also a political cry from behind prison walls, reminding the larger world outside that even if Gandhi was no longer on the political scene, Savarkar was back. He was still a leader, a politician capable of pulling together a nationalist community. But unlike Gandhi, he was offering a sense of Hindu-ness that could be the basis for a more genuine and, in the end, more effective nationalism than that of the Mahatma. The startling change for its time was Savarkar’s assertion that it was not religion that made Hindus Hindu. If Gandhi had officiated at the marriage of religion and politics, and Khilafat leaders were using the symbols of religion to forge a community, Savarkar argued that name and place were what bound the Hindu community, not religion . . . The fundamental (negative) contribution of Hindutva was to install a new term for nationalist discourse, one that was both modern and secular, if open to a secular understanding of religious identity. In place of religion qua religion, he secularized a plethora of Hindu religious leaders. In so doing, he did not create a sterilely secular nationalism. He did quite the opposite. He enchanted a secular nationalism by placing a mythic community into a magical land .”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

Janaki Bakhle quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)

Religion , Time , Understanding , Marriage

“Fine weather encourages individualism. When the whole glittering landscape is cut out as clear as a map—indented by the blue sky as by a blue sea, then each one of us wishes to take his own way, to walk by himself along the roads of the world and conquer for himself the cities of the morning. In the sunlight a man asks for liberty, which is only the divine name for loneliness. But it is in black and bleak conditions that we learn that it is not well for man to be alone; and festivity was discovered in the darkness. Winter encourages that thing called comradeship which modern humanitarians so often seem unable to understand, but which Walt Whitman so wisely perceived to be the permanent foundation of democracy.”

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

Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p. 190

Democracy , Understanding , Loneliness , Learning

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Home , Time , Children , People

“Superheroes may be superhuman in stature but inside they’re human beings and they act and react as human beings. It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing legendary characters like Hercules or modern characters, you’ll find that humans are humans and they’ll react the same way in certain situations.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

Source: “1993: Jack Kirby: The Hardest Working Man in Comics by Steve Pastis” https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/category/interview/, Happening Magazine, (1993) by Steve Pastin; as quoted by Rand Hoppe, The Kirby Effect The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, (28 April 2018).

Way

“We live in a world in which individuals and businessmen… they want to do so unencumbered by national boundaries. At the same time, modern democracies, at least as much as other forms of government, long for autonomy; they want to control their own destinies in ways responsive to the needs of an electorate often concerned less with national than with local or sectorial interests. Yet, theory and experience indicate we can’t have it both ways, full integration and full autonomy.”

Paul Volcker (1927–2019) American economist

The political economy of the dollar

Democracy , World , Way , Time

“Some writers write every morning, or every day. I don´t tend to do that. I am of the Wendy Wasserstein mind. Going to the movies is research. Walking down Central Park and seeing cute boys in tank tops is research. Going to the Museum of Modern Art is research. Having dinner with my best friends is research. Because research, when it comes to being a playwright, most importantly means living. It means experiencing and engaging with the world…”

Christopher Oscar Peña

On his research process in “"a cautionary tale" part II: Interview with Playwright Christopher Oscar Peña” http://www.theaterspeak.org/2013/07/part-ii-of-cautionary-tale-at-flea.html (Theaterspeak; 2013 Jul 15)

World , Boy , Art

“Translation from Portuguese: Many modern analysts have been focused on explaining the troubles with communism and its repercussions as seen in Eastern Europe and Russia. Communism remains a topic of study for political scientists. In contrast, the memory of fascism has slightly faded away. It is a topic of study primarily for historians. This makes it easier for politicians to muddle and play with fascist ideas.”

Radosveta Vassileva (1985) legal scholar

Muitos analistas modernos têm-se concentrado em explicar os problemas com o comunismo e as suas repercussões no leste europeu e na Rússia. O comunismo continua a ser um objeto de estudo para politólogos. Em contraste, a memória do fascismo tem-se desvanecido e é um objeto de estudo sobretudo para historiadores. Isto torna mais fácil para os políticos confundirem e brincarem com ideias fascistas.
Sete breves exemplos da aparente “retórica reconfortante” da extrema-direita e uma explicação sobre a extrema-esquerda, " https://expresso.pt/internacional/2019-11-14-Sete-breves-exemplos-da-aparente-retorica-reconfortante-da-extrema-direita-e-uma-explicacao-sobre-a-extrema-esquerda", Expresso (November 14, 2019)

Study , Communication , Memory , Idea

“Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is — and that is the point I want to stress — that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word... I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present social conflict of the world an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious verities and equally generous idealisms? I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.”

Karel Čapek (1890–1938) Czech writer

R.U.R. supplement in The Saturday Review (1923)

Selfishness , People , Truth , World

“This evolution toward noise-sound is only possible today. The ear of an eighteenth century man never could have withstood the discordant intensity of some of the chords produced by our orchestras (whose performers are three times as numerous); on the other hand our ears rejoice in it, for they are attuned to modern life, rich in all sorts of noises. But our ears far from being satisfied, keep asking for bigger acoustic sensations. However, musical sound is too restricted in the variety and the quality of its tones. Music marks time in this small circle and vainly tries to create a new variety of tones... We must break at all cost from this restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 6

Music , Life , Time

“A particularly dark aspect of the Muslims’ existence in India seems to be communal riots. It is a fact that communal riots have taken place on a large scale in modern India over the last forty-five years and, regrettably, in some parts are still continuing. I repeat, nevertheless, that the occurrence of communal riots is not linked to the system of governance developed after Independence. It is related rather to the Muslims’ own rabble-rousing leadership and yellow journalism.”

Wahiduddin Khan (1925) Islamic Scholar

quoted in Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

Relation ships , Parting , Communication

“My administration has identified three major priorities for creating a safe, modern, and lawful immigration system: fully securing the border, ending chain migration, and canceling the visa lottery. Chain migration is a disaster, and very unfair to our country. The visa lottery is something that should have never been allowed in the first place. People enter a lottery to come into our country. What kind of a system is that? It is time for Congress to act and to protect Americans.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

10 February 2018 https://abcnews.go.com/US/times-trump-slammed-chain-migration-apparently-helped-wifes/story?id=57132429
2010s, 2018, February

Time , People , Law , Country

“The white races did, of course, give some things to the natives, and they were the worst gifts that they could possibly have made, those plagues of our own modern world-materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism and syphilis. For the rest, since these peoples possessed qualities of their own which were superior to anything we could offer them, they have remained essentially unchanged.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Where imposition by force was attempted, the results were even more disastrous, and common sense, realizing the futility of such measures, should preclude any recourse to their introduction. One solitary success must be conceded to the colonizers: everywhere they have succeeded in arousing hatred, a hatred that urges these peoples, awakened from their slumbers by us, to rise and drive us out. Indeed, it looks almost as though they had awakened solely and simply for that purpose! Can anyone assert that colonization has increased the number of Christians in the world? Where are those conversions en masse which mark the success of Islam? Here and there one finds isolated islets of Christians, Christians in name, that is, rather than by conviction; and that is the sum total of the successes of this magnificent Christian religion, the guardian of supreme Truth! Taking everything into consideration, Europe's policy of colonization has ended in a complete failure.
7 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

World , People , Alcohol

“The challenge is going to come from Russia. The challenge is not going to come from the United States. The challenge is not going to come from West Germany nor from France. The challenge is going to come from those countries who, however wrong they may be – and I think they are wrong in many fundamental respects – nevertheless are at long last being able to reap the material fruits of economic planning and of public ownership. … Our main case is and must remain that in a modern complex society it is impossible to get rational order by leaving things to private economic adventure. Therefore I am a Socialist. I believe in public ownership.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (October 1959), quoted in Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography. Volume II: 1945–1960 (Davis-Poynter, 1973), pp. 646–647 and Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (Harper Collins, 1993), p. 230
1950s

Thinking , Country

“Amartya Sen converted Nalanda into a club that promotes a certain variant of a modern political agenda in the service of a political party.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Dr. Bharat Gupt, India Facts, http://indiafacts.org/what-ails-amartya-sen

“The English nation, for their improvements in the theory of government, has, at least, more merit with the human race than any other among the moderns. The late most beautiful and liberal speculations of many writers, in various parts of Europe, are manifestly derived from English sources. Americans, too, ought for ever to acknowledge their obligations to English writers, or rather have as good a right to indulge a pride in the recollection of them as the inhabitants of the three kingdoms. The original plantation of our country was occasioned, her continual growth has been promoted, and her present liberties have been established by these generous theories.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Source: 1780s, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787), Ch. 1 Marchamont Nedham : The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined"

Beauty , Parting , Country

“Liberalism, as a set of ideals, is still viable, and even compelling to Western men. That is one reason why it has become a common denominator of American political rhetoric; but there is another reason. The ideals of liberalism have been divorced from any realities of modern social structure that might serve as the means of their realization. Everybody can easily agree on general ends; it is more difficult to agree on means and the relevance of various means to the ends articulated. The detachment of liberalism from the facts of a going society make it an excellent mask for those who do not, cannot, or will not do what would have to be done to realize its ideals.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

"Liberal Values in the Modern World"
Power, Politics, and People (1963)

Making love , Reality , Men

“One of the great besetting problems of the modern age is what to do with too much information.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 2, “Meet the Scrum” (p. 35)

Problem , Age

“In a sense, modern philosophy is a series of introductions to introductions to introductions, the movement between them controlled by the pro-tective/pro-textive play of forces about desire.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Appendix B, “Closures and Openings” Section 8 (p. 368; see note on Discussion page)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

Sense

“The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high stage of development of communism at which the antithesis between mental and physical labour disappears, at which there consequently disappears one of the principal sources of modern social quality - a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

The Lenin Anthology, p.379
The State and Revolution (1917)

Communication

“Sophistication, that modern kind of sophistication that begs to differ, to be paradoxical, to invert, is not a possible attitude in Venice. In time, this becomes the beauty of the place. One gives up the struggle and submits to a classic experience. One accepts the fact that what one is about to feel or say has not only been said before by Goethe or Musset but is on the tip of the tongue of the tourist from Iowa who is alighting in the Piazzetta with his wife in her furpiece and jeweled pin. Those Others, the existential enemy, are here identical with oneself.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: Venice Observed (1956), Ch. 1

Beauty , Time , Feeling

“For all his derogation, he truly believed in the modern, as subversive of established values, a mine or fuse laid under the terrain of the virtuous; the words, modern, secular, experimental, were drawled out by him in a seductive, blandishing tone, like a veiled erotic invitation.”

Mary McCarthy book The Groves of Academe

Source: The Groves of Academe (1952), Ch. VI, p. 383

“The doctrine of Universal Kinship is not a new doctrine, born from the more brilliant loins of modern understanding. It is as old almost as human philosophy. It was taught by Buddha twenty-four hundred years ago. And the teachings of this divine soul, spreading over the plains and peninsulas of Asia, have made unnumbered millions mild. It was taught also by Pythagoras and all his school of philosophers, and rigidly practised in their daily lives. Plutarch, one of the grandest characters of antiquity, wrote several essays in advocacy of it. In these essays, as well as in many passages of his writings generally, he demonstrates that he was far ahead of his contemporaries in the breadth and intensity of his moral nature, and in advance even of all except a very few of those living to-day, 2,000 years after him. Shelley among the poets of modern times, and Tolstoy in these latter days, are others among the eminent adherents of this holy cause.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Ethical Implications of Evolution", pp. 322–323
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

School , Soul , Time , Understanding

“St. Anselm argued that since we can imagine a perfect being, he must exist—because he would not be perfect without the added perfection of existence. This so-called ontological argument was more or less promptly attacked on two grounds: (1) Can we imagine a completely perfect being? (2) Is it obvious that perfection is augmented by existence? To the modern ear such pious arguments seem to be about words and definitions rather than about external reality.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 8, “Norman Bloom, Messenger of God” (p. 152)

Perfection , Imagination , Reality

“But our openness to the dazzling possibilities presented by modern science must be tempered by some hard-nosed skepticism. Many interesting possibilities simply turn out to be wrong. An openness to new possibilities and a willingness to ask hard questions are both required to advance our knowledge. And the asking of tough questions has an ancillary benefit: political and religious life in America, especially in the last decade and a half, has been marked by an excessive public credulity, an unwillingness to ask difficult questions, which has produced a demonstrable impairment in our national health. Consumer skepticism makes quality products. This may be why governments and churches and school systems do not exhibit unseemly zeal in encouraging critical thought. They know they themselves are vulnerable.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 5, “Night Walkers and Mystery Mongers: Sense and Nonsense at the End of Science” (pp. 68-69)

School , Question , Health , Knowledge

“I have always placed my highest and most permanent hopes upon the eternity of the Communal situation. The greater the political progress made by the Hindus, the greater, in my judgment, will the Moslem distrust and discontent become. All the conferences in all the world cannot bridge over the unbridgeable, and between these two communities lies a chasm which cannot be crossed by the resources of modern political engineering.”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Letter to Lord Reading (March 1925) on India, quoted in H. Montgomery Hyde, Lord Reading (Heinemann, 1967), p. 387

World , Hope , Communication

“We exist to change society. We are not likely to be very successful if we are horrified at any suggestion of changing ourselves. One of the things from which we are suffering is a misplaced national complacency: a belief that we do things better than anyone else. Do not let us be too afraid, as a Labour Party, of learning from some of our friends abroad. Parties all over the world have been modernizing themselves. There are only two unreconstructed socialist parties in the world—the French and the Australian. Do not let us be too conservative, complacent, and insular.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Scarborough (6 October 1960) in favour of revising Clause IV, quoted in The Times (7 October 1960), p. 20
1960s

Success , Suffering , Learning , World

“The chief danger for a country placed as we are is that of living sullenly in the past, of believing that the world has a duty to keep us in the station to which we are accustomed, and showing bitter resentment if it does not do so. This was the mood of Suez; and it is a mood absolutely guaranteed, not to recreate our past glories, but to reduce us to a level of influence and wealth far lower than that which we need occupy. … Our neighbours in Europe are roughly our economic and military equals. We would do better to live gracefully with them than to waste our substance by trying unsuccessfully to keep up with the power giants of the modern world.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

The Labour Case (Penguin, 1959), p. 11
1950s

Country , Past , Wealth , World

“This country cannot afford now—if it ever could afford—unofficial strikes, wasteful stoppages, long, weary arguments about industrial demarcation, any more than we can afford out-of-date industrial methods, industrial promotion based on influence and connexion rather than technical ability, or management attitudes which give a higher priority to tax avoidance or the earning of quick, uncovenanted capital profits than to modernization and innovation in industrial production methods, or aggressiveness in exports.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton (12 December 1964), quoted in The Times (14 December 1964), p. 14
Prime Minister

Country

“The desire to continue to feel yourself guilty arguably finds its endpoint in modern European liberal societies: the first societies in human history who, when they are hit, ask what they did to deserve it. Unassuageable historical guilt carries over into the present.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Feeling , History

“More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. Alongside this outgoing version of self-distrust runs a more introverted version of the same guilt. For there is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. Mass immigration — the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people — is one way in which this new story has been imagined: a change, we seemed to think, was as good as a rest. Such existential civilizational tiredness is not a uniquely modern-European phenomenon, but the fact that a society should feel like it has run out of steam at precisely the moment when a new society has begun to move in cannot help but lead to vast, epochal changes.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Imagination , Past , People , Help

“When I was a young student, I thought modern psychology could tell me the answers, but I soon found out that the best psychologists didn’t know a damn thing about the real core of the matter. Oh, I am not disparaging the work that has been done; it was badly needed and had been very useful in its way. None of ’em know what life is, what thought is, whether free will is a reality or an illusion, or whether that last question means anything. The best of ’em admit their ignorance; the worst of them make dogmatic assertions that are obvious absurdities.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 284)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Question , Reality , Way , Life

“There is a school of philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

In these words Mr. A.P. Sinnett began his book, The Occult World, the first popular exposition of Theosophy, published thirty years ago.[1881]... Since then, many thousands have learned...yet to the majority its teachings are still unknown..
A Textbook of Theosophy (1912), Chapter One

School

“People in the present day will be slow to believe that any knowledge worth considering can be found outside the bright focus of Western culture. Modern science has accomplished grand results by the open method of investigation, and is very impatient of the theory that persons who ever attained to real knowledge, either in sciences or metaphysics, could have been content to hide their light under a bushel. So the tendency has been to conceive that occult philosophers of old- Egyptian priests, Chaldean Magi, Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-Platonists, and the rest-who kept their knowledge secret, must have adopted that policy to conceal the fact that they knew very little. Mystery can only have been loved by charlatans who wished to mystify. The conclusion is pardonable from the modern point of view, but it has given rise to an impression in the popular mind that the ancient mystics have actually been turned inside out, and found to know very little. This impression is absolutely erroneous.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

Making love , Light , Personality , People

“For, strange as the statement will appear at first sight, modern metaphysics, and to a large extent modern physical science, have been groping for centuries blindly after knowledge which occult philosophy has enjoyed in full measure all the while. Owing to a train of fortunate circumstances, I have come to know that this is the case; I have come into some contact with persons who are heirs of a greater knowledge concerning the mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet evolved; and my present wish is to sketch the outlines of this knowledge, to record with exactitude the experimental proofs I have obtained that occult science invest its adepts with a control of natural forces superior to that enjoyed by physicists of the ordinary type, and the grounds there are for bestowing the most respectful consideration on the theories entertained by occult science concerning the constitution and destinies of the human soul.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

Soul , Personality , Nature , Knowledge

“There is a school of Philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight. Glimpses of it are discernible in the ancient philosophies with which all educated men are familiar, but these are hardly more intelligible than fragments of forgotten sculpture,-less so, for we comprehend the human form, and can give imaginary limbs to a torso; but we can give no imaginary meaning to the truth coming down to us from Plato or Pythagoras, pointing, for those who hold the clue to their significance, to the secret knowledge of the ancient world. Side lights, nevertheless, may enable us to decipher such language, and a very rich intellectual reward offers itself to persons who are willing to attempt the investigation.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

School , Light , Personality , Intelligence

“Part One… discusses at length the opposing ways of approaching and dealing with life: co-operating or competing. It traces the competitive spirit back to the animal kingdom and shows its gradual replacement by co-operation as humanity advances. Many of the problems of the modern world are seen in this context and co-operation is shown as the way, in line with our soul’s intent, to solve them.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Co-operation (2002)

Soul , Animals , Problem , Way

“In the recognition of the growth in human consciousness and in a realization of the distinction obviously existing between primitive men and our modern intelligent humanity lie the grounds for an unshaken optimism as to human destiny.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Introduction
Problems Of Humanity (1944)

Optimism , Lie , Intelligence , Men

“The Whigs of this day have before them, in this Appeal, their constitutional ancestors: They have the doctors of the modern school. They will choose for themselves. The author of the Reflections has chosen for himself. If a new order is coming on, and all the political opinions must pass away as dreams, which our ancestors have worshipped as revelations, I say for him, that he would rather be the last (as certainly he is the least) of that race of men, than the first and greatest of those who have coined to themselves Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the constitution.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 476

School , Dreams , Men

“The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors; but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.—The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him but the law.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 436

Sense , Wisdom , Law , Success

“We sincerely welcome more foreign experts to China to spark innovation and pursue successful careers. And we welcome the talents from all over the world to be part of our modernization drive, and make even greater contribution to building a community with a shared future for mankind, to world peace and development, and to human progress.”

Han Zheng (1954) Chinese politician

Han Zheng (2019) cited in " China warns Taiwan of continued lockout from WHO assembly http://www.arabnews.com/node/1102951/world" on CCTV English, 28 September 2019.

Peace , Success , Future , Communication

“There have been many legends invented about Charlemagne, but he was no legend. Out of the shattered ruins of the ancient world he built the modern world, and even now reflection on his feat quickens the pulse. It was an achievement as daring as any long transoceanic flight of our day, but it called also for endurance lasting not hours but decades, and for adventure of the mind as well as of the body; a vast new political trajectory was described as well as a military one.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal," in Woman as Artist and Thinker, Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005.

World

“Once this was a free country. Oh, I always knew that couldn’t last, that here too things were bound to grind back to the norm—masters and serfs, whatever names they go by. And so far we continue happier than most of the world ever was. But damn, modern democracy has the technology to regiment us beyond anything Caesar, Torquemada, Suleyman, or Louis XIV dared dream of.”

Poul Anderson book The Boat of a Million Years

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 18 “Judgment Day”, Section 3 (p. 327)

World , Dreams , Democracy , Country

“To make the best of both worlds. Oriental and European, the ancient and modern — what am I saying? To make the best of all the worlds — the worlds already realized within the various cultures and, beyond them, the worlds of still unrealized potentialities.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Two, Premonitions of Transformation and Conspiracy

World , Making love

“I certainly hold an Iraqi national thought and I am an Arab belonging to Iraq. I do not believe in an Islamic state in Iraq. I believe that an Islamic state will harm Iraq a lot and may harm the region. Therefore, I look forward to having a national project in Iraq that controls the future of the country in a civilized and modern form and respects the heritage of Iraq.”

Ayad Allawi (1945) Iraqi politician

18 October 2005 https://www.aljazeera.net/programs/today-interview/2005/10/18/إياد-علاوي-الدستور-العراقي%20إياد%20علاوي..%20الدستور%20العراقي

Future , Country

“The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.
continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Star , Reality , People