Quotes about modernity (2750 quotes, page 3)

“The Ellipse is the most simple of the Conic Sections, most known, and nearest of Kin to a Circle, and easiest describ'd by the Hand in plano. Though many prefer the Parabola before it, for the Simplicity of the Æquation by which it is express'd. But by this Reason the Parabola ought to be preferr'd before the Circle it self, which it never is. Therefore the reasoning from the Simplicity of the Æquation will not hold. The modern Geometers are too fond of the Speculation of Æquations.”

Isaac Newton book Arithmetica Universalis

p, 125
Arithmetica Universalis (1707)

“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. … The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in The Guardian [London] (14 June 1989)
Post-presidency (1989–2004)

Age

“The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Meltdown" http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm (1994)

Intelligence , Learning

“We can only protect liberty by making it relevant to the modern world.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In full: Tony Blair's speech http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5382590.stm, BBC News online. Final speech to the Labour Party Annual Conference as Leader, 26 September 2006.
2000s

World

“There is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the lowly, and the common, even though it may seem almost the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and security. Here it is only a euphemism for escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. … Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”—the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 95-96

Love , People , Way , Home

“Modern Christianity must always reckon with the possibility of having to abandon the historical figure of Jesus. Hence it must not artificially increase his importance by referring all theological knowledge to him and developing a ‘christo-centric’ religion: the Lord may always be a mere element in ‘religion’, but he should never be considered its foundation. (p. 402)”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

The Quest of the Historical Jesus 2nd edition (1913)

Religion , Knowledge

“And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

"A New Calendar," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1307/ (February 17, 1887)

“What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity is something depending upon a very selective process. It ignores much that is to be found in the Gospels: for example, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the doctrine that the wicked will suffer eternal torment in Hell fire. It picks out certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount, though even these it often rejects in practice. It leaves the doctrine of non-resistance, for example, to be practised only by non-Christians such as Gandhi. The precepts that it particularly favours are held to embody such a lofty morality that they must have had a divine origin. And yet … these precepts were uttered by Jews before the time of Christ.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", in Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter, part II (11 November 1954)
1950s

Hell , Suffering , Time , Christ

“We, the men of to-day and of the future, need many qualities if we are to do our work well. We need, first of all and most important of all, the qualities which stand at the base of individual, of family life, the fundamental and essential qualities—the homely, every-day, all-important virtues. If the average man will not work, if he has not in him the will and the power to be a good husband and father; if the average woman is not a good housewife, a good mother of many healthy children, then the state will topple, will go down, no matter what may be its brilliance of artistic development or material achievement. But these homely qualities are not enough. There must, in addition, be that power of organization, that power of working in common for a common end […]. Moreover, the things of the spirit are even more important than the things of the body. We can well do without the hard intolerance and arid intellectual barrenness of what was worst in the theological systems of the past, but there has never been greater need of a high and fine religious spirit than at the present time. So, while we can laugh good-humoredly at some of the pretensions of modern philosophy in its various branches, it would be worse than folly on our part to ignore our need of intellectual leadership. […] our debt to scientific men is incalculable, and our civilization of to-day would have reft from it all that which most highly distinguishes it if the work of the great masters of science during the past four centuries were now undone or forgotten. Never has philanthropy, humanitarianism, seen such development as now; and though we must all beware of the folly, and the viciousness no worse than folly, which marks the believer in the perfectibility of man when his heart runs away with his head, or when vanity usurps the place of conscience, yet we must remember also that it is only by working along the lines laid down by the philanthropists, by the lovers of mankind, that we can be sure of lifting our civilization to a higher and more permanent plane of well-being than was ever attained by any preceding civilization.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The World Movement (1910)

Life , Men , Children , Family

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life , World , Penalty , Way

“What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions, 2010

Pain , Art , Way , Problem

“According to the description of this verse, the hundreds and thousands of stars and the great planets such as the sun, the Moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are not clustered together because of the law of gravity or any similar idea of the modern scientists. These planets and stars are all servants of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Govinda or Krishna, and according to His order they sit in their chariots and travel in their respective orbits.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 5, Chapter 23, verse 3, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/5/23/3
Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Law , Travel , Star , Idea

“Our modern worship of empty ideals is ludicrous. What does the condition of the rabble matter? All we need do is to keep it as quiet as we can. What is more important, is to perpetuate those things of beauty which are of real value because involving actual sense-impressions rather than vapid theories. "Equality" is a joke — but a great abbey or cathedral, covered with moss, is a poignant reality. If it is for us to safeguard and preserve the conditions which produce great abbeys, and palaces, and picturesque walled town, and vivid sky-lines of steeples and domes, and luxurious tapestries, and fascinating books, paintings and statuary, and colossal organs and noble music, and dramatic deeds on embattled fields — these are all there is of life: take them away and we have nothing which a man of taste or spirit would care to live for. Take them away and our poets have nothing to sing — our dreamers have nothing to dream about. The blood of a million men is well shed in producing one glorious legend which thrills posterity and it is not at all important why it was shed.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life , Men , Books , Beauty

“The modern man is... certain about his essential virtue... [and since] he does not see that he has a freedom of spirit which transcends both nature and reason... [he] is unable to understand the real pathos of his defiance of nature's and reason's laws. He always imagines himself betrayed into this defiance either by some accidental corruption in his past history or by some sloth of reason. Hence he hopes for redemption, either through a program of social reorganization or by some scheme of education.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)

Education , Law , Hope , Imagination

“It is difficult to make a general judgement about genetic modification (GM), whether vegetable or animal, medical or agricultural, since these vary greatly among themselves and call for specific considerations. The risks involved are not always due to the techniques used, but rather to their improper or excessive application. Genetic mutations, in fact, have often been, and continue to be, caused by nature itself. Nor are mutations caused by human intervention a modern phenomenon. The domestication of animals, the crossbreeding of species and other older and universally accepted practices can be mentioned as examples. We need but recall that scientific developments in GM cereals began with the observation of natural bacteria which spontaneously modified plant genomes. In nature, however, this process is slow and cannot be compared to the fast pace induced by contemporary technological advances, even when the latter build upon several centuries of scientific progress.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

§ 133
2010s, 2015, Laudato si' : Care for Our Common Home

Nature , Universe , Animals

“One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)

Time

“I belong to a generation - assuming that this generation includes others besides me - that lost its faith in the gods of the old religions as well as in the gods of modern nonreligions. I reject Jehova as I reject humanity.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 14
The Education of the Stoic

God , Faith , Religion

“By that time a structure of property rights had developed in the Netherlands and England which provided the incentives necessary for sustained growth. These included the inducements required to encourage innovation and the consequent industrialization. The industrial revolution was not the source of modern economic growth. It was the outcome of raising the private rate of return on developing new techniques and applying them to the production process.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 157

Time

“In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

Source: 1960s-1980s, "Note on the problem of social costs", 1988, p. 185

Youth , Mathematics

“Many people found our house spooky, and the attic in fact as full of evil when I was born. It housed a collection of more than three hundred antique and modern firearms. Father had bought them during his and Mother's six-month honeymoon in Europe in 1922. Father thought them beautiful, but they might as well have been copperheads and rattlesnakes. They were murder.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick (1982)

People , Beauty , Evil , Housing

“The socialist society will not be a battlefield for class-war, because the classes will have been abolished, but that can only be accomplished through the greatest class-war the world has ever seen, as the modern proletariat rise up for justice and power.”

Ture Nerman (1886–1969) Swedish socialist

Nya Samhället (3 November 1913)
Sourced quotes

War , World , Justice

“I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural..”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

In his application for a grant given by the Guggenheim Foundation 1944; as quoted in Abstract expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 9
1940's

Feeling , Painting

“It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Sources of Intolerance"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Men

“Shivaji proved, by his example, that the Hindu race could build a nation, found a State, defeat its enemies; they could conduct their own defence; they could protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they could maintain navies and ocean going fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He demonstrated that the tree of Hinduism was not dead, and that it could put forth new leaves and branches and once again rise up its head to the skies.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sir Jadunath Sarkar Shivaji and His Times, 1919, p. 406

Art , Literature , Tree , Dead

“Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness

Life , World , Nature

“A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Part I, p. 26
A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

God , Soul

“Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited by Alvin Redman (1954)

Parent

“Modern physics… reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s

“It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews … The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.”

Richard Wagner book Das Judenthum in der Musik

Judaism in Music (1850)

Music , Nature , Evil , Personality

“The best critics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demand perfect rhyming, and no aspirant for fame can afford to depart from a standard so universal. It is evidently the true goal of the English, as well as of the French bard; the goal from which we are but temporarily deflected during the preceding age.
But exceptions should and must be made in the case of a few who have somehow absorbed the atmosphere of other days, and who long in their hearts for the stately sound of the old classic cadences. Well may their predilection for imperfect rhyming be discouraged to a limited extent, but to chain them wholly to modern rules would be barbarous. Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

The Allowable Rhyme (1915)
Non-Fiction

Age , Error , Freedom , Universe

“There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help the poor, for the more perfect life to help the “less perfect.” This action can be motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one’s own life and existence. All this unites into the clear awareness that one is rich enough to share one’s being and possessions. Love, sacrifice, help, the descent to the small and the weak, here spring from a spontaneous overflow of force, accompanied by bliss and deep inner calm. Compared to this natural readiness for love and sacrifice, all specific “egoism,” the concern for oneself and one’s interest, and even the instinct of “self-preservation” are signs of a blocked and weakened life. Life is essentially expansion, development, growth in plenitude, and not “self-preservation,” as a false doctrine has it. Development, expansion, and growth are not epiphenomena of mere preservative forces and cannot be reduced to the preservation of the “better adapted.” … There is a form of sacrifice which is a free renunciation of one’s own vital abundance, a beautiful and natural overflow of one’s forces. Every living being has a natural instinct of sympathy for other living beings, which increases with their proximity and similarity to himself. Thus we sacrifice ourselves for beings with whom we feel united and solidary, in contrast to everything “dead.” This sacrificial impulse is by no means a later acquisition of life, derived from originally egoistic urges. It is an original component of life and precedes all those particular “aims” and “goals” which calculation, intelligence, and reflection impose upon it later. We have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! Jesus’ view of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite clearly that he understood this fact. When he tells us not to worry about eating and drinking, it is not because he is indifferent to life and its preservation, but because he sees also a vital weakness in all “worrying” about the next day, in all concentration on one’s own physical well-being. … all voluntary concentration on one’s own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which instinctively and beneficently governs all life. … This kind of indifference to the external means of life (food, clothing, etc.) is not a sign of indifference to life and its value, but rather of a profound and secret confidence in life’s own vigor and of an inner security from the mechanical accidents which may befall it. A gay, light, bold, knightly indifference to external circumstances, drawn from the depth of life itself—that is the feeling which inspires these words! Egoism and fear of death are signs of a declining, sick, and broken life. …
This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and literature, the exposure of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of “life” even in a bug.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 88-92

Love , Life , Death , People

“Regarding social order, Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F. A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century. But Hayek's views about the "spontaneity" of social order remain controversial. In their extreme form, they imply that all deliberate efforts to manipulate social order — social engineering — are doomed to failure because the complex nature of our cultural heritage makes a complete understanding of the human condition impossible.
Hayek was certainly correct that we have, at best, a very imperfect understanding of the human landscape, but "spontaneous" it is not. What distinguishes human evolution from the Darwinian model is the intentionality of the players. The mechanism of variation in evolutionary theory (mutation) is not informed by beliefs about eventual consequences. In contrast, human evolution is guided by the perceptions of the players; their choices (decisions) are made in the light of the theories the actors have, which provide expectations about outcomes.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Douglass North in "Orders of the Day" in Reason (November 1999) http://reason.com/archives/1999/11/01/orders-of-the-day, a review of The Great Disruption : Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (1999) by Francis Fukuyama

Fashion , Failure , Understanding , Nature

“Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)

Men , Rage

“War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.”

Don DeLillo book End Zone

Source: End Zone (1972), Ch. 16

War

“This foundation of the class struggle, which Marx – and this is his immortal service – has given to the modern labor movement, is the main point of attack in the battle which the bourgeois political economy is waging with socialism.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
Context: This foundation of the class struggle, which Marx – and this is his immortal service – has given to the modern labor movement, is the main point of attack in the battle which the bourgeois political economy is waging with socialism. The political economists deny the class struggle and would make of the labor movement only a part of the bourgeois party movements, and the Social Democracy only a division of the bourgeois democracy. The bourgeois political economy and politics direct all their exertions against the class character of the modern labor movement. If it were possible to create a breach in this bulwark, in this citadel of the Social Democracy, then the Social Democracy is conquered, and the proletariat thrown back under the dominion of capitalistic society. However small such a breach may be in the beginning, the enemy has the power to widen it and the certainty of final victory. And the enemy is most dangerous when he comes as a friend to the fortress, when he slinks in under the cover of friendship, and is recognized as a friend and comrade. The enemy who comes to us with open visor we face with a smile; to set our foot upon his neck is mere play for us. The stupidly brutal acts of violence of police politicians, the outrages of anti-socialist laws, the anti-revolution laws, penitentiary bills – these only arouse feelings of pitying contempt; the enemy, however, that reaches out the hand to us for a political alliance; and intrudes himself upon us as a friend and brother, – him and him alone have we to fear. Our fortress can withstand every assault – it can not be stormed nor taken from us by siege – it can only fall when we ourselves open the doors to the enemy and take him into our ranks as a fellow comrade. Growing out of the class struggle, our party rests upon the class struggle as a condition of its existence. Through and with that struggle the party is unconquerable; without it the party is lost, for it will have lost the source of its strength. Whoever fails to understand this or thinks that the class struggle is a dead issue, or that class antagonisms are gradually being effaced, stands upon the basis of bourgeois philosophy.

“The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Introduction http://www.utilitarian.org/texts/newgeneration.html to The New Generation (1930)
1930s
Context: The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.

Family

“The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Psychology of the Child Archetype [Das göttliche Kind] (1941), 1963 translation, II, 1 : The Archetype as a Link with the Past; also in Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part I, p. 160
Context: Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language. (Indeed, language itself is only an image.) The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or interpretation does to it, we do to our own souls as well, with corresponding results for our own well-being. The archetype — let us never forget this — is a psychic organ present in all of us. A bad explanation means a correspondingly bad attitude toward this organ, which may thus be injured. But the ultimate sufferer is the bad interpreter himself.

Dreams

“Facing the immense complexity of modern social and industrial conditions, there is need to use freely and unhesitatingly the collective power of all of us; and yet no exercise of collective power will ever avail if the average individual does not keep his or her sense of personal duty, initiative, and responsibility.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Foreword http://www.bartleby.com/55/100.html
1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)
Context: Facing the immense complexity of modern social and industrial conditions, there is need to use freely and unhesitatingly the collective power of all of us; and yet no exercise of collective power will ever avail if the average individual does not keep his or her sense of personal duty, initiative, and responsibility. There is need to develop all the virtues that have the state for their sphere of action; but these virtues are as dust in a windy street unless back of them lie the strong and tender virtues of a family life based on the love of the one man for the one woman and on their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common obligation to the children that are theirs. There must be the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of living; there must be shame at the thought of shirking the hard work of the world, and at the same time delight in the many-sided beauty of life.

Exercises , Sense , Personality

“But the Moderns advancing yet much farther, have receiv'd into Geometry all Lines that can be express'd by Æquations, and have distinguish'd, according to the Dimensions of the Æquations, those Lines into Kinds; and have made it a Law, that you are not to construct a Problem by a Line of a superior Kind, that may be constructed by one of an inferior one.”

Isaac Newton book Arithmetica Universalis

Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
Context: The Antients, as we learn from Pappus, in vain endeavour'd at the Trisection of an Angle, and the finding out of two mean Proportionals by a right line and a Circle. Afterwards they began to consider the Properties of several other Lines. as the Conchoid, the Cissoid, and the Conick Sections, and by some of these to solve these Problems. At length, having more throughly examin'd the Matter, and the Conick Sections being receiv'd into Geometry, they distinguish'd Problems into three Kinds: viz. (1.) Into Plane ones, which deriving their Original from Lines on a Plane, may be solv'd by a right Line and a Circle; (2.) Into Solid ones, which were solved by Lines deriving their Original from the Consideration of a Solid, that is, of a Cone; (3.) And Linear ones, to the Solution of which were requir'd Lines more compounded. And according to this Distinction, we are not to solve solid Problems by other Lines than the Conick Sections; especially if no other Lines but right ones, a Circle, and the Conick Sections, must be receiv'd into Geometry. But the Moderns advancing yet much farther, have receiv'd into Geometry all Lines that can be express'd by Æquations, and have distinguish'd, according to the Dimensions of the Æquations, those Lines into Kinds; and have made it a Law, that you are not to construct a Problem by a Line of a superior Kind, that may be constructed by one of an inferior one. In the Contemplation of Lines, and finding out their Properties, I like their Distinction of them into Kinds, according to the Dimensions thy Æquations by which they are defin'd. But it is not the Æquation, but the Description that makes the Curve to be a Geometrical one.<!--pp.227-228

Law , Problem

“Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 396
Context: Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal. This is why I maintain that no state in the modern world is legitimate. No present-day authority can claim to be instructed by God, for all authority is set in the framework of a totalitarian state. This is why I decide for anarchy.

“In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. "All things are numbers" is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature.

Mathematics

“Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization — you can't just swallow it whole.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

The Dub Room Special (1982).
Context: I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization — you can't just swallow it whole.

Way

“It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name -- modern slavery.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)
Context: As Bill mentioned, I’ve come to CGI every year that I’ve been President, and I’ve talked with you about how we need to sustain the economic recovery, how we need to create more jobs. I’ve talked about the importance of development -- from global health to our fight against HIV/AIDS to the growth that lifts nations to prosperity. We've talked about development and how it has to include women and girls -- because by every benchmark, nations that educate their women and girls end up being more successful. And today, I want to discuss an issue that relates to each of these challenges. It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name -- modern slavery.

Health , Communication , Business , Tear

“The mere existence of modern weapons”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, UN speech
Context: Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension. The mere existence of modern weapons — ten million times more powerful than any that the world has ever seen, and only minutes away from any target on earth — is a source of horror, and discord and distrust. Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes — for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement. And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness — for in a spiraling arms race, a nation's security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.

“It’s very hard to prosper in this modern economy if you haven’t fully unleashed the potential of your people. And”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama After Meeting with Vietnamese Civil Society Leaders at JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi in Hanoi, Vietnam (May 24, 2016) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/24/remarks-president-obama-after-meeting-vietnamese-civil-society-leaders
2016
Context: It’s very hard to prosper in this modern economy if you haven’t fully unleashed the potential of your people. And your people’s potential, in part, derives from their ability to express themselves and express new ideas, to try to right wrongs that are taking place in the society.

People

“But amid all the beliefs of Europe, and of Asia, that of the Indian Brahmins seems to me infinitely the most alluring. And the reason why I love the Brahmin more than the other schools of Asiatic thought is because it seems to me to contain them all. Greater than all European philosophies, it is even capable of adjusting itself to the vast hypotheses of modern science.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Life of Ramakrishna (1929)
Context: Of course, this entire fabric of Indian life stands solidly on faith, that is to say, on a slender and emotional hypothesis. But amid all the beliefs of Europe, and of Asia, that of the Indian Brahmins seems to me infinitely the most alluring. And the reason why I love the Brahmin more than the other schools of Asiatic thought is because it seems to me to contain them all. Greater than all European philosophies, it is even capable of adjusting itself to the vast hypotheses of modern science. Our Christian religions have tried in vain, when there were no other choice open to them, to adapt themselves to the progress of science. But after having allowed myself to be swept away by the powerful rhythm of Brahmin thought, along the curve or life, with its movement of alternating ascent and return, I come back to my own century, and while finding therein the immense projections of a new cosmogony, offspring of the genius of Einstein, or deriving freely from the discoveries, I yet do not feel that I enter a strange land. I yet can hear resounding still the cosmic symphony of all those planets which forever succeed each other, are extinguished and once more illumined, with their living souls, their humanities, their gods – according to the laws of the eternal To Become, the Brahmin Samsara – I hear Siva dancing, dancing in the heart of the world, in my own heart.

Love , School , Science

“The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 4
Context: The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell. In this house they think themselves happy; in that witty; in a third profound. It is all an illusion (which is nothing against it, for illusions are the most valuable and necessary of all things, and she who can create one is among the world's greatest benefactors), but as it is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails.

“The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 4. The Gene machine
Context: Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines that who can only learn of the basis of trial and error. The trouble with overt trial is that it takes time and energy. The trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal.... The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.

“The purely psychological interpretation only apprehends half of the matter. The other half is the revealing of the archetypal basis of the terms actually applied in modern physics.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Letter to Carl Jung, (16 June 1948)
Context: The purely psychological interpretation only apprehends half of the matter. The other half is the revealing of the archetypal basis of the terms actually applied in modern physics. What the final method of observation must see in the production of "background physics" through the unconscious of modern man is a directing of objective toward a future description of nature that uniformly comprises physis and psyche, a form of description that at the moment we are experiencing only in a prescientific phase. To achieve such a uniform description of nature, it appears to be essential to have recourse to the archetypal background of the scientific terms and concepts.

“The fact that the prevailing mood of modern culture was able to transmute the original pessimism of romanticism into an optimistic creed proves the power of this mood.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (1949)
Context: The fact that the prevailing mood of modern culture was able to transmute the original pessimism of romanticism into an optimistic creed proves the power of this mood. Only occasionally the original pessimism erupts in full vigor, as in the thought of a Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. The subjugation of romantic pessimism, together with the transmutation of Marxist catastrophism establishes historical optimism far beyond the confines of modern rationalism. Though there are minor dissonances the whole chorus of modern culture learned to sing the new song of hope in remarkable harmony. The redemption of mankind, by whatever means, was assured for the future. It was, in fact, assured by the future.

Mood

“We of the great modern democracies must strive unceasingly to make our several countries lands in which a poor man who works hard can live comfortably and honestly, and in which a rich man cannot live dishonestly nor in slothful avoidance of duty”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Foreword http://www.bartleby.com/55/100.html
1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)
Context: We of the great modern democracies must strive unceasingly to make our several countries lands in which a poor man who works hard can live comfortably and honestly, and in which a rich man cannot live dishonestly nor in slothful avoidance of duty; and yet we must judge rich man and poor man alike by a standard which rests on conduct and not on caste, and we must frown with the same stern severity on the mean and vicious envy which hates and would plunder a man because he is well off and on the brutal and selfish arrogance which looks down on and exploits the man with whom life has gone hard.

Democracy , Country

“Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)
Context: I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

“First and foremost let us all resolve that in this country hereafter we shall place far less emphasis upon the question of right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of duty. A republic can't succeed and won't succeed in the tremendous international stress of the modern world unless its citizens possess that form of high-minded patriotism which consists in putting devotion to duty before the question of individual rights. This must be done in our family relations or the family will go to pieces”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Now this is a declaration of principles. How are we in practical fashion to secure the making of these principles part of the very fiber of our national life? First and foremost let us all resolve that in this country hereafter we shall place far less emphasis upon the question of right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of duty. A republic can't succeed and won't succeed in the tremendous international stress of the modern world unless its citizens possess that form of high-minded patriotism which consists in putting devotion to duty before the question of individual rights. This must be done in our family relations or the family will go to pieces; and no better tract for family life in this country can be imagined than the little story called 'Mother', written by an American woman, Kathleen Norris, who happens to be a member of your own church.

World , Family , Question , Country

“I dream of helping liberate my homeland from this transient medieval system of clerical rule. It is the Iranian people whose dream and decision will determine the final form of our future constitution and government. Having said that, and in view of my homelands culture and history, I am confident that a modern constitutional monarchy, similar to that of Japan, Spain, UK and Sweden, will be perfectly capable in institutionalizing democracy and help usher in modernity, progress and development.”

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

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

People , Dreams , Democracy , Confidence

“The development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s was the greatest advance in physical science since the work of Isaac Newton. It was not easy; the ideas of quantum mechanics present a profound departure from ordinary human intuition. Quantum mechanics has won acceptance through its success. It is essential to modern atomic, molecular, nuclear, and elementary particle physics, and to a great deal of chemistry and condensed matter physics as well.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

Preface
Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2012, 2nd ed. 2015)

Idea , Science , Success , Departure

“It is with Isaac Newton that the modern dream of a final theory really begins.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

page 11, 2nd edition https://books.google.com/books?id=Qd0MEtsBr7oC&pg=PA11
Dreams of a Final Theory (1992; 2nd edition 1994)

Dreams

“I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of Ravana, Chanakiya, Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Study , Reading , History , Country

“It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Understanding , People , Communication , Life

“There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

Life , Making love , Understanding , Communication

“Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

Beauty , People , Communication

“For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most intimate habits. Islam – this theology of an immoral Arab – is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God’s revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a weakling. No weaklings should rule.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in Grey Wolf: Mustafa Kemal – An intimate study of a dictator (1932) by Harold Courtenay Armstrong, pp. 199-200
Disputed

School , Sleep , God , Clothes

“Men of science in former ages worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in secret to carefully selected pupils. Their motives for adopting that policy are readily intelligible, even if the merits of the policy may seem still open to discussion. At all events, their teaching has not been forgotten; it has been transmitted by secret initiation to men of our own time, and while its methods and its practical achievements remain secrets in their hands, it is open to any patient and earnest student of the question to satisfy himself that these methods are of supreme efficacy, and these achievements far more admirable than any yet standing to the credit of modern science.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

Time , Question , Intelligence , Secret

“The esoteric doctrines for which the Eastern lotus stands have been perpetuated in modern Europe under the form of the rose. The rose and the lotus are yonic emblems, signifying primarily the maternal creative mystery, while the Easter lily is considered to be phallic. The Brahmin and Egyptian initiates, who undoubtedly understood the secret systems of spiritual culture whereby the latent centers of cosmic energy in man may be stimulated, employed the lotus blossoms to represent the spinning vortices of spiritual energy located at various points along the spinal column and called chakras, or whirling wheels, by the Hindus. Seven of these chakras are of prime importance and have their individual correspondences in the nerve ganglia and plexuses.”

Manly P. Hall (1901–1990) Canadian writer and mystic

The Secret Teachings of All Ages p.306 https://ia800809.us.archive.org/15/items/Thesecretteachingsofallages2/The%20Secret%20Teachings%20Of%20All%20Ages%20-%20Manly%20P.%20Hall.pdf
The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)

Maternity , Secret