Quotes About Contemporaries

The Somnium makes clear to us, although it did not to all of Kepler's contemporaries, that "in a dream one must be allowed the liberty of imagining occasionally that which never existed in the world of sense perception." Science fiction was a new idea at the time of the Thirty Years' War, and Kepler's book was used as evidence that his mother was a witch.

From many things that Adams and his contemporaries wrote, it is clear that they did not use the word "religion" to exclude Christian ideas or principles as some do today. The founders did not make institutional religion a part of the government, but they never thought of excluding Christian principles.

Furthermore, unlike so many of his evangelical contemporaries he did not hold the view that the various inter-denominational youth movements represented the most hopeful field of labour; indeed his doctrine of the church left him with little sympathy for that attitude.

But truth is most likely to be exhibited by the general sense of contemporaries, when the feelings of the heart can be expressed without suffering itself to be disguised by the prejudices of man.

their contemporaries in the West, Charlemagne and his lords, were dabbling in the art of writing their names.

He was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then.

History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the Origin of Species with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them.

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.

A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or subconsciously, the lives of his epoch and his contemporaries

Any serious consideration of the world as it is around us today must tell us that maintaining common decency, much less peace and harmony, among living contemporaries is a major challenge, both among nations and within nations. To admit that we can do nothing about what happened among the dead is not to give up the struggle for a better world, but to concentrate our efforts where they have at least some hope of making things better for the living.

One difficulty that people seeking to modernize hymnals and the language of worship inevitably run into is that contemporaries are never the best judges of what works and what doesn't. This is something all poets know; that language is a living thing, beyond our control, and it simply takes time for the trendy to reveal itself, to become so obviously dated that it falls by the way, and for the truly innovative to take hold.

Only Gnostics and contemporaries qualify, for they alone are both severed from their unconscious and aware of the fact.

History, in [Nietzsches] view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain chain of great mens great moments, which runs through millennia, could not stand clearly and vividly before me.

The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.

However deep our devotion may be to parents or to children, it is our contemporaries alone with whom understanding is instinctive and entire.

Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful.

I've seen many of my contemporaries become superstars, and the way fame and fortune starts to really affect the way they treat other people, and I think it's ugly.

The 'submissiveness' of dogs below the 'top dog' signals more their location and cooperative role in this food-getting system than it does 'being dominated.'" She goes on to say that dogs' relationships with people mirror their relationships to litter-mates, who, in the wild, are "contemporaries.

The pyramid once passed there was still a short way to go before we confronted the Sphinx, in the middle of what our contemporaries have left him of his desert.

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.

why, when its causes today seem so numerous and so obvious, were contemporaries so oblivious of Armageddon until just days before its advent? One possible answer is that their vision was blurred by a mixture of abundant liquidity and the passage of time.

Such as they are, its ethics are those of Machiavelli's contemporaries; yet they cannot be said to be out of date so long as the governments of Europe rely on material rather than on moral forces.

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.

There are also those who, like the author, ensconce themselves on a thunderous crag of omniscience and, with protestations of humility which are either unconvincing or totally absent, assume the obligation of appraisal, commendation, derogation or denunciation of their contemporaries. Still, by and large it is an easier job than digging a ditch.