Quotes About Modernity

The modern rule is that every woman should be her own chaperone.

Alors que ce mauvais siècle approche de sa fin, le pressentiment se répand que l'idée de faire histoire n'était qu'un prétexte. Le sujet décisif de la modernité, c'est de faire nature.

It illustrates the process of intelligence in relation to non-transparent factors on the basis of five typical configurations that I shall call: the grave; the body; the book; the bureaucracy; the complex machine. It would be an accidental but not undesirable effect if people recognize this series as a progressive approach to the living environment, or, rather, the box environment of modernity.

Una de las ironías de las religiones en la Modernidad es que incluso hacen de lo absoluto una opción. Incluso aquellos que luchan por lograr la ortodoxia no escapan al imperativo herético, porque la verdadera creencia también depende de una elección (hairesis) a su favor.

As the activity culture of modernity constitutes itself against heteronomy, however, it will seek and find methods to place the commanding authority inside the hearer of the command themselves, so that they seem only to be obeying their inner voice when they submit. In this way, the fact of 'subjectivity' is demanded, created and fulfilled. What is meant, then, is the individual's co-determination of the authority that can give them commands.

El secreto de la modernidad se esconde en su capacidad de reclutar personas de cualquier origen y cualquier confesión para que formen parte de la más grande de las campañas militares, la campaña por el alivio progresivo del estrés anónimo surgido de la opresión de lo real.

Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popular hopes for a new era of technological achievement and commercial abundance. From the 1920s to the 1950s, neon-lit streets pulsed with visual excitement from Vancouver to Miami.

The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.

The presidency which under Lincoln had been a tool of transformation had become, under Johnson, a refuge from modernity.

I don't think you should try to be loyal to your century or your opinions, because you are being loyal to them all the time. You have a certain voice, a certain kind of face, a certain way of writing, and you can't run away from them even if you want to. So why bother to be modern or contemporary, since you can't be anything else?

Het modernisme rust niet voordat het van de vrouw een man en van de man een vrouw heeft gemaakt, en, alle onderscheid nivellerend, het leven doodt door het onder de ban van de eenvormigheid te leggen.

It's certainly better to be a little old-fashioned but honest and loyal, than to be over-sophisticated and modern, with inferior character, and thus typically ignorant and inefficient.

For the moment when fashion is fashion, it has no past and no future. The 'latest' fashion, la dernière mode, is also the 'last': for

I don't really wear sarees and suits.

But these matters of life and faith cannot be expressed in the tongues of modernity, for it is this very epistemology that has consigned us to death and despair.

Only recently has tolerance become an emblem of Western civilization, an emblem that identifies the West exclusively with modernity, and with liberal democracy in particular, while also disavowing the West's savagely intolerant history, which includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch burnings, centuries of anti-Semitism, slavery, lynching, genocidal and other violent practices of imperialism and colonialism, Naziism, and brutal responses to decolonization.

Failure to sleep with someone is now an act of hostility, whereas it was once understood to be part of the natural process of searching for one's mate.

Vuoi che ti dica una cosa? Più lo si analizza, corpo moderno, più lo si esibisce, meno esso esiste. Annullato, in misura inversamente proporzionale alla sua esposizione.

He was always on the lookout for the secret core of primitive ritual and magical belief hidden within the seemingly "rational" processes of modernity.

One of the great paradoxes of social engineering is that it seems at odds with the experience of modernity generally. Trying to jell a social world, the most striking characteristic of which appears to be flux, seems rather like trying to manage a whirlwind.

When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. Or are we Yahoos?

The nation was cracking under the weight of bloated modernity and all the patches pasted onto its excessive and malfunctioning hypercomplexity, and people were bewildered by the strange glitches, failures and shortages. Going forward, nothing would really work anymore as it was designed to, yet the hope and expectation that it would all magically recover dominated the chatter in the rare moments when people could step back from their frantic lives and share a meal or a drink.

If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners—no possible sliding panels—it was flooded with electric light—everything was new and bright and shining. There was nothing hidden in this house, nothing concealed. It had no atmosphere about it. Somehow, that was the most frightening thing of all….

His poems have no capital letters in them, which is, I believe, the essence of modernity.