Quotes About Modern

For the influenza pandemic that erupted in 1918 was the first great collision between nature and modern science. It was the first great collision between a natural force and a society that included individuals who refused either to submit to that force or to simply call upon divine intervention to save themselves from it, individuals who instead were determined to confront this force directly, with a developing technology and with their minds.

families where the parents float around in a haze of brightly coloured hemp and honey-almond candles, a copy of a self-help book tucked under an arm, and a Dalai Lama keyring for their four-wheel-drive clutched in their hand.

Christmas ought to be brought up to date," Maria said. "It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.

Look, demanding somebody do anything in this day and age is not going to fly.

The growth of modern constitutional government compels for its successful practice the exercise of reason and considerate judgment by the individual citizens who constitute the electorate.

And Margot should have made a rule about no cell phones. What was it about life now? The people who weren't present always seemed to be more important than the people who were.

And Margot should have made a rule about no cell phones. What was it about life now? The people who weren't present always seemed to be more important than the people who were.

A sentence in Auden's Airman's Journal has always seemed very profound to me ---I haven't the book here so I can't quote it exactly, but something about time and space and how 'geography is a thousand times more important to modern man than history'---I always like to feel where I am geographically all the time, on the map,---but maybe that is something else again.

Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration.

If you count people as an invasive species—the science writer Alan Burdick has called Homo sapiens "arguably the most successful invader in biological history"—the process goes back a hundred and twenty thousand years or so, to the period when modern humans first migrated out of Africa.

Researchers now believe it won't last out the Anthropocene. "It is likely that reefs will be the first major ecosystem in the modern era to become ecologically extinct

As Rachel Carson once observed, referring to a very different but at the same time profoundly similar problem: "Time is the essential ingredient, but in the modern world there is no time.

Its demise was part of a wave of disappearances that has come to be known as the megafauna extinction. This wave coincided with the spread of modern humans and, increasingly, is understood to have been a result of it. In this sense, the crisis Cuvier discerned just beyond the edge of recorded history was us.

In fact, the American Mastodon vanished around thirteen thousand years ago. Its demise was part of a wave of disappearances that has come to be known as the megafauna extinction. This wave coincided with the spread of modern humans and, increasingly, is understood to have been a result of it. In this sense, the crisis Cuvier discerned just beyond the edge of recorded history was us.

Veblen espoused the Veblenian opinion that wanting a big house full of cheaply produced versions of so-called luxury items was teh greatest soul-sucking trap of modern civilization, and that these copycat mansions away from the heart and soul of a city had ensnared their overmortgaged owners - yes, trapped and relocated them like pests.

I think in a lot of romantic comedies it ends with a kiss, and I feel like in modern day relationships, and maybe just my own experience, it starts with a kiss and then all sort of falls apart and then comes together. You're texting. You're wondering what's going on. There's no definitions, there's no labels.

What happened to the days of the hero rescuing the damsel in distress?" Not that I could envisage Heather as a damsel in distress. "Those days are long gone, Brendan. Nowadays, the damsel takes care of herself, and on occasion she might even rescue the hero, if she feels he deserves it." "I'm screwed, then.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

the normal electrical demands of a pampered, spoiled, convenience-oriented, gadget-minded, power-guzzling populace continued unabated.

while their generals' strategies committed them to taking the offensive, the new tools of modern warfare gave the overwhelming advantage to the defender.

Adam Smith would compose the founding text of modern economics— Inquiry Concerning the Wealth of Nations—in a language that was, it is all too easy to forget, a foreign tongue to him.

Taken together, they laid the future cornerstone of what comes to be called calculus, or the mathematics of infinity (Archimedes was the first mathematician to use the concept of infinity in his work). Without it, modern math and science as we know it would not exist.

Bacon's curiosity makes him sound amazingly modern, and in many ways he was. But his writings look back as much as they look forward, and the figure to whom he owes his greatest debt is without doubt Aristotle, whom he discovered through his admiration for Grosseteste.5 Aristotle's works unlocked for Bacon a world of scientific investigation, above all a method of exploring the wonders of nature and understanding its underlying principles

Far more than Thomas Aquinas or even Bacon, Ockham is the true forerunner of the modern era.