Quotes About Modern

today the expense of modern warfare far outweighs any economic benefits it achieves.

la forme moderne de l'antisémitisme n'est-elle pas très précisément dans le déni de l'évidence ? l'antisémitisme moderne n'a-t-il pas pour article de foi quasi premier cette terrible adresse aux vivants : la Shoah ne fut pas ce que vous dites ; elle ne fut, en aucune manière, ce crime exorbitant à la longue histoire des crimes (ch. 57 La Shoah au coeur et dans la tête)

I was astonished at how much older literature can actually be read as if it were contemporary.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.

Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? The reason is clearly that the human heart as modern civilisation has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied, because it feels deply, perhaps even unconsciously, that it has somehow missed the meaning of life, that perhaps others, but not we ourselves, have secured the good things which nature offers man's enjoyment.

I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.

It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world.

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.

The positive sum of pleasures in a modern man's life is undoubtedly greater than was to be found in more primitive communities, but the consciousness of what might be has increased even more.

Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

There was formerly a capacity for lightheartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.

Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.

The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world.

But the modern man, when misfortune assails him, is conscious of himself as a unit in a statistical total; the past and the future stretch before him in a dreary procession of trivial defeats. Man himself appears as a somewhat ridiculous strutting animal, shouting and fussing during a brief interlude between infinite silences.

In religion and politics, on the contrary, though there is as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody considers it de rigueur to have a dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with any different opinion. If only men could be brought into a tentatively agnostic frame of mind about these matters, nine-tenths of the evils of the modern world would be cured.

scientific knowledge, though difficult, is not mysterious, but open to all who care to take the necessary trouble. The modern intellectual, therefore, inspires no awe, but remains a mere employee; except in a few cases, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has failed to inherit the glamour which gave power to his predecessors.

The empires of Attila and Genghis Khan were transitory; and the nations of Europe lost most of their possessions in the New World. But with modern technique most empires are fairly safe except against external attack, and revolution is only to be expected after defeat in war.

Many forces conspire to make for uniformity in modern communities—schools, newspapers, cinema, radio, drill, etc. Density of population has the same effect. The position of momentary equilibrium between the sentiment of independence and the love of power tends, therefore, under modern conditions, to shift further and further in the direction of power, thus facilitating the creation and success of totalitarian States.

To formulate any satisfactory modern ethic of human relationships, it will be essential to recognize the necessary limitations of men's power over the non-human environment, and the desirable limitations of their power over each other.

Bir trenle Kaliforniya ovalar?n? geçerken bir sabun reklam?n?n hoparlörden yükselen gürültüsünü duymamaya çal???yordum; o s?rada yaÅŸl? bir çiftçi güleç bir yüzle yan?ma yaklaÅŸarak, Bu zamanda nereye gidersen git, uygarl?ktan yakan? kurtaramazs?n, dedi. Heyhat! Ne kadar doÄŸru!..

Descartes (1596-1650), the founder of modern philosophy, invented a method which may still be used with profit--the method of systematic doubt.

The modern world unlearned us how to enjoy leisure time, making us think we need to be productive in order to be worthy.