Modern Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

It's extremely dangerous trying to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law — first the 'Rose Revolution', then they'll think up something like blue. [word play here: "rose" having the colloquial sense of "lesbian" in modern Russian, and "blue" meaning "gay"]

Today, we are truly a global family. What happens in one part of the world may affect us all. This, of course, is not only true of the negative things that happen, but is equally valid for the positive developments. We not only know what happens elsewhere, thanks to the extraordinary modern communications technology. We are also directly affected by events that occur far away.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.

Henry David Thoreau

No greater tragedy exists in modern civilization than the aged, worn-out worker who after a life of ceaseless effort and useful productivity must look forward for his declining years to a poorhouse. A modern social consciousness demands a more humane and efficient arrangement.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.

Henry David Thoreau

Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything that to a modern man would appear to be justice

Bertrand Russell

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

Henry David Thoreau

The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art.

Theodore Roosevelt

The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.

The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul. We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

G. K. Chesterton

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.

The Christians say that God has done miracles. The modern world, even when it believes in God, and even when it has see the defenselessness of nature, does not. It thinks God would not do that sort of thing.

On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.

Theodor W. Adorno

The association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the nursery, as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.

J. R. R. Tolkien

The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

G. K. Chesterton

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

G. K. Chesterton

He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe.

G. K. Chesterton

The beauty of science and the nature of scientific revelations constitute part of the modern theologian's perspective and toolbox.

Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.

What should have died along with communism is the belief that modern societies can be run on a single principle, whether that of planning under the general will or that of free-market allocations.

Charles Taylor (philosopher)

The modern queer was invented by Tennessee Williams. Brando in blue jeans, sneakers, white T-shirt and leather jacket. When you saw that, you knew they were available.