Modern world Quote by Paul Johnson

“OVER the past two hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Indeed, the rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in shaping the modern world. Seen against the long perspective of history it is in many ways a new phenomenon.” quote by Paul Johnson — Download Open image

““OVER the past two hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Indeed, the rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in shaping the modern world. Seen against the long perspective of history it is in many ways a new phenomenon.””

Paul Johnson

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Modern world

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“Partly by accident, partly by instinct, partly by deliberate contrivance, he was the first intellectual systematically to exploit the guilt of the privileged. And…

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“The Salem [witch] trials…can be seen as an example of the propensity of the American people to be convulsed by spasms of self-righteous rage against enemies, real or imaginary, of their society and way of living. Hence the parallels later drawn between Salem in 1692 and the “Red Scare” of 1919-20, Senator McCarthy’s hunt for Communists in the early 1950’s,…

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“Much of Sartre’s time in the 1960s was spent travelling in China and the Third World, a term invented by the geographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952 but which Sartre popularized. He and de Beauvoir became familiar figures, photographed chatting with various Afro-Asian dictators-he in his First World suits and shirts, she in her schoolmarm cardigans enlivened by ‘ethnic’ skirts and…

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“He [Augustine] admitted: 'I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress by writing.' ”

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The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked…

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Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.

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“Marx wrote about finance and industry all his life but he only knew two people connected with financial and industrial processes. One was his uncle in Holland, Lion Philips, a successful businessman who created what eventually became the vast Philips Electric Company. Uncle Philips' views on the whole capitalist process would have been well-informed and interesting, had Marx troubled to…

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“When we are dealing with concepts like freedom and equality, it is essential to use words accurately and in good faith. So the eighth…

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Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around…

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Wisdom lies not in possessing knowledge - which quickly becomes outdated - but in perpetually seeking it.

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The planet Earth, though not threatened with destruction by man-made global warming, is by no means indestructible. There are many unpredictable events within our…

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“As Khrushchev put it, “He prodded the capitalist world with the tip of his bayonet.” He himself put it, “If I see a door…

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More Modern world quotes

Like a child exploring the attic of an old house on a rainy day, discovering a trunk full of treasure and then calling all his brothers and sisters to share the find, Richard J. 'Foster has 'found' the spiritual disciplines that the modern world has stored away and forgot, and has excitedly called us to celebrate them. For they are,…

Eugene H. Peterson

In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot. Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world. An individual American…

P. J. O'Rourke

“Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. [...] The first thing to observe about the moderate’s retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God’s utterances difficult to…

Sam Harris

“Virtually all letter writers confessed how their encounter with Nietzsche's philosophy either emboldened or chastened them, liberated them from old falsehoods, or saddled them with new moral responsibilities. Helen Bachmuller of Dayton, Ohio, wrote to let Förster-Nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the belief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. Though unworthy of his greatness,…

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

So-called Western Civilization, as practised in half of Europe, some of Asia and a few parts of North America, is better than anything else available. Western civilization not only provides a bit of life, a pinch of liberty and the occasional pursuance of happiness, it's also the only thing that's ever tried to. Our civilization is the first in history…

P. J. O'Rourke

“She’d thought Troy stank: the corpse piles, the fires, the fish guts thoughtfully left out for the gods—gee fucking thanks, guys, just what we want—and the stupid Achaeans stomping around on the beach, refusing to wash, letting the blood cook to black in the sun and rust the joints of their armor. That was nothing compared to the inescapable reek…

Stephen King

“People aren't crazy, they’re just reacting normally to an abnormally crazy world.”

J.S.B. Morse

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Most big companies don't like you very much, except hotels, airlines and Microsoft, which don't like you at all.

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“Critical thinking is an unavoidable part of growing up. We do not become adults without it. But in the modern world, this stage often corrodes religious belief. Modern Western ways of thinking are very much shaped by the identification of truth with factuality. And generally accepted modern knowledge calls into question the factuality of much of the Bible and of…

Marcus J. Borg

A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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“And while [we] do have possibilities that are vast and magnificent and almost infinite in scope, it's important to remember that our choice-rich lives have the potential to breed their own brand of trouble. We are susceptible to emotional uncertainties and neuroses that are probably not very common among the Hmong, but that run rampant these days among my contemporaries…

Elizabeth Gilbert