Quote by René Girard

“On the practical level modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid of meaning. Modern culture is the most…

— Yuval Noah Harari

“I am not averse to generalizing the notion of "modern" to designate a certain way of life, rather than making it purely a synonym…

— Paul Valéry

A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values,…

— Steven Pinker

“The society we live in today is just an experiment. Nobody has the answers. Nobody knows where it’s going, or why. We don’t even…

— Hanzi Freinacht

“Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in…

— Samuel P. Huntington

“Simply put, relating to the world by following the world can be a recipe for disappointment and disillusionment. Countercultures that point out the problem…

— Gabe Lyons

The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

“A rejection of the prevailing state of affairs accounts, I think, for the explosive growth of intuitive anarchism among young people today. Their love…

— Murray Bookchin

“For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we…

— Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and…

— Kenny Smith

“We in the West are accustomed to thinking that humans are all basically the same underneath our different cultural clothing, that the concerns the…

— Philip Cushman

“Also, a large swath of our intellectual culture is loath to admit that there could be anything good about civilization, modernity, and Western society.”

— Steven Pinker