Contemporary Thinkers Quotes

Mortal man! You've wasted your time mostly with wrong and empty beliefs! And now you have started understanding that most important thing in life is existence! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is always a melancholic silence before entering every New Year! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If you want to create a high-society, you must give high things to the public! Show the public eagle; public will be an eagle! Show the public a rat, public will be a rat! Whatever you give to the public, public will take that! To create a high-society, you must give high things to the public! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

All the bad in my life led me to her, which makes me think that I can live with the past if she is my future. - HEW ~ Michelle Warren

You can't get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV. ~ David Hare

Good preachers...are effective teachers, good thinkers, with rhetorical skills, a good voice, a good memory, and the ability to recognize when to stop. They are diligent in their preparation, throwing heart and soul into their sermons, and they must be ready to take criticism. They should remember that they must patiently bear such criticism and dissatisfaction with their preaching. But above all, preachers must know that the Word of God has taken them captive and that God has called them to serve Him by proclaiming that Word. ~ Robert Kolb

Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people. ~ Jared Diamond

For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster. ~ Sarah Hall

Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages? ... I guess it's because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears - Chaucer's, Boccaccio's, Henry Knighton's, Thomas Walsingham's, Froissart's, Jean Creton's ... writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves. ~ Terry Jones

Am I in trouble? He chortled, well, a bunch of not-so-friendly thugs were waiting to ambush you and blow up your apartment. If that doesn't qualify as trouble, I don't know what does. ~ Melissa Cutler

Poshlust," or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature - these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as "America is no better than Russia" or "We all share in Germany's guilt." The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as "the moment of truth," "charisma," "existential" (used seriously), "dialogue" (as applied to political talks between nations), and "vocabulary" (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name - that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost's favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wrec ~ Vladimir Nabokov

As a rule, people who classify art as "irrelevant" are trying to position themselves above the entity; it's a way of pretending they're more in step with contemporary culture than the artist himself, which is mostly a way of saying they can't find a tangible reason for disliking what something intends to embody. Moreover, the whole argument is self-defeating: If you classify something as "irrelevant," you're (obviously) using it as a unit of comparison against whatever is "relevant," so it (obviously) does have meaning and merit. Truly irrelevant art wouldn't even be part of the conversation. ~ Chuck Klosterman

I realized with Broadway everything written for black people is usually written in the past, and I'm kind of a contemporary guy. I don't think you want to see me in 'Raisin in the Sun'. ~ Chris Rock

I've always loved writing emotionally rich, character-driven novels that explore the way people fall in love and deal with life's triumphs and tragedies. I enjoy writing the contemporary and historical books equally, though perhaps 'enjoy' is the wrong word. ~ Susan Wiggs

I can't take any more of being careful around her. I want her. Not just for now, but for always. - HEW ~ Michelle Warren

Use your dick, don't be one. ~ Marissa Clarke

I come from an African Caribbean background. I've been influenced by a reggae church music style, contemporary gospel, and rock all fused together. ~ Laura Mvula

When Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant met in what is still considered the biggest wrestling match of all time, exaggeration was in the air. According to various contemporary reports, there were 95,000 people on hand at WrestleMania III to see the 7-foot-5, 525-pound Andre square off against Hulk Hogan, who stood 6-foot-8 and weighed 320 pounds and whose biceps measured twenty-four inches around. Probably the only number in that last sentence that's unimpeachable is the III. ~ David Shoemaker

Dr. Asa Don Brown has successfully managed to amalgamate his own profound insights with centuries old wisdom and contemporary psychology to produce an unique, lucid and pragmatic work. His book will undoubtedly inspire those seeking inspiration, educate those seeking an education, and edify those seeking an edification. In a world where many are often making more but feeling less, this book will be a welcome addition to aid them in reconciling this frustrating chasm. ~ Tony Mann

Mr. Graves was always using the word weirdo to describe himself and people he liked. He said that all the great writers were "weirdos," too - that our best artists, musicians, and thinkers were first labeled weird in high school or "when they were young." That was "the price of admission. ~ Matthew Quick

Whilst in Pipalyatjara, I learnt that the Pitjantjara people were trying to have their land turned from leasehold to freehold. The attitude of the elders at first had been to dismiss the whole question. As far as they were concerned they didn't own the land, the land owned them. Their belief was that the earth was traversed in the dream-time by ancestral beings who had supernatural energy and power. These beings were biologically different from contemporary man, some being a synthesis of man and animal, plant, or forces such as fire or water... ~ Robyn Davidson

Well, you played me, Rabbit. You played me, and it worked, and I'm not the kind of person to make the same mistake twice. Your whole life is a game, but you know what? I already have a life. Poker's nothing to me but a goddamn deck of cards. ~ Elle Lothlorien

I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals. ~ Rabih Alameddine

I don't know," she said quietly. "A guy in a pair of ripped jeans who takes off his shirt because he's all sweaty is kind of hot. ~ Samantha Chase

I want to make people smile. I want to tell an epic story ... with laughter. I want to change the way people view the world. I want life to stop being so damn dramatic all the time. I want ... what are you doing? ~ Cassie Mae

I couldn't imagine choosing shopping when sex was an option. ~ Cindi Madsen

Many of the pains and efforts taken to deal with the contemporary marriage are dominated by considerations of well-being, happiness, and biology. This corresponds to the position of contemporary psychology, which distinguishes itself through a deep skepticism amounting to a rejection of anything transcendent. ~ Adolf Guggenbhuhl-Craig

I had fallen too far. I was in love with Rush Finlay. ~ Abbi Glines

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition. ~ Alain De Botton

Busted," she said. "You pretend to be all rough and tough, but on the inside you're a big softie."
"I guarantee you there is nothing soft
~ Robin Bielman

You can't manipulate people who know how to think for themselves. ~ Trish Mercer

We embark on this quest not from a simple desire, but from a mandate of our species to search for our place in the cosmos. The quest is old, not new. And has garnered the attention of thinkers great and small, across time and across culture. What we have discovered, the poets have known all along. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

This exile is a fascinating symbolic act from our modern psychoanalytic viewpoint, for we have held in earlier chapters that the greatest threat and greatest cause of anxiety for an American near the end of the twentieth century is not castration but ostracism, the terrible fate of being exiled by one's group. Many a contemporary man castrates himself or permits himself to be castrated because of fear of being exiled if he doesn't. He renounces his power and conforms under the great threat and peril of ostracism.
- Rollo May, "The Tragedy of Truth About Oneself" (The Psycology of Existence: An Integrative, Clinical Perspective by Kirk Schneider and Rollo May), pp. 14-15 ~ Rollo May

And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby... Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority.

This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an 'exercise' undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbel ~ Aldo Leopold

He tilted my head up with his index finger. Tingles spread on my skin. Pain, obstacles, betrayal and all shitty things that happen in life shape everyone, just as much as good things do. Don't regret anything if in the end you can say you're an amazing woman. ~ Stephanie Witter

Contemporary philosophy illustrates Hegel's dictum that philosophy is its own time apprehended in thought, for in our age philosophy yields to the objectifying technical impulse and loses its ancient task of pursuing the Socratic ideal of the wisdom of the examined life. ~ Donald Phillip Verene

If fantasy was realistic, reality would be fantastic. ~ Annonymous Contemporary

I don't know? Maybe because we had sex. ~ Faith Sullivan

Mark my words, Lila. You'll be mine in all ways you can imagine. ~ Stephanie Witter

This has led evangelicals to ethnocentrism, to asserting their historically contingent cultural values as "biblical truth." In the conservative direction, this has closed off productive dialogue between evangelicals and mainline Christians on gay marriage - because if the Bible has an obvious stance on the matter, as most evangelicals believe, the other side must be intentionally denying the truth. In the liberal direction, this has led green evangelicals to ignore the role contemporary experiences and theology have played in their reinterpretation of the Bible on environmental matters. ~ Jonathan Dudley

Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The "Gold Coast" was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night.
The world's most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake's edge. ~ Daniel Amory

Juliet laughed. "You all are crazy, you know that?"
"Oh, for sure," he said with a nod.
"Does it rub off?"
"If you're lucky. ~ Erin Nicholas

The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command. ~ Dallas Willard

There are a couple of specific things about the show [Into the Badlands]. We didn't want to do a contemporary show, which is always "Chinese cop comes to New York, teams up with racist cop, together they fight crime ... " ~ Miles Millar

Technically and logically speaking, actual Victorian science fiction writers cannot be dubbed 'steampunks.' Although they utilized many of the same tropes and touchstones employed later by twenty-first-century writers of steampunk, in their contemporary hands these devices represented state-of-the-art speculation. ~ Paul Di Filippo

Much modern art is, at first sight, unnerving ... in the contemporary world, we have come to expect instant response and immediate understanding. ~ Nicholas Serota