Modern Technology Quotes

The Western industrial complex would not change even if millions of people perished in Africa or India or some other faraway place. The population of the earth increases by millions every month, and such losses would be seen as a little drop in the ocean. But if something serious were to occur in the West, then that would turn upside down the currently held vision of Western people with regard to the impact of modern technology on nature. It would be something that would wake them up and perhaps help to stop this really suicidal course that modern civilization is currently pursuing and that the rest of the world is trying to follow. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

I remember an era when you could get your nose sliced off for sticking it too far into another man's business. Now you can find out anything about anyone with the click of a button. There is no privacy and no consideration, and everyone is prying into things that aren't their affair. You can probably check on the intertube and find out what color underwear I have on today. ~ Joe Hill

I love the modern technology now. ~ Ringo Starr

The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology. ~ Murray Rothbard

All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness. ~ Mark Kennedy

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. ~ Douglas Adams

With the help of modern technology, I can compose intricate keyboard parts and then I have to go back and learn them in order to perform them properly. ~ Geddy Lee

The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums. Granting the frailty, and no doubt the impermanence, of modern technology as a human contrivance, the man who can keep a fire in a stove or on a hearth is not only more durable, but wiser, closer to the meaning of fire, than the man who can only work a thermostat. ~ Wendell Berry

It seems to us that there are four great collective sociological assumptions in the modern world. By this we mean not only the Western world, but all the world that shares a modern technology and is structured into nations…. That man's aim in life is happiness, that man is naturally good, that history develops in endless progress, and that everything is matter.
The other great psychological reflection of social reality is the myth. The myth expresses the deep inclinations of a society. Without it, the masses would not cling to a certain civilization, or its process of development and crisis. It is a vigorous impulse, strongly colored, irrational, and charged with all of man's power to believe… In our society the two great fundamentals myths on which all other myths rest are Science and History. And based on them are the collective myths that are man's principal orientations: the myth of Work, the myth of Happiness (which is not the same thing as presupposition of happiness), the myth of the Nation, the myth of Youth, the myth of Hero.
Propaganda is forced to build on those presuppositions and to express these myths, for without them nobody would listen to it. And in so building it must always go in the same direction as society; it can only reinforce society. A propaganda that stresses virtue over happiness and presents man's future as one dominated by austerity and contemplation would have no audience at all. A propaganda that questions progress or work would arou ~ Jacques Ellul

[…] I began to see Algiers as one of the most fascinating and dramatic places on earth. In the small space of this beautiful but congested city intersected two great conflicts of the contemporary world. The first was the one between Christianity and Islam (expressed here in the clash between colonizing France and colonized Algeria). The second, which acquired a sharpness of focus immediately after the independence and departure of the French, was a conflict at the very heart of Islam, between its open, dialectical - I would even say "Mediterranean" - current and its other, inward-looking one, born of a sense of uncertainty and confusion vis-à-vis the contemporary world, guided by fundamentalists who take advantage of modern technology and organizational principles yet at the same time deem the defense of faith and custom against modernity as the condition of their own existence, their sole identity.

[…] In Algiers one speaks simply of the existence of two varieties of Islam - one, which is called the Islam of the desert, and a second, which is defined as the Islam of the river (or of the sea). The first is the religion practiced by warlike nomadic tribes struggling to survive in one of the world's most hostile environments, the Sahara. The second Islam is the faith of merchants, itinerant peddlers, people of the road and of the bazaar, for whom openness, compromise, and exchange are not only beneficial to trade, but necessary to life itself. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

Joshua Joseph has no great hatred of modern technology
he just mistrusts the effortless, textureless surfaces and the ease with which it trains you to do things in the way most convenient to the machine. ~ Nick Harkaway

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present. ~ Glen Hansard

Modern technology easily becomes the servant of this or that want and need. In modern economy, a completely irrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalized production. A marvelously rational mechanism serves one or another demand, always with the same earnestness and precision, be it for a silk blouse or poison gas or anything whatsoever. Economic rationalism has accustomed itself to deal only with certain needs and to acknowledge only those it can "satisfy." In the modern metropolis, it has erected an edifice wherein everything runs strictly according to plan - everything is calculable. A devout Catholic, precisely following his own rationality, might well be horrified by this system of irresistible materiality. ~ Carl Schmitt

Joshua Joseph has no real hatred of modern technology - he just mistrusts the effortless, textureless surfaces, and the ease with which it trains you to do things in the way most convenient to the machine. Above all, he mistrusts duplication. A rare thing becomes a commonplace thing. A skill becomes a feature. The end is more important than the means. The child of the soul gives place to a product of the system ... For anything really important, Joe prefers something with a history, an item which can name the hand which assembled it and will warm to the one that deploys it. A thing of life, rather than one of the many consumer items which humans use to make more clutter; strange parasitic devices with their own little ecosystems. ~ Nick Harkaway

Like all tools, modern technology has produced some wonderful moments in music and also some horrors. ~ Hugh Hopper

Lighting was very primitive. And still it was really the way to learn because sometimes some of the modern technology is so extreme and so compartmentalized that we lose sight of exactly what we're doing. ~ Haskell Wexler

The ideological fantasies of this movement [New Left of the 1960s] … were no more than a nonsensical expression of the whims of spoilt middle-class children, and while the extremists among them were virtually indistinguishable from Fascist thugs, the movement did without doubt express a profound crisis of faith in the values that had inspired democratic societies for many decades.… The New Left explosion of academic youth was an aggressive movement born of frustration, which easily created a vocabulary for itself out of Marxist slogans … : liberation, revolution, alienation, etc. Apart from this, its ideology really has little in common with Marxism. It consists of "revolution" without the working class; hatred of modern technology as such; …the cult of primitive societies … as the source of progress; hatred of education and specialized knowledge. ~ Leszek Kołakowski

I think people should be able to have at their behest, like, four hours of music, entertainment, visual knowledge, different pathways. That's what I'm trying to do with modern technology, not just another song and another song. ~ Jon Anderson

Modern technology has taken the angst out of achieving the perfect shot. For me, the only thing that counts is the idea behind the image: what you want to see and what you're trying to say. The idea is crucial. You have to think of something you want to say and expand upon it. ~ Martin Parr

In his fight against the powers of the surrounding world his first weapon was magic, the first forerunner of our modern technology. We suppose that this confidence in magic is derived from the over-estimation of the individual's own intellectual operations, from the belief in the 'omnipotence of thoughts', which, incidentally, we come across again in our obsessional neurotics. ~ Sigmund Freud

The environmental crisis is somber evidence of an insidious fraud hidden in the vaunted productivity and wealth of modern, technology-based society. This wealth has been gained by rapid short-term exploitation of the environmental system, but it has blindly accumulated a debt to nature-a debt so large and so pervasive that in the next generation it may, if unpaid, wipe out most of the wealth it has gained us. ~ Barry Commoner

I would absolutely love to go back to the simplicity of the '80s, where there wasn't texting, social media, iPhones, or smartphones. I love the fact that you would go home and check your messages. I'm not well suited to the world of modern technology. ~ Matthew Rhys

But some great records are are being made with today's technology and there are still great artists among us. Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant on modern technology, they wouldn't have emerged when recording was more organic. ~ Tony Visconti

By now, with all our modern technology, there should be no poverty left on earth. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

That many if not most people ... who want fresh leafy greens in January buy them at the supermarket after they've been bleached and plastic-bag shipped from California or beyond is not a tribute to modern technology; it's an unprecedented abdication of personal responsibility and a ubiquitous benchmark of abnormality. ~ Joel Salatin

I don't cook - I can cook - but I'm not very good. I like being asked over for dinner, because she can't cook either. We would starve if it weren't for modern technology. I know how to work a microwave, but love home cooked meals. ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society. ~ Tyler Cowen

When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won. ~ Howard Zinn

Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival. ~ Barry Commoner

I love the quietness of the library, the gateway to knowledge, to the French language and medieval history and hydraulic engineering and fairy tales, learning in a very primitive form: books, something that's quickly giving way to modern technology. ~ Mary Kubica

I don't like technology and all that. I'm a farm boy. I would rather live in that time when you had to provide for your family. I don't know. I'm a country kid, so I don't like modern technology. ~ Travis Fimmel

Thanks to modern technology, we now can deliver every text in every research library to every citizen in our country, and to everyone in the world. If we fail to do so, we are not living up to our civic duty. ~ Robert Darnton

All scientist are oglers, i suppose, the sensuousness is a sine quo non of modern technology ~ Aporva Kala

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology. ~ Michael Morpurgo

As the Harvard University strategist Graham Allison summed it up: "Historically, there has always been a gap between people's individual anger and what they could do with their anger. But thanks to modern technology, and the willingness of people to commit suicide, really angry individuals can now kill millions of people if they can get the right materials." And that is becoming steadily easier with the globalization of flows and the rise of 3-D printing, by which you can build almost anything in your basement, if it can fit. In ~ Thomas L. Friedman

HOBBES:
All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once. ~ Bill Watterson

The Dark Depths of the Seas And Internal Waves

Or [the unbelievers' state] are like the darkness of a fathomless sea
which is covered by waves above which are waves above which are
clouds, layers of darkness, one upon the other. If he puts out his hand,
he can scarcely see it. Those Allah gives no light to, they have no light.
(Qur'an, 24:40)
In deep seas and oceans, the darkness is found at a depth of 200
meters (660 feet) and deeper. At this depth, there is almost no light, and
below a depth of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) there is no light at all.65
Today, we know about the general formation of the sea, the characteristics
of the living things in it, its salinity, as well as the amount of
water it contains, and its surface area and depth. Submarines and special
equipment, developed with modern technology, have enabled scientists
to obtain such information.
Human beings are not able to dive to a depth of more than 70
meters (230 feet) without the aid of special equipment. They cannot
survive unaided in the dark depths of the oceans, such as at a depth of
200 meters (660 feet). For these reasons, scientists have only recently
been able to discover detailed information about the seas. However,
that the depth of the sea is dark was revealed in the Qur'an 1,400 years
ago. It is certainly one of the miracles of the Qur'an that such information
was given at a time where no ~ Harun Yahya

War is the ultimate realization of modern technology. For centuries men have tested themselves in war. War was the final test, the great experience, the privilege, the honor, the selfsacrifice or what have you, the absolutely ultimate determination of what kind of man you were. War was the great challenge and the great evaluator. It told you how much you were worth. But it's different today. Few men want to go off and fight. We prove ourselves, our manhood, in other ways, in making money, in skydiving, in hunting mountain lions with bow and arrow, in acquiring power of one kind or another. And I think we can forget ideology ~ Don DeLillo

I see climate change as one of the driving forces in the 21st century. With modern technology and globalization, we are much more connected than ever before. The world's warehouses are now container ships. ~ David Titley

Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to their beliefs, should be the basis for the construction of any object created by humanity become immediately absurd once we analyze all the object being manufactured today. A fork or a bed cannot come to be considered necessary for humanity's life and health, and yet retain a relative value.
They are 'learned necessities.' Modern human beings are suffocating under necessities like televisions, refrigerators, etc. And in the process making it impossible to live their real lives. Obviously we are not against modern technology, but we are against any notion of the absolute necessity of objects, to the point even of doubting their real utility.'
Asger Jorn ~ Tom McDonough

The palimpsests of molecules need not be overwritten, for machines make once-ephemeral words persist: they collect in gutters; they pile up and require sweeping; they hang in air like morning fog. ~ Dexter Palmer

We need to take responsibility for the effect of our environment on our nervous systems, and particularly the nervous systems of our children. No wonder so many of them are diagnosed with all the stuff they're diagnosed with today. Modern technology is a blessing to be sure, but it's also a curse if we allow it to pull us out of our spiritual center. A 24 hour electronic onslaught comes at the expense of our deep humanity and our deepest relationships. ~ Marianne Williamson

For me, modern technology has ruined romance and movies - nobody can run to the airplane gate anymore. ~ Lorene Scafaria

The wonderful thing about modern technology is the amount of communication and information-sharing it facilitates. And the awful thing about modern technology is the amount of communication and information-sharing it facilitates. ~ Mark McGuinness

Imagine a day when all plants and trees go on a strike, a bandh just for a day. All of us will die for want of oxygen." Reading this, I was instantly reminded of Bolivia's recent legislation (in December 2010) to grant all nature equal rights as humans. Justice William O. Douglas, writing against a 1972 decision by the United States Supreme Court, wrote, "Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation ... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life ... The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled. ~ Anonymous

During the past few decades, modern technology, with radio, TV, air travel, and satellites, has woven a network of communication which puts each part of the world in to almost instant contact with all the other parts. ~ David Bohm

It seems like I always wrote, I just didn't think of it as a career choice. I just liked to tell stories ... to myself, to pen pals (I had a lot of them, all over the world). Of course this was in the days before computers were everywhere, and anyone could access the Web. You had to make an effort keeping up a correspondence, and the arrival of the mail once a day was a big deal. I think if modern technology had been around when I was a kid, I would never have left my bedroom except to take the dogs out for their run three times a day. ~ Charles De Lint

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people. ~ Bernadette Devlin

We are discovering today that several of the premises which are deeply ingrained in our way of life are simply untrue and become pathogenic when implemented with modern technology. ~ Gregory Bateson

By 1957, a mere eleven years after its devastation, Japan not only had the most modern steel mills in the world but was the foremost steel producer in the world. But that was just the beginning: In the decade following 1957, Japanese steel production grew by 170 percent - while the American steel industry grew only 20 percent. The American steel industry, believing itself invulnerable, was headed by a complacent and insular management which was slow to bring in modern technology and which, even as the challenger grew more proficient, locked the industry into ever costlier labor agreements. By 1964, 28 percent of Japan's steel exports was going to America. In Japan, a thrust in shipbuilding followed closely upon the success in steel; by 1956 Japan had replaced Britain as the world's leading shipbuilding nation. ~ David Halberstam

Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps. ~ Evan Williams

I don't think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand. ~ Franklin Foer

The dramatic importance of climate changes to the world's future has been dangerously underestimated by many, often because we have been lulled by modern technology into thinking we have conquered nature. This well-written book points out in clear language that the climatic threat could be as awesome as any we might face, and that massive world-wide actions to hedge against that threat deserve immediate consideration. ~ Stephen Schneider

Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity. ~ Jacques Ellul

Being a club pro and all, a guy trying to keep up with golf's modern technology, I hadn't found much time for Internet dating, but then one day I knew I'd met the girl of my dreams when she replied to a comment I'd made on You-and-Me.com. She said, 'I love it when you talk equipment to me.' ~ Dan Jenkins

The point is: whenever there is a conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires win each time. That's the Cave Man Principle. ~ Michio Kaku

There are times when the marvels of scientific advancement expedite our processes, making our lives easier. Modern technology provides machines that can think three or five or seven steps ahead of the human mind, machines that offer elegant solutions, a selection of contingency plans, Bs and Cs and Ds in case A isn't to your liking.
And then there are times when a screwdriver and a bit of elbow grease are all that's necessary to get the job done. ~ Victoria Schwab

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

In marked contrast to the relaxed, typically Latin attitude of the Dominicans the Protestant missionaries were still proceeding at full blast with the fight for souls. These North American evangelists of strictly fundamentalist inclination combined in a curious fashion strict adhesion to the literal meaning of the Old Testament With mastery of the most modern technology. Most of them came from small towns in the Bible Belt, armed with unshakably clear consciences and a rudimentary smattering of theology, convinced that they alone were the repositories of Christian values now abolished elsewhere. Totally ignorant of the vast world, despite their transplantation, and taking the few articles of morality accepted in the rural Amenca of their childhoods to be a universal credo, they strove bravely to spread these principles of salvation all around them.
Their rustic faith was well served by a flotilla of light aircraft, a powerful radio, an ultra-modern hospital and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- in short, all the equipment that a battalion of crusaders dropped behind enemy lines needed. ~ Philippe Descola

[Technology] has taught us how to become gods before we have learned to be men. ~ Herbert Joseph Muller

I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period. ~ Robert Burchfield

As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smith's basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels.
For example, competition among profit-seeking firms may still be the key driving force of capitalism, as in Smith's scheme. But it is not between small, anonymous firms which, accepting consumer tastes, fight it out by increasing the efficiency in the use of given technology. Today, competition is among huge multinational companies, with the ability not only to influence prices but to redefine technologies in a short span of time (think about the battle between Apple and Samsung) and to manipulate consumer tastes through brand-image building and advertising. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Wouldn't it be great if the technology we used to take care of ourselves was as good as the technology we use to make money? ~ James Heywood

I don't know if there's enough vision. Industry wide, the apathy regarding this recent problem is already setting in - shiny things are happening elsewhere, people are forgetting. ~ Theo De Raadt

The dilemma of modern society: the conflict between the need for capital formation at a high rate and the popular condemnation of interest and dividends as "unearned income" and "capitalist," if not as sinful and wicked. ~ Peter Drucker

We must change life,' the poet [Rimbaud] had written, and so the Situationists set out to transform everyday life in the modern world through a comprehensive program that included above all else the construction of 'situations'
defined in 1958 as moments of life 'concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a play of events'
but that also necessary entailed the supersession of philosophy, the realization of art, the abolition of politics, and the fall of the 'spectacle-commodity economy. ~ Tom McDonough

Focusing totally on technique, you lose the essence and power of simplicity ... The other extreme is just as bad; you see it in a lot of Modern works, where the concept is more important than the technique, resulting in very poor craftsmanship. ~ George L. Carlson

While the alchemist of old sought to turn lead into gold, the modern alchemist has a more noble dream: to turn men from rot to rock ~ Agona Apell

Scholars have estimated that by 1850, the aboriginal population in North America - besieged by the invaders' explosive weaponry, wondrous technology, contemptuous cruelty, and irresistible pathogens, as well as the Indians' own ever-deepening despair - was just one-tenth of what it had been when Columbus first ventured ashore. ~ Richard Kluger

He thought the police would have to do better; everyone knew the cult boys had more modern guns ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition. ~ James Agee

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce, first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages, was not suddenly abolished in modern times. ~ James Buchan

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris. ~ Norman Rockwell

I once read an article which made the argument that modern Western schools have a good deal in common with modern prisons, and I've always thought it was pretty accurate. With both schools and prisons, the ones running the system have a very simple set of priorities for their inmates: they want them to stay on the premises, they want them to stay healthy and watered and fed, and they want them not to be gratuitously violent in a way that'll draw public attention. ~ Benedict Jacka

The amount of improvement that has occurred in computer technology in the past half century is truly staggering and unprecedented in other industries. ... If cars had improved at this rate in the same time period, a Rolls Royce would now cost 10 dollars and get a billion miles per gallon. (Unfortunately, it would probably also have a 200-page manual telling how to open the door.) ~ Andrew S. Tanenbaum

The people who resist change will be confronted by the growing number of people who see that better ways are available; thanks to technology. ~ Bill Gates

Technology policy - whether we should have one and what form such a policy should take - was a core issue of the 1992 presidential campaign, and in February 1993 the Clinton administration confirmed that fostering new technologies will be a critical part of its agenda for redirecting the American economy. ~ Lewis M. Branscomb

There is more mental health cure found in a pile of dirt than in all the behavioral therapy and drugs in modern medical science. ~ J.S.B. Morse

If liberty is to be preserved against the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, there must be something more than courts and legal guarantees; freedom must be written not merely in the constitution but in the people's heart. And it can be written in the heart, we believe, only as a result of the redeeming work of Christ. Other means in the long run will fail. ~ J. Gresham Machen

Technology is a nerdy field. That's why I called myself a 'geek.' It requires a lot of training and encouragement at a very young age. ~ Weili Dai

Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other.
Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stands an uncanny but fascinating halo of brilliance - evoke both fear and Titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe.
The fear and enthusiasm we experience at the sight of perfect mechanisms are in exact contrast to the happiness we feel at the sight of a perfect work of art. We sense an attack on our integrity, on our wholeness. That arms and legs are lost or harmed is not yet the greatest danger. ~ Ernst Junger

In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an element of disappearing to a place that's not me. It's "the selflessness of writing". It seldom happens, but when it does it's worth quite a lot. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Sunnybrook Farm is now a parking lot; the petticoats are in the garbage can, where they belong in the modern world; and I detest censorship. ~ Shirley Temple

It's from love and knowledge of nature that any sensible understanding must come. Technology is essentially antagonistic to nature - that in fact is why it's created, to do something to or with nature that wasn't there before, that wasn't natural. ~ Kirkpatrick Sale

Water: 35 liters, Carbon: 20 kg, Ammonia: 4 liters, Lime:1.5 kg, Phosphrus: 800 g, salt: 250g, saltpeter:100g, Sulfer: 80g, Fluorine: 7.5 g, iron: 5.6 g, Silicon: 3g, and 15 other elements in small quantities ... thats the total chemical makeup of the average adult body. Modern science knows all of this, but there has never been a single example of succesful human trasmutation. It's like there's some missing ingredient ... Scientists have been trying to find it for hundreds of years, pouring tons of money into research, and to this day they don't have a theory. For that matter, the elements found in a human being is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child's allowence. Humans are pretty cheaply made. ~ Hiromu Arakawa

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' But 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. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain. ~ Bertrand Russell

I am angry with myself. I failed to speak from that compartment in myself, as that persona who represents motherhood the one who knows my daughter will always in some way look down on me; will not know my dark places and my desires, my ambivalences, even toward her; will think herself wiser, braver, more modern, her inner life more intriguing, her challenges more compelling I have cherished the self who knows this and accepts it. It is without vanity, able to resist the urge to be understood. ~ Emily Bitto

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason. ~ Richard M. Weaver

Real breakthroughs are not found because you want to develop some new technology, but because you are curious and want to find out how the world is. ~ Anton Zeilinger

I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

But indeed nobody knows what inarticulate traditions, remnants of old wisdom, priceless though quite anonymous, survive in many modern things that still have life in them. ~ Thomas Carlyle

The function of a writer is to call a spade a spade. If words are sick, it is up to us to cure them. Instead of that, many writers live off this sickness. In many cases modern literature is a cancer of words ... There is nothing more deplorable than the literary practice which, I believe, is called poetic prose and which consists of using words for the obscure harmonics which reosund about them and which are made up of vague meanings which are in contradiction with the clear meaning ... That is not all: we are living in an age of mystifications. Some are fundamental ones which are due to the structure of society; some are secondary. At any rate, the social order today rests upon the mystification of consciousness, as does disorder as well. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Don Juan: I feel like God is punishing me and I don't know what for.

Nurse 2: God's not punishing you. Life is Hell for all of us. You're not special. ~ Duncan Macmillan

Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them. ~ Norman Lamm

over the centuries Dante has been variously "constructed" - as lover, statesman, neo-Platonist, proto-Protestant, Romantic visionary, Byronic hero, Pre-Raphaelite, father of his country, theologian in verse, precursor of the modern novel, and, finally, altissimo poeta, the consummate poet. ~ Peter S. Hawkins

Worlds need those pockets, the urban closets that hide the skeletons of a modern society. ~ S.A. Check

Nobody in America, in the modern generation, has read their mythology or legends. ~ Kenneth Anger