Century Quotes - page 100
Cultures may be classed into three types: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. ...until the seventeenth century, all cultures were tool-users. ...the main characteristic of all tool-using cultures is that their tools were largely invented to do two things: to solve specific and urgent problems of physical life, such as in the use of waterpower, windmills, and the heavy-wheeled plow; or to serve the symbolic world of art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion, as in the construction of castles and cathedrals and the development of the mechanical clock. In either case, tools (...were not intended to attack) the dignity and integrity of the culture into which they were introduced. With some exceptions, tools did not prevent people from believing in their traditions, in their God, in their politics, in their methods of education, or in the legitimacy of their social organization...
Neil Postman
Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone-that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is, far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The man of the educated minority, no doubt, know more than their predecessors, and of some of them, perhaps, it may be said that they are more civilized- though I should not like to be put to giving names, but the great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.
H. L. Mencken
Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy, and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious, and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring, that of their opponents exciting but false.
Roger Scruton
Does anybody now believe in the story of the serpent? I pity any man or woman who, in this nineteenth century, believes in that childish fable. Why did Adam and Eve disobey? Why, they were tempted. By whom? The devil. Who made the devil? God. What did God make him for? Why did he not tell Adam and Eve about this serpent? Why did he not watch the devil, instead of watching Adam and Eve? Instead of turning them out, why did he not keep him from getting in? Why did he not have his flood first, and drown the devil, before he made a man and woman. And yet, people who call themselves intelligent-professors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions-teach children and young men that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute historical fact. I defy any man to think of a more childish thing. This God, waiting around Eden-knowing all the while what would happen-having made them on purpose so that it would happen, then does what? Holds all of us responsible, and we were not there.
Robert G. Ingersoll
The majority of my articles are published at 21st Century Wire. I am a special contributor at Mint Press in US and at the UK Column daily news channel. My work is re-published at the Ron Paul Institute, Global Research, Dissident Voice, Sott., Greanville Post, The London Journal among others. I have appeared on RT Cross Talk, RT News, Press TV, Ron Paul Liberty Report, Sunday Wire, Sputnik Radio.
Vanessa Beeley
Other Venetians may, in one or the other way, more irresistibly enlist our sympathies, or may shine out for the moment more brilliantly in some special branch of their art; yet, after all, we find ourselves invariably comparing them to Titian, not Titian to them, taking him as the standard for the measurement of even his greatest contemporaries and successors. ..
.He is the greatest painter of the sixteenth century, just because, being the greatest colorist of the higher order, and in legitimate mastery of the brush second to none, he makes the worthiest use of his unrivaled accomplishment, not merely to call down the applause due to supreme pictorial skill and the victory over self-set difficulties, but, above all, to give the fullest and most legitimate expression to the subjects which he presents, and through them to himself.
Titian
I'm still not sure what went wrong with the site, so I'll just do what I always do in these situations and assume it was a causality casualty from war with an alternate timeline. Rolling with that assumption on all of life's little problems can give you a terrific perspective on things. Y'know? "Augh, fuck. It's raining!” becomes, "Huh, it's raining,” and then with a bemused nod, "Typical 31st century Mega-Etruscan tactic. ”And then when your friends look at you weird, you can give them a pitying gaze, clutch their heads to your bosom, and lament that they too have been affected by the wars. Something like, "Oh, you poor dear. You've no memory of what never shall be.” I don't have many friends anymore. Not since the war took them.
Brian Clevinger