Contemporary Quotes

Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity. (Eugenio Montale)
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. View quote
W. H. Auden
The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it. View quote
Gertrude Stein
The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting. View quote
Edward Hopper
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven. View quote
Jascha Heifetz
The problem of meaning today is the problem of how the diverse and superficially self-contradictory experiences of men can be put into a consistent picture that will provide contemporary man with a convincing basis from which to live and to act. View quote
Carroll Quigley
By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile. View quote
James Henry Breasted
There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Ninety percent of [contemporary philosophers] see their principal task as that of beating religion out of men's heads. ... We are far from being able to provide scientific basis for the theological world view. View quote
Kurt Gödel
The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before-which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living. View quote
Herbert Marcuse
By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests. (Herbert Marcuse)
In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world. View quote
A. J. P. Taylor
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing. View quote
Jorge Luis Borges
Nevertheless, in the theatre, and in the cinema, the contemporary reality of Poland has been represented only to a minuscule degree in the last 12 years. View quote
Andrzej Wajda
Like contemporary poetry, philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study - which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
During my career I've enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences. View quote
David S. Goyer
Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button. View quote
Christopher Lasch
The intellectual debility of contemporary conservatism is indicated by its silence on all important matters. View quote
Christopher Lasch
Well, I'm not sure, but of one thing I am certain: History judges one differently than contemporary observers, and so I think that as time passes, I hope that not me personally so much, but our administration will be seen for some of the things that we accomplished. View quote
David Dinkins
No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms. View quote
P. F. Strawson
I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff. (Eberhard Weber)
One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past. View quote
George Crumb
The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising. View quote
Kit Williams
The notion of a contemporary epiphany to me is very exciting, because it's a sort of biblical thing. It's something that has happened to people in other centuries or in the context of religious experience. View quote
Pamela Stephenson
When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis. View quote
Rollo May