The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.
If you stop and think about our history, one of the reasons we had an American century and there is an American dream was because at key points in our history we made very bold decisions about making sure that there was very broad, universal access to quality education.
I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century.
The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.
When they talk about family values, it’s in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.
Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.
I was practically born and raised at 20th Century Fox studio, started to work there selling papers when I was around seven years old, and every summer vacation from school I would work in a various department at the studio. So I was an old-timer when I was 15.
When I’m dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.
The position of modern science, as far as an ignorant man of letters can understand it, seems not a step in advance of that held by Huxley and Romanes in the last century.
I think because of their terrible past, particularly this century, the Chinese have come to accept cruelty more than many other people, which is something I feel very unhappy about.
Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.
Although images of perfection in people’s personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies – utopian images – can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.
At American Airlines, we have built a business around the love of travel that has lasted three quarters of a century. And I’m pretty sure we’re just getting started.
When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I’m familiar with. I don’t write stories about the nineteenth century.
The 20th century was a century in which human rights were infringed upon in numerous parts of the world, and Japan also bears responsibility in that regard. I believe that we have to look at our own history with humility and think about our responsibility.
Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th Century.
The ’90s were extremely diverse, almost like a laboratory of the new century. There was much experimenting around, in politics, economics, gender and family structures, and also in fashion. There was a cloud of possibilities which kept us all dizzy.
The first half of the 20th century belongs to Picasso, and the second half is about photography. They said digital would kill photography because everyone can do it, but they said that about the box brownie in 1885 when it came out. It makes photography interesting because everyone thinks they can take a picture.
In the 21st century when few of us stay in the same job all our lives, I would like to think there was flexibility so teachers could become social workers, or foster carers become teachers.
The 20th Century was the century of Aviation and the century of Globalization. The next century will be the century of Space.
Just as it had taken centuries to determine the true nature of the universe, so also the search for the beginning of human life proceeded well into the 20th century.
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.
Confucius, who was born in the sixth century B.C., traditionally had a stature in China akin to that of Socrates in the West.
I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren.
Even the building of a second British empire in the 19th century never fully healed the wound of losing America, and the end of Britain’s imperial prestige after the second world war has cut deeper.
Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.
Let me state what the official IPCC prediction is: Sea levels could go up as much as three-quarters of a meter in this century, but there is a reasonable probability it could be much higher than that.
Live with your century; but do not be its creature.
Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.
I would still love to do more Handel. I think Handel was a fantastic composer. I did lots of Vivaldi, but it’s also important to do the music of Handel, one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.
It became a metaphor for the lives of the people in this film and for the Old West, for the abandonment that occurred in the early part of the 20th century.
Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.
One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index.
You’d think that in this age, especially in the 21st century – especially with all the technology and all the discoveries that we’ve made – that we would figure out how to tackle abuse.
The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.
The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.
India, Pakistan, China, Singapore and South Korea are heavily investing in nuclear arms. Since 21st century is the century of Asia, Asian countries should be the first ones to drop this arms race.
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
For better or worse, in the 21st century, reality shows are the variety show.
The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, it’s hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line.
You have indeed done much since the new century began to give shape and substance to the growing, the insistent desire that war may be banished from the earth.
Without a song, each day would be a century.
Many traditional religions foster attitudes that ought to have disappeared as biological understanding accumulated over the last century.
Gold and silver are always in demand, regardless of clime, century, or government in power. But public confidence in and, hence, demand for paper money depends on the ultimate confidence – or lack thereof – of the public in the viability of the issuing government.
A fellowship to Oxford acquainted me with the depths of English cooking. By the twenty-first century, London’s best restaurants are as good as Paris’s, but not in the 1950s.
The telephone is a 100-year-old technology. It’s time for a change. Charging for phone calls is something you did last century.
However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.
What I enjoy doing is challenging stereotypes of what people believe a Tory must be. You don’t have to say every Tory is in it for themselves – it’s pathetic caricaturing that has no place in the 21st century, and if we can challenge that stereotype, then great.
I’ve won some awards. ‘Time’ magazine designated me as one of the environmental heroes of the 20th century. Oh, and I’ve got some honorary citizenships, like from the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys. But the one thing I am proud of is I didn’t get the Chevron environmental award. Never did get that one.
The twentieth century may tell us that we have nothing to be complacent about in the recent history of humankind; but it also tells us that there is nothing inevitable about tyranny.
One of the people that I respect the most now, a person I think has done a heck of a lot for this world as a leader, is Margaret Thatcher. She helped create a world that offers us a lot of excitement as we look to the next century.
