#modern

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#modern-values #priorities #truths #values #wealth-and-virtues

Anymore, no one's mind is their own. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#life #modernity #originality #life

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#creative-writing #life #meaningless #meaninglessness #modern-life

There are so many simple things getting unnoticed in me, it makes me feel I am a robot! ↗

— Vikram Roy

#modern-life #philosophy #philosophy-of-life #life

And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion. “ The Prince, XVIII, 5 ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#modern-stateman #morals #faith

[This is] the only period in all human history when people were proud of being modern. For though to-day is always to-day and the moment is always modern, we are the only men in all history who fell back upon bragging about the mere fact that to-day is not yesterday. I fear that some in the future will explain it by saying that we had precious little else to brag about. For, whatever the medieval faults, they went with one merit. Medieval people never worried about being medieval; and modern people do worry horribly about being modern. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#men

Alors que ce mauvais siècle approche de sa fin, le pressentiment se répand que l’idée de faire histoire n’était qu’un prétexte. Le sujet décisif de la modernité, c’est de faire nature. ↗

— Peter Sloterdijk

#modernité #nature #nature

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#fiction #modern-fiction #virginia-woolf #art

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better. ↗

— George Santayana

#appear #argument #better #function #make

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. ↗

— Leszek Kołakowski

#doubt #irony #modernity #philosophy #self-criticism