#modernit

The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and (the productive) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It has always been hard to do genuine - and no perishable - work within institutions ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#academics #darwin #einstein #freud #institutions

[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

I distrust every idea that doesn’t seem obsolete and grotesque to my contemporaries. ↗

— Nicolás Gómez Dávila

#modernity #philosophy #ideology

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business. ↗

— Vera Wang

#business #decided #dress #find #get

Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category. ↗

— Theodor Adorno

#chronological #modernity #qualitative

It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work. This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines... I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. ↗

— Wendell Berry

#freedom #irony #modernity #rest #restlessness

An diesem Punkt gibt es keinen einzigen ihrer »Werte« [der Zivilisation des Westens] mehr, an den sie noch auf irgendeine Art zu glauben vermöchte, und jede Affirmation wirkt auf sie wie eine schamlose Tat, wie eine Provokation, die man besser zerlegen, dekonstruieren und in den Zustand des Zweifels zurückführen sollte. Der westliche Imperialismus heute, das ist der des Relativismus, des »Das ist deine Ansicht«, das ist der kleine Seitenblick oder der verletzte Protest gegen all das, was dumm genug, primitiv genug oder selbstgefällig genug ist, um noch an etwas zu glauben, um noch irgendetwas zu behaupten. Es ist dieser Dogmatismus der Infragestellung, der in der gesamten universitären und literarischen Intelligenzija komplizenhaft mit dem Auge zwinkert. Unter den postmodernistischen Geistesgrößen ist keine Kritik zu radikal, solange sie ein Nichts an Gewissheit umhüllt. Vor einem Jahrhundert verursachte jede ein wenig lärmmachende Negation einen Skandal, heute liegt er in jeder Affirmation, die nicht zittert. ↗

— Unsichtbares Komitee

#postmodernity #relativism #western-world #art

Democracy, good governance and modernity cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country. ↗

— Emile Lahud

#country #democracy #good #good governance #governance

Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word "modernity" if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#already #china #could #exclude #islamic

In the world of The Age of Innocence, a financial disaster or moral scandal would permanently exile a guest from the finest dinner tables. In contemporary New York, a mere change of fashion can eliminate a place setting; therefore, the need to maintain a rigidity not of morals, but of taste, seems all the more desperate. ↗

— Wendy Wasserstein

#society #victorian #age