#modernity

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

In our age it is not sex that raises its ugly head, but love. ↗

— John Fowles

#modernity #sex #age

I believe that the idea of the totality, the finality of the master-plan, is misguided. One should advocate a gradual transformation of public space, a metamorphic process, without relying on a hypothetical time in the future when everything will be perfect. The mistake of planners and architects is to believe that fifty years from now Alexanderplatz will be perfected. -p.197 ↗

— Daniel Libeskind

#architecture #methodology #modernity #urban-planning #architecture

When nations grow old the Arts grow cold And commerce settles on every tree ↗

— William Blake

#business #modernity #art

General theories are everywhere condemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: 'The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.' We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters--except everything. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#generalization #modernism #postmodernity #art

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#corruption #court-system #courts #ethical-behaviour #ethics

Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure. ↗

— Paul de Man

#came #could #departure #desire #earlier

In the white man's world, language, too -- and the way which the white man thinks of it--has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language -- for the Word itself -- as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word. ↗

— N. Scott Momaday

#creativity #language #modernity #change

Christmas ought to be brought up to date,” Maria said. “It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols. ↗

— John Masefield

#gangsters #guns #modernity #dating