20th century

Explore 4282 quotes from the 20th century

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

Jim Bouton

More information about this quote

Topic

Baseball Sports

Author

Jim Bouton

Source

Ball Four

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

English

Time

1970 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Bouton, Jim. Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues. World Publishing Company, 1970, pt. 7.

God gave me my money. I believe the power to make money is a gift from God... I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.

John D. Rockefeller

More information about this quote

Topic

Charity

Speaker

John D. Rockefeller

Medium

Interview

Language

English

Time

1905 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Rockefeller, John Davison. Interviewed by William Hoster. c. 1905.

Current Citation

Rockefeller, John Davison. Quoted in The Rockefellers: An American dynasty, written by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976, ch. 3.

Homesickness is a bit like seasickness. You don’t know how awful it is till you get it, and when you do, it hits you right in the top of the stomach and you want to die.

Roald Dahl

More information about this quote

Topic

Homesickness Home

Author

Roald Dahl

Source

Boy: Tales of Childhood

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

English

Time

1984 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Dahl, Roald. "Homesickness." Boy: Tales of Childhood. Jonathan Cape, 1984.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

More information about this quote

Topic

Wilderness Nature Environmental destruction

Author

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Source

Inversnaid

Medium

Poem

Statement Type

Question

Language

English

Time

1918 1910s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "Inversnaid." Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Humphrey Milford, 1918, I. 13.

Current Citation

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "Inversnaid." Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works, edited by Catherine Phillips. Oxford University Press, 2009.

The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it has also become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it.

Aharon Appelfeld

More information about this quote

Topic

The Holocaust

Speaker

Aharon Appelfeld

Source

The New York Times

Medium

Newspaper

Language

English

Time

1986 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Appelfeld, Aharon. Quoted in "Writing Holocaust Memories." Written by Herbert Mitgang. The New York Times, 15 Nov. 1986.

It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.

J.M. Barrie

On charm.

More information about this quote

Topic

Charm

Speaker

Maggie Wylie

Author

J.M. Barrie

Source

What Every Woman Knows

Medium

Play

Language

English

Time

1908 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Barrie, J. M. What Every Woman Knows. 3 Sept. 1908, Duke of York's Theatre, London, England, UK, act 1.

There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea-change-and it is for Mrs. Thatcher.

James Callaghan

More information about this quote

Topic

Political winds Politics

Speaker

James Callaghan

Language

English

Time

1979 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Callaghan, James. Quoted in Callaghan: A Life, written by Kenneth O. Morgan. Oxford University Press, 1997.

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”

Daniel Boorstin

More information about this quote

Topic

Travel Tourism

Author

Daniel Boorstin

Language

English

Time

1962 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Boorstin, Daniel. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Harper Colophon Books, 1961.

I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun-a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet, head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body.

Arthur Eddington

More information about this quote

Topic

Physics

Author

Arthur Eddington

Source

The Nature of the Physical World

Genre

Scientific literature

Language

English

Time

1928 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Eddington, Arthur. "The Nature Of The Physical World." Gifford lecture. January – March 1927, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Bill Wilson

Buy Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book at Amazon Buy Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Alcoholism Addiction Alcohol

Author

Bill Wilson

Source

Alcoholics Anonymous

Language

English

Time

1939 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Wilson, Bill. Alcoholics Anoymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Works Publishing Co., 1939, ch. 5.

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labors... Then surely it is braver, a saner and truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

Roger Casement

More information about this quote

Topic

Resisting authority Revolution

Speaker

Roger Casement

Source

King's Bench. R vs Casement

Medium

Courtroom speech Speech

Language

English

Time

1917 1910s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Casement, Roger. King's Bench. R vs Casement [1017] KB 98, 134. 29 June 1916.

When I communicate my thought and my sentiments to a friend with whom I am in full sympathy, so that my feelings pass into him and I am conscious of what he feels, do I not live in his brain as well as in my own-most literally!

Charles Sanders Peirce

More information about this quote

Topic

Communication Connecting with others Friendship

Author

Charles Sanders Peirce

Genre

Philosophical literature

Language

English

Time

1966 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Science and Philosophy. Vol. 7, The Belknap Press, 1966, par. 591.

It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

Steven Weinberg

More information about this quote

Topic

The universe

Author

Steven Weinberg

Source

The First Three Minutes

Genre

Scientific literature

Language

English

Time

1977 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. Basic Books, 1977, epilogue.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

Edward Hoagland

More information about this quote

Topic

Man and animals

Author

Edward Hoagland

Source

Harper's Magazine

Medium

Magazine

Language

English

Time

1975 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Hoagland, Edward. "The Tug of Life at the End of the Leash." Harpers Magazine, Feb. 1975.

Buildings will collapse, power plants will stop generating electricity. Generals will drop atomic bombs on their own populations. Mad revolutionaries will run in the streets, crying fantastic slogans. I have often thought that it would begin in New York. This metropolis has all the symptoms of a mind gone berserk.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

The New Yorker

More information about this quote

Topic

End of the world New York City

Author

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Source

The Cafeteria The New Yorker

Medium

Short story Magazine

Language

English

Time

1968 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Singer, Isaac Bashevis. "The Cafeteria." The New Yorker, 28 Dec. 1968.

We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

Vernor Vinge

More information about this quote

Topic

Artificial intelligence Technological progress

Speaker

Vernor Vinge

Medium

Speech

Language

English

Time

1993 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Vinge, Vernor. "Technological Singularity." VISION-21 Symposium. 30 Mar. 1993 - 31 Mar. 1993, NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, OH, USA. Speech.

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

Enoch Powell

More information about this quote

Topic

Politicians Politics

Author

Enoch Powell

Language

English

Time

1977 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Powell, Enoch. Joseph Chamberlain. Thames and Hudson, 1977.

I think continually of those who were truly great... The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Stephen Spender

More information about this quote

Topic

Greatness

Author

Stephen Spender

Source

The Truly Great

Medium

Poem

Language

English

Time

1955 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Spender, Stephen. "I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great." Poems. Faber and Faber, 1933.

Business is built by men who care-care enough to disagree, fight it out to a finish, get facts. When two men always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

William Wrigley Jr.

More information about this quote

Topic

Building a business Business

Speaker

William Wrigley Jr.

Source

The American Magazine

Medium

Interview Magazine

Language

English

Time

1931 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 0

Citation

Wrigley, William Jr. "Spunk Never Cost Man a Job Worth Having." Interviewed by Neil M. Clark. The American Magazine, Mar. 1931.

It is... Time to get back to basics: to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on the state.

John Major

More information about this quote

Topic

Personal responsibility Politics

Author

John Major

Medium

Speech

Genre

Political speech

Language

English

Time

1993 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 0

Citation

Major, John. Speech at the Conservative Party Conference. Conservative Pary Conference. 8 Oct. 1993, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK.