No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times. — Martha Graham
Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time. — Voltaire
It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now — William Makepeace Thackeray
All great music is contemporary. If it's still alive and kicking, then it's contemporary. If it fades away, it was a period piece. It had its moment, and that was it. — Steve Reich
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well. — Elias Canetti
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living. — Thomas Hobbes
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these. — Ovid
Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it. — Le Corbusier
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have. — Abraham Lincoln
This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants. — David Foster Wallace
I'm alive today, therefore I'm just as much a part of our time as everybody else. The times will just have to enlarge themselves to make room for me, won't they, and for everybody else. — Stevie Smith
A contemporary artist can use the findings of all epochs and all styles, from the most primitive literary expressions up to the most refined products of the baroque. — Juan Goytisolo
The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated into a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap. — Spiro T. Agnew
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends. — Joseph Conrad
Short Contemporaries Quotes
If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover
Learn from the masters, learn from your contemporaries. Always try to update yourself. — James Stewart
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy
The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise. — Kenny G
I especially like to collect contemporary art. — Yusaku Maezawa
Do I think all contemporary Christian music is good? No. — Amy Grant
Since 1985, I have written about contemporary Jewish practice and the Jewish community. — Anita Diament
We've had the Iron Age, the Stone Age, this is the pissin' about age. — Karl Pilkington
Contemporary literature in the West has shown some signs of ethical change. — Lafcadio Hearn
There is no new wave, only the sea. — Claude Chabrol
Contemporaries Image Quotes
Contemporary Inspirational Quotes
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. — William Faulkner
I listen to both oldies and contemporary stations. I enjoy listening to current stuff because there's an energy to it that's inspiring. — Carole King
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. — Albert Einstein
All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind. — Adlai E. Stevenson
Ultimately our claim to know the one God only gains credence in the contemporary world as he demonstrates the divine presence through the way we live- through our lives as we connect our Christian belief with true Christian living. — Stanley J. Grenz
I'm inspired heavily by film influences - David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Pedro Almodóvar, and what I see in the cinema - so there is a linking, an interweaving between memory, cinema and contemporary life, which the women in my pictures encapsulate. — Miles Aldridge
For inspiration you go to the archives, you go to things of the past, but you still need to be contemporary for today. You can never forget the time you're living in because the past is the past and it will never come back. — Nicki Minaj
Fashion has always been nourished by the past. At the end of the day, where the inspiration comes from doesn't matter. It's what you do with it. How you treat it, how you translate it into a contemporary wardrobe. You put it in a shaker. — Christophe Lemaitre
Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there's no shame in raiding the headlines. It's necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points. — Carl Hiaasen
I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour. — Edgar Degas
Contemporary Art Quotes
My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society. — Herbert Bayer
The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren
Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine
For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow! — Victor Pinchuk
I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation. — Yusaku Maezawa
I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity. — Cindy Sherman
New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt
I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture. So I started to think about how to compare manga to contemporary art. — Takashi Murakami
Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom. — Eli Broad
In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles... Contemporary or postmodernist art... will involve the necessary failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the imprisonment in the past. — Fredric Jameson
Contemporary Life Quotes
To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life -- not existing forms of dance. — Pina Bausch
One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that. — Joseph Campbell
I don't see boundaries between styles, such as modern or contemporary. I've collected each piece from a different experience or period of my life. — Carlos Miele
Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am? — June Jordan
It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common. — Sam Shepard
Jesus is not a memory. He is an actual, contemporary, reachable Person. He is the living Christ, who has the power to enter into people's lives and change and lift them up. — Norman Vincent Peale
The most difficult problems are naturally not involved in the search for forms for contemporary life. It is a question of working our way to forms behind which real human values lie. — Alvar Aalto
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions... What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life... in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. — Asger Jorn
Readers need to see themselves between the lines of the story. — Karen Kingsbury
I am making an Enlightenment Capsule for the audience to meditate inside - virtual reality in which people can experience ancient ideas from the East... But I'm not interested in using ancient things; rather I want to connect them with contemporary life through the technology we have now. — Mariko Mori
Contemporary Society Quotes
In our contemporary society, one so over-inundated with imagery, it is easy to overlook the power of a single frame to change the way we look at the world, or rally disparate hearts to a single cause. Yet, ours is a society shaped by this very phenomenon. — Steve McCurry
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman. — Boris Pasternak
People see their own lives as stories; a lifelong story with a single hero or heroine... much contemporary unhappiness is due to the fact that people in high tech societies receive neither strong myths and stories from their culture nor the ability to construct their own... they lose the plot. — Guy Claxton
One of those blocks (that prevent the 'Middle East from entering the mainstream of modernity') is the orthodox tenet that the Koran and the scriptures contain all the knowledge required to deal with the problems of contemporary society. — Arnold Beichman
Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen. — Lauren DeStefano
The more we study the early Church, the more we realize that it was a society of ministers. About the only similarity between the Church at Corinth and a contemporary congregation, either Roman Catholic or Protestant, is that both are marked, to a great degree, by the presence of sinners. — D. Elton Trueblood
We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like. — Richard J. Foster
... while in theory digital technology entails the flawless replication of data, its actual use in contemporary society is characterized by the loss of data, degradation, and noise; the noise which is even stronger than that of traditional photography. — Lev Manovich
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Contemporary art will help me to modernise our society. — Victor Pinchuk
Contemporary Music Quotes
Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics. — Michael Eric Dyson
Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music. — Ryan Tedder
I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum. — Wynton Marsalis
I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff. — Eberhard Weber
Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice — Greil Marcus
I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art. — Damien Hirst
I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera. — Trevor Nunn
Underground electronic music is art - fundamentally it's based on contemporary art, culture, dance, and real music. If you look at EDM, how many of those cultural standpoints are the same? — Seth Troxler
Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred. — George Crumb
We live in a modern world, and in contemporary music the central fact is contamination. Not the contamination of disease but the contamination of musical styles. If you find this in me, that is good. — Ennio Morricone
Contemporary Christian Quotes
A great reformation and revival-it will happen the same way the early Christians conquered Rome. Their program of conquest consisted largely of two elements: gospel preaching and being eaten by lions, a strategy that has not yet captured the imagination of the the contemporary church. — Douglas Wilson
To be a Christian is to be a theologian-a student of God and his will. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church. — R. C. Sproul
The best proof that Christ has risen is that he is still alive. And for the immense majority of our contemporaries, the only way of seeing him alive is for us Christians to love one another. — Louis Evely
The contemporary Christian mind is starved, and as a result we have small, impoverished souls. — J.P. Moreland
The contemporary quarrel over church and state is not really about whether a wall of separation of church and state should exist or not... The real question is what does 'separation' mean? — James Davison Hunter
Rabbi Kushner writes from a wealth of Jewish wisdom and pastoral devotion, but his theology is, I find, is wholly in keeping with contemporary Christian thought. So far as there is an answer to the conflict between the goodness of God and the bitterness of suffering, this is it — Gerald Priestland
It is only when all our Christian ancestors are allowed to become our contemporaries that the real splendor of the Christian faith and the Christian life begins to dawn upon us. — Lynn Harold Hough
What really concerns me is for Christians to understand the fundamentals of evangelism in a way that is helpful in the contemporary scene. — Mark Dever
The overwhelming emphasis of contemporary Christianity: "Just do it." The overwhelming emphasis of Biblical Christianity: "It is finished" — Tullian Tchividjian
In grades 1 through 4 these books introduce the child to U.S. society - to family life, community activities, ordinary economic transactions, and some history. None of the books covering grades 1 through 4 contain one word referring to any religious activity in contemporary American life. — Paul Vitz
Contemporary Literature Quotes
What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real. — George Bernard Shaw
The most prevalent poetic representation of contemporary experience is the mimesis of disorientation by non sequitor. — Tony Hoagland
The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it. — Gertrude Stein
Even though what I enjoy most is literature, I would not want to live only in a world of fiction, cut off from the rest of life. No - I want to always have a foot in the street, to be inmersed in the activities of my contemporaries, in the times, in the place where I live. — Mario Vargas Llosa
I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into. — Jonathan Frakes
Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger. — Michael N. Castle
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. — Arthur Conan Doyle
Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary. — Toni Morrison
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete. — Taiye Selasi
Contemporary Fiction Quotes
Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book. — Ron Rash
Going back to the noir fiction of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's very contemporary. — Jeff Goldblum
A political philosophy (often called "political science" by practitioners who are not averse from verbal trickery) must deal with contemporary realities. If it does not, if it is charged with "ideals," it is merely a variety of romantic fiction, although it may not be recognized as such. — Revilo P. Oliver
Arnošt Lustig is one of the leading contemporary Czech fiction writers, and certainly the most important Jewish writer of Bohemia to have survived the Holocaust. — Josef Skvorecky
I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up. — Jessica Hagedorn
The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what's going on in contemporary fiction - not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum. — Lev Grossman
Gaston Milhaud, like many of his contemporaries, sought to overthrow empirical positivism by insisting on the fundamental reality of the mind, but mind conceived in the Kantian sense. The knowledge of nature is symbolic, and there is no necessary connection between the phenomena and our fictions. — Fulton J. Sheen
Novels, except as aids to masturbation, play no part in contemporary life. — Gore Vidal
I'm always interested in contemporary fiction. — Kenneth Branagh
I can be very snobby about fiction, especially contemporary fiction. I can be kind of overly demanding, I think. But this is, I think, a good time. A lot of fiction comes out right now. So, I like reading the memoir. I love memoir, the biography, auto bio. — Annette Bening
He who finds a new path is a pathfinder, even if the trail has to be found again by others; and he who walks far ahead of his contemporaries is a leader, even though centuries pass before he is recognized as such. — Ibn Khaldun
Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots. — I. M. Pei
Being and stability are regarded by our contemporaries as akin to death; they cannot live unless they act, fret, or distract themselves with this or that. Their spirit (provided we can still talk about a spirit in their case) feeds only on sensations and on dynamism, thus becoming the vehicle for the incarnation of darker forces. — Julius Evola
The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue. — Arnold J. Toynbee
If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave. — Eckhart Tolle
Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval. — Naval Ravikant
One cannot set out to make a work that's spiritual. What is a contemporary iconography for the spiritual? Is it some fuzzy space? — Anish Kapoor
To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. — Marshall Berman
Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment. Here we have the first internal inconsistency of contemporary atheism: it proclaims that all religion must necessarily vanish away, and it is itself a religious phenomenon. — Jacques Maritain
The physical realities that underpin national and international politics are too often disregarded in both history and contemporary world affairs. — Tim Marshall
I consulted a Chinese herbalist and spent two weeks on an island off the coast of Zanzibar. I was away from any kind of contemporary technology. — Francesca Annis
Indeed, the great Leonardo (da Vinci) remained like a child for the whole of his life in more than one way. It is said that all great men are bound to retain some infantile part. Even as an adult he continued to play, and this was another reason why he often appeared uncanny and incomprehensible to his contemporaries. — Sigmund Freud
Contemporary ramen is totally different than what most Americans think ramen should be. Ramen is not one thing; there are many, many different types. — David Chang
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosevic
A great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it. — Dallas Willard
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosević
Today's terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization. — Jean Baudrillard
If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education. — Paul Lockhart
Those who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands...Contemporariness, then, is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disconnection. — Giorgio Agamben
It is time to cease to argue about God , and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry. — Erich Fromm
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In Conclusion
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