A Quote by C. J. Chivers

Without question the AK-47 was a remarkable invention, and not just because it works so well, or because it changed how wars are fought, or because it proved to be one of the most important products of the 20th century.

C. J. Chivers

Quote Topics

Because Century Changed Fought How Important Invention Just Just Be Just Because Most Products Proved Question Remarkable The Most Important Wars Well Without Works

Quote Author

C. J. Chivers
American - Journalist
Born: 1964

The fact that people die because of an AK-47 is not because of the designer, but because of politics.

Mikhail Kalashnikov

Just because a lot of people know something nominal doesn't make it important. A lot of people know what a pencil sharpener is, but that doesn't make it the most important invention of the 20th century.

Ben Affleck

The reason why the Wright brothers were successful wasn't because they had the most resources, but because they understood how invention works. You have to iterate quickly, and you should be prepared to fail. Because things often don't go as planned.

Boyan Slat

I was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's simply no question about it. I mean, if you're going to compare him to somebody, it's Shakespeare in terms of centrality of the tradition, in being at the beginning of it.

Terry Teachout

I think I already proved that I wasn't just fighting for the money, because I fought as an amateur. I fought 90 fights for free.

Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

In fact, the 20th century I think was the most fascinating century and the whole of man civilization because so much happened.

Joan Collins

[It's] troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that's often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

Jonah Lehrer

E.U. need to be nurtured and cultivated and protected and fought for because the achievements that we've seen on this continent, in contrast to a divided Europe of the previous century, are ones that remind us of how important it is that we work together.

Barack Obama

Out of all the isms, movements and manifestos of the 20th century, it was the Dadaists who proved the most important - giving birth, not only to a lot of modern art, but also shaping comedy, music and political protest.

Vic Reeves

So many of our wounded warriors from today's wars are alive not just because of remarkable advances in technology, but primarily because of the extraordinary dedication and skill of our military and our VA medical professionals.

Kyle Carpenter

I oftentimes receive the question, "What do you think is the most important social issue to focus on?" Or, "What's the most important component of identity? Is it gay rights or race or feminism?" And I'm like, "Well, they're all intertwined. It's all one conversation at the end of the day. You can't just pick one." I mean, people experience all kinds of prejudice because of all different parts of themselves. And that doesn't make one part more important than the other.

Amandla Stenberg

Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20th century, we kids fought it every Fourth of July not only with exploding powder and shimmering flares, but with all of our senses.

Paul Engle

More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.

Nicholas D. Kristof

Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention...All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.

Dmitri Shostakovich

I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.