A Quote by Gary Jennings

In the 20th century alone, there have been 1,600 books about the circus. My adding one more would be superfluous unless I do something totally new and different.

Gary Jennings

Quote Topics

About Adding Alone Been Books Century Circus Different More New Something Superfluous Totally Unless Would Would Be

Quote Author

Gary Jennings
American - Author
September 20, 1928 - February 13, 1999

The different American experience of the 20th Century is crucial because the lesson of the century for Europe, which essentially is that the human condition is tragic, led it to have a build a welfare system and a set of laws and social arrangements that are more prophylactic than idealistic. It's not about building perfect futures; it's about preventing terrible pasts. I think that is something that Europeans in the second half of the 20th century knew in their bones and Americans never did, and it's one of the big differences between the two Western cultures.

Tony Judt

I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.

Christine Jennings

You only had widespread literacy and books that people could afford in the middle of the 19th century. Did more people read poetry at the turn of the 20th century when there were about fifty million people?

Robert Hass

The 21st century is significantly different from the 20th century. The old models will not hold anymore. More and more, we are one people on Earth. We need to share our problems.

Haris Pasovic

Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learnt about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost.

Sylvia Earle

I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form.

Sydney Pollack

That's a chapter - the last chapter - of the 20th ... 20th ... the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century.

George W. Bush

When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long.

Willie Nelson

Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years - that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding.

Tino Sehgal

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Ross McKitrick

D-Day represents the greatest achievement of the american people and system in the 20th century. It was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the democracies going to prevail?

Stephen Ambrose

It is my opinion that the 21st century will be the century of play, and the heteroglossic activity of artists in the 20th century has been the forecast.

Brian Sutton-Smith

It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th century. The number of books I've sold runs into untold millions.

Howard Fast

One layer was certainly 17th century. The 18th century in him is obvious. There was the 19th century, and a large slice, of course, of the 20th century; and another, curious layer which may possibly have been the 21st.

Clement Attlee

So many new things have been discovered in the 20th century that now, at the end of the century, we need some kind of synthesis, some musical language which will allow us just to write music.