A Quote by Zbigniew Brzezinski

During the nineteenth century, men died believing in the cause of royalty or republicanism. In reality, much of their sacrifice was rendered on the altar of the new nationalism.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Quote Topics

Altar Believing Cause Century Died Men Much Nationalism New Nineteenth Century Reality Rendered Republicanism Royalty Sacrifice

Quote Author

Zbigniew Brzezinski
American - Politician
March 28, 1928 - May 26, 2017

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

Yann Martel

Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority ... a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State.

Benito Mussolini

In the 19th century it was basically nationality and people trying to define their nationalism and create states which would reflect their nationalism. In the 20th century, ideology came to the fore, largely, but not exclusively, as a result of the Russian Revolution and we have fascism, communism and liberal democracy competing with each other. Well that's pretty much over.

Samuel P. Huntington

It seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and the novel nowadays cannot resemble that of the nineteenth century. In this domain all experiments are justified, and it is better to write something new clumsily than to repeat the old brilliantly. In the nineteenth century, novels dealt with the fate of a person or of a family; this was linked to life in that period. In our time the destinies of people are interwoven. Whether man recognizes it or not, his fate is much more linked to that of many other people than it used to be.

Ilya Ehrenburg

The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth century ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.

Eric Hoffer

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY WAS DUE PRIMARILY TO A NEW BURST OF RELIGIOUS LIFE EMANATING FROM THE CHRISTIAN IMPULSE. . . . NEVER IN ANY CORRESPONDING LENGTH OF TIME HAD THE CHRISTIAN IMPULSE GIVEN RISE TO SO MANY NEW MOVEMENTS. NEVER HAD IT HAD QUITE SO GREAT AN EFFECT UPON WESTERN EUROPEAN PEOPLES. IT WAS FROM THIS ABOUNDING VIGOR THAT THERE ISSUED THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE WHICH DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SO AUGMENTED THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH AND THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Kenneth Scott Latourette

Nineteenth-century English literature I know; 19th-century sewage systems, not so much.

Glen Duncan

Regardless of the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it's a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice.

Tana French

Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.

Arundhati Roy

Nationalism and patriotism are the two most evil forces that I know of in this century or in any century and cause more wars and more death and more destruction to the soul and to human life than anything else.

Oliver Stone

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?

Henry David Thoreau

The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

Emma Goldman

The use of the word royalty, as fee to a proprietor for the exploitation of a work or property, derives from the period when the sovereign assumed title to all wealth of the realm. It was the struggle for freedom from these encroachments of the state that chiefly marked the Nineteenth Century, and established everywhere constitutional regimes of limited authority. In the Twentieth Century, however, we have witnessed a gradual and almost unrestricted movement back to state authoritarianism, primarily in the economic sphere, accompanied by the spread of state monopoly and intervention.

Elgin Groseclose

Most of what I read is for reviewing purposes or related to something I want to write about. It's slightly utilitarian. I definitely miss that sense of being a disinterested reader who's reading purely for the pleasure of imagining his way into emotional situations and vividly realized scenes in nineteenth-century France or late nineteenth-century Russia.