"If the West is heading toward some kind of crisis, it’s worth asking ourselves a few basic questions. Modern society as we normally define it—a secular culture built around tolerance, reason, and democratic values—occupies a rather small portion of the world, and there are signs that it is shrinking. Is modernity the inexorable force of progress that we tend to assume? Is it a mere moment of human history that is fast fading? If it is something to value, how can we rediscover it, separate the good and the bad in it, make it relevant and vital?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Non-fiction authors from the United StatesJournalists from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesCritics from the United StatesPeople from Pennsylvania
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Preface (p. xix)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Russell_Shorto
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Russell Shorto
5 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Russell Shorto →
Related Quotes
"Modesty was not a condition from which Descartes suffered."
"The irony is that in shifting the focus onto the individual human mind, which everyone agrees can be a pretty flimsy …"
"“Death,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, “is not an event in life.” He meant, maybe (for it’s hard to…"
"The situation in biology was particularly complex. Biologists craved the sort of base principles that Newton had deve…"
"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge …"
"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on …"
"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libat…"
"The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language."
"Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a v…"
"The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, cons…"