17th Century Quotes:

From the early days of European migration to America, in the 17th Century, the prototype of buildings was based on English precedent, even if mostly translated into the locally available material in abundance: timber.

- Harry Seidler

topic: America, Migration, Abundance, 17th Century, Timber

Each of us have things and thoughts and descriptions of an amazing universe in our possession that kings in the 17th Century would have gone to war to possess.

- Kary Mullis

topic: Kings, War, Gone, 17th Century

Borne out of this, starting around the 17th Century was the Baroque era. It is my view that it is one of the architectural peak periods in western civilisation.

- Harry Seidler

topic: Views, Starting Over, Eras, Civilisation, 17th Century

The data, however, do indicate that Christians who see Jews through a 17th-century lens, believing that most are thoroughly religious, are thoroughly wrong.

- Marvin Olasky

topic: Christian, Religious, Believe, 17th Century

I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera.

- Cecilia Bartoli

topic: Opera, Classic, Century, 17th Century, Baroque

I would love to do a period piece - in the 18th or 17th century. To me, it would be such an incredible challenge because of the way people carried themselves. There are so many incredible stories within those centuries - just the language and the way they carried themselves and what they were going through.

- Amy Smart

source: "Interview: Amy Smart" by Vicki Hogarth, www.askmen.com.

topic: People, Challenges, Way, 17th Century

Modernity is the ensemble of changes - intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, aesthetic - that have altered the world drastically since roughly the 17th century, until which time the world was, in the above respects, far less different from the world of any previous epoch of recorded history than it is from the world of today. The modern predicament is the set of problems these changes have bequeathed us.

- George Scialabba

source: Source: thenewinquiry.com

topic: Political, Intellectual, Different, Modernity, 17th Century

Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church.

- Edgar Mitchell

source: Source: www.edgemagazine.net

topic: Reality, People, Mind, Inquisition, 17th Century

Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.

- Fritjof Capra

topic: Men, Obsession, Obsessed, 17th Century

Order can arise from chaos without anyone or anything directing the process when unstable combinations of atoms perish and others persist. In the 17th century, Descartes applied this insight to cosmology, and long before Darwin presented his more rigorous ideas about variation and selection, people began to speculate more openly about the origins of life and the species in Epicurean terms.

- Catherine Wilson

source: Source: www.3ammagazine.com

topic: Origin Of Life, Order, Ideas, 17th Century, Epicurean

What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world.

- Asra Nomani

source: "The Case Against Wearing Hijab To Support Muslim Women". "All Things Considered" with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. December 22, 2015.

topic: Religious, Government, Iran, Theocracy, 17th Century

17th century philosophers were not in a position to understand the mind as well as we can today, since the advent of experimental methods in psychology. It shows no disrespect for the brilliance of Descartes or Kant to acknowledge that the psychology which they worked with was primitive by comparison with what is available today in the cognitive sciences, any more than it shows disrespect for the brilliance of Aristotle to acknowledge that the physics he worked with does not compare with that of Newton or Einstein.

- Hilary Kornblith

source: Source: www.3ammagazine.com

topic: Psychology, Disrespect, Mind, 17th Century, Cognitive Science

The spirit must be freed from tethers so strong and feelings never put to rest, so that the lift of life may give buoyancy to the soul. In many families, there are hurt feelings and a reluctance to forgive. It doesn’t really matter what the issue was. It cannot and should not be left to injure. Blame keeps wounds open. Only forgiveness heals. George Herbert, an early 17th-century poet, wrote these lines: ‘He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven, for everyone has need of forgiveness.’

- Thomas S. Monson

topic: Strong, Hurt, Bridges, Buoyancy, 17th Century

Technologically I live in the 17th century. I have a very simple cell phone. I say I live through the kindness of strangers, because if they see something on the Net they type it out and send it to me.

- Iris Apfel

source: Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

topic: Kindness, Simple, Phones, Cellphone, 17th Century

Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

topic: Ignorance, Two, Scripture, 17th Century

Recently I was reading somewhere or other an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. Inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion.

- George Orwell

source: George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

topic: Christian, Reading, Italian, Stilettos, 17th Century

[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child's duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.

- C. Sommerville

topic: Children, Commitment, Self, 17th Century

Religion is a practical discipline and in the 17th century in the West, we turned it onto a head trip. But it's like dancing, or swimming, or driving, which you can't learn by texts. You have to get into the car and learn how to manipulate the vehicle.

- Karen Armstrong

source: Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

topic: Swimming, Car, Discipline, 17th Century, Homo Sapiens

Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

- Aaron Zigman

topic: Break, Century, Rachmaninoff, 17th Century, Stravinsky

I'd share a pic if the digital camera battery wasn't as flat as 17th century Earth.

- Simon Haynes

topic: Technology, Batteries, Earth, 17th Century, Digital Cameras

Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can't wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but heaven has to step it up a bit. They're basically getting by because they only have to be better than hell.

- Joel Stein

topic: Clouds, Blue, Sky, Luxury Hotels, 17th Century

Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.

- Charles Duhigg

topic: Risk, Experts, Agents, Insurance Agent, 17th Century

You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.

- Eric Hoffer

topic: Talking, America, Gauges, 17th Century

I think we as Americans know there's a much better alternative than the 17th century practice of burning rocks to power our economy.

- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

topic: Thinking, Rocks, Practice, 17th Century

The technologies for the alternative energy sources exists today. The economics are compelling. The public health is compelling. Why would we maintain a focus on a 17th-century technology, when there are 21st-century alternatives that are both necessary and available? And the answer is the subversion of democracy.

- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

topic: Technology, Focus, Democracy, 17th Century, Energy Sources

Yes, I would agree that America, just like Spain was in the 17th Century, is the main empire of the world and they are the ones who, on the surface, are the most pushy: pushing their language, pushing their culture - or what there is of it - pushing by force their system on others.

- Viggo Mortensen

topic: America, Spain, Culture, 17th Century, Pushy

Literate households in the 17th century would have had the Bible, John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a couple of other books. Shakespeare plays were cheap, so you could buy those, but a folio cost a pound, which was an incredible amount of money then.

- Stephen Greenblatt

source: Source: www.bostonglobe.com

topic: Couple, Book, Play, Shakespeare Play, 17th Century

I'm from Holland and the history of "Admiral" is something you would read about when you're at school. Nobody knows about these stories and when you go to any museum in Holland, you will see these paintings of these 17th century sea beckels that the Dutch were in to, so it always intrigued me.

- Roel Reine

topic: School, Museums, Sea, 17th Century, Admiral

Aristotle saw nature as intelligent and purposive, whereas for the Epicureans, and the 17th century 'mechanical' philosophers, there is no intentionality in nature except where there are animal minds and bodies.

- Catherine Wilson

source: Source: www.3ammagazine.com

topic: Animal, Intelligent, Mind, Intentionality, 17th Century

The word crap is actually another word that's very, very old. It was taken over from 17th century England by the pilgrim fathers and Americans were talking about things being crap in the 17th and 18th centuries. What Sir Thomas Crapper – complete coincidence – does is not invent the flushing toilet, as many, many people believe, but was a great promoter for it. He ran a business marketing other people's products and that's why his name was on them. When the American soldiers came over in the First World War, they all thought it was hilarious that it said 'crapper' on them.

- Lucy Worsley

topic: War, Father, Believe, Flushing, 17th Century

One of my favorite writers is Michel de Montaigne. My wife gave me a beautiful 17th-century edition of Montaigne's essays translated by John Florio. That's probably my most precious possession.

- Stephen Greenblatt

source: Source: www.bostonglobe.com

topic: 17th Century, Essays, Precious Possessions