Jeremy Irons Quotes

One can't help but be a bit melancholy when you see how the world has changed, and I don't mean that nostalgically.

The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

Modernization is found in markets.

If England became a world power, it was because of the industrial revolution.

Corporatization is the descendant of industrialization.

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn't just by conquest. It's through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants.

China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it.

Since the end of the Cold War, metropolitan elites everywhere have identified progress and modernity with the cornucopia of global capitalism, the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes and the secular ethic of consumerism.

I like where we're going with technology and global integration, but the fact that corporations and dollars rule everything in our lives, I don't like it. This isn't the Hollywood I wanted to be part of.

In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.

The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

Countries have lost their culture because what they wanted was money. Money became the running theme in every country and culture was sacrificed.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

The dramatic modernization of the Asian economies ranks alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most important developments in economic history.

The selfish spirit of commerce which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draw all, even the most barbarian of nations into civilization.

The main occupation of society has changed from fighting to business, from military to industrial life.

The production of goods had become an end in itself and the consumption of goods only the means to further production.

These days malls are the cathedrals of the modern world, and old buildings that had character are gone to allow for econo-worship and peso-pilgrimages.

The masses in highly industrialized countries like England, the United States, or France are largely de-Christianized. Technology, and the way of life it produces, undermines Christianity far more effectively than do violent measures.

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

We're living through the second Industrial Revolution.