Cultural Renaissance Quotes

Modernism in Vienna brought together science and culture in a new way to create an Age of Insight that emphasized a more complex view of the human mind than had ever existed before.

A day will come when the nationalists will find themselves the only defenders of Islam. They will have to give a special meaning to it if they want the Arab nation to have a good reason for survival.

Throughout history, cities have been associated with incredible bursts of creative energy - the Renaissance in Florence, or modernism in Paris. London is the cultural metropolis of the early 21st century.

Over the last 15 years or so, Manchester has undergone huge transformation - from a city in decline and on its knees to one that is growing, vibrant and confident.

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

I want to be a Renaissance woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I want to just do everything.

Out of the ashes of the Great War came the freewheeling cultural renaissance that was the Jazz Age, but the decade-long party of flapper dresses and bootlegging came to a crashing halt with the Crash of '29 - triggering the Great Depression and the New Deal that would help America get back on its feet, just in time for another, greater war.

There used to be a lot of industry in Montreal, and now there's not, so it's really easy to get huge, empty spaces where you can practice and make music or make art for very, very cheap.

Culture in America and everywhere else comes from the suffering, from those who don't want the old ways. They want to bring in the new, whether it's the ballet, when it started, or Shakespeare.

I think '60s are appealing to creative people, because it seemed to be a time of endless possibilities, when the boundaries of what could be considered popular culture were being expanded almost by the week. It doesn't feel like that anymore. At times, I wish it were so. Radio is a perfect example; good God, I mean, back then the most interesting songs were also hits, and that's just not true anymore. It hasn't been true in a long time.

India is now changing and regaining its lustre, and it is coming of age.

We moved, and there was a golden era in the '40s when we were so conscious of who we were as Australians.

Detroit is right now a new Mecca for Hip Hop.

I would certainly never consider myself a Renaissance Man; I'm not fit to look at the dust from the chariot wheels of many of those who have gone before me.

The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands.

The fact that Newark is having poetry festivals and peace conferences - all of these things are building an undeniable thesis that our city is making incredible strides forward.

Every movement that slays its gods creates new ones, of course. I loathe talk of the sixties and seventies being a 'Greatest Generation' of artists, but if we're going to use such idiotic appellations, let this one also be applied to the artists, curators, and gallerists who emerged in the first half of the nineties.

Readers transform a library from a mausoleum into many theaters.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

When I first started coming to New York in the early Nineties and seeing the vitality of the programme compared to what was going on back in London or Paris, it was just in a different league. It's like a 16th-century court.

Latin America seemed to be a land where there were only dictators, revolutionaries, catastrophes. Now we know that Latin America can produce also artists, musicians, painters, thinkers, and novelists.

The '70s were full of creativity. Everybody was so unique. It was a very creative period, and I think to be a designer you have to know a little about art and literature and music because there is inspiration in all of these things. You're looking for beauty but also something that makes sense.

When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.

A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity.

Cultural transformation announces itself in sputtering fits and starts, sparked here and there by minor incidents, warmed by new ideas that may smolder for decades. In many different places, at different times, the kindling is laid for the real conflagration-the one that will consume the old landmarks and alter the landscape forever.