The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Carlyle highlights three pivotal forces that shaped modern society: gunpowder for warfare, printing for communication, and Protestantism for faith.
In this quote, Thomas Carlyle identifies gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion as key elements that have significantly influenced modern civilization. Gunpowder signifies the advancement of military technology and the impact of war on society; printing represents the spread of knowledge and information, facilitating education and democratizing access to literature; and the Protestant religion symbolizes a major shift in spiritual beliefs, encouraging individualism and reformation in religious practices. Together, these elements underline the interplay between technology, communication, and faith in shaping contemporary life.
Themes
CivilizationGunpowderPrintingReligionModernity
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the impact of technology on society, this quote can illustrate how certain inventions have changed our world.
More from Thomas Carlyle
All quotes βThirty millions, mostly fools.
Thomas CarlyleRead
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Thomas CarlyleRead
For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Similar quotes
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.
EpictetusRead
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
Roland BarthesRead
It was during the Reagan years that defiance of international law and the U.N. Charter became entirely open.
Noam ChomskyRead
I hold it to be the most monstrous proposition ever uttered within the Senate that conquering a country like Mexico, the President can constitute himself a despotic ruler without the slightest limitation on his power. If all this be true, war is indeed dangerous!
John C. CalhounRead
Modesty is the color of virtue.
DiogenesRead