1940s

Explore 416 quotes from the 1940s

Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and that's all any man's got a right to say.

The Grapes of Wrath

Watch The Grapes of Wrath at Amazon Watch The Grapes of Wrath at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Judging others Moral relativism Morality

Speaker

Jim Casy

Actor

John Carradine

Source

The Grapes of Wrath

Medium

Film

Genre

Drama (film) Drama

Language

English

Time

1940 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

The Grapes of Wrath. Directed by John Ford. 20th Century Fox, 1940.

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man-there has never been such another... Who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us", or "The ladies, God bless them!"

Dorothy L. Sayers

More information about this quote

Topic

Patriarchy Gender relations Women

Author

Dorothy L. Sayers

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1946 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Sayers, Dorothy. "The Human-Not-Quite-Human." Unpopular Opinions. Victor Gollancz, 1946.

All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation... Of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.

E.B. White

Here is New York

Buy Here is New York at Amazon Buy Here is New York at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

New York City Nuclear holocaust

Author

E.B. White

Source

Here is New York

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1949 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

White, E. B and Roger Angell. Here is New York. Harper & Brothers, 1949.

In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.

Joseph Schumpeter

More information about this quote

Topic

Marxism

Author

Joseph Schumpeter

Genre

Economic literature Historical literature

Language

English

Time

1942 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Harper & Brothers, 1942, pt. 1, ch. 1.

It did not take atomic weapons to make man want peace, a peace that would last. But the atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It has made the prospect of future war unendurable.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

More information about this quote

Topic

Nuclear weapons

Speaker

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Source

The Atomic Bomb and College Education

Medium

Speech

Genre

Commencement address

Language

English

Time

1946 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert. "The Atomic Bomb and College Education." Commencement ceremony. 28 Feb. 1946, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life-blood of real civilization.

G.M. Trevelyan

More information about this quote

Topic

Curiosity Progress

Author

G.M. Trevelyan

Source

English Social History

Genre

Historical literature

Language

English

Time

1942 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Trevelyan, George Macaulay. English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries Chaucer to Queen Victoria. Longmans, Green and Company, 1942, introduction.

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhautible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

Joseph Campbell (writer)

Buy The Hero with a Thousand Faces at Amazon Buy The Hero with a Thousand Faces at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Myth

Author

Joseph Campbell (writer)

Source

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Genre

Sociology

Statement Type

Definition

Language

English

Time

1949 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon Books, 1949, prologue.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac

Buy A Sand County Almanac at Amazon Buy A Sand County Almanac at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Moral theory Environmental protection

Author

Aldo Leopold

Source

A Sand County Almanac

Medium

Essay

Genre

Nature writing

Language

English

Time

1949 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Leopold, Aldo. "The Land Ethic." A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, 1949.

Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind.

George Gaylord Simpson

More information about this quote

Topic

Human origins Nature of man Evolution

Author

George Gaylord Simpson

Source

The Meaning Of Evolution

Language

English

Time

1949 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Simpson, George Gaylord. The Meaning of Evolution. Yale University Press, 1949, epilogue.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong.

Elizabeth II

More information about this quote

Topic

British empire

Speaker

Elizabeth II

Medium

Radio broadcast Speech

Statement Type

Promises and vows

Language

English

Time

1947 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Elizabeth II. Speech on her twenty-first birthday. 21 Apr. 1947, Cape Town, South Africa, Africa. Radio broadcast.

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.

Max Beerbohm

From Bloomsbury to Baywater

More information about this quote

Topic

Trying new things

Author

Max Beerbohm

Source

From Bloomsbury to Baywater

Language

English

Time

1946 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Beerbohm, Max. "From Bloomsbury to Baywater." Mainly on the Air. William Heinemann, 1946. Originally published in World Review of Reviews, Aug. 1940.

If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.

Robert H. Jackson

More information about this quote

Topic

The Holocaust Accountability

Speaker

Robert H. Jackson

Medium

Courtroom speech Speech

Language

English

Time

1946 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Jackson, Robert H. Summation for the prosecution. Nuremberg Trials. 26 July 1946, Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, Germany.

The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for.

William Cuppy

More information about this quote

Topic

Extinction Animals

Author

William Cuppy

Language

English

Time

1941 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Cuppy, William. "The Dodo." How to Become Extinct. Farrar & Rinehart, 1941.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Robert H. Jackson

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

Read this opinion at supreme.justia.com.

More information about this quote

Topic

Dissent Freedom of thought Constitutional law

Author

Robert H. Jackson

Source

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

Medium

Supreme Court opinion Legal opinion

Genre

Legal writing

Language

English

Time

1943 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 2

Citation

Jackson, Robert H. United States, Supreme Court. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. United States Reports, vol. 319, 14 June 1943, pp. 624-671. Justia, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/319/624/.

I do not know why the necessity of God
Should feed on grief; but it seems so.

Christopher Fry

More information about this quote

Topic

Need of God Grief

Speaker

Moses

Author

Christopher Fry

Source

The Firstborn

Medium

Play

Language

English

Time

1946 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Fry, Christopher. The Firstborn. Cambridge University Press, 1946, act 3, sc. 2.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.

Dorothy L. Sayers

More information about this quote

Topic

Advertising and marketing Consumerism

Author

Dorothy L. Sayers

Source

Creed or Chaos?

Language

English

Time

1947 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Sayers, Dorothy. Creed or Chaos? Methuen & Co., 1947, ch. 6.

Private property is a natural fruit of labor, a product of intense activity of man, acquired trough his energetic determination to ensure and develop with his own strength his own existence and that of his family, and to create for himself and his own an existence of just freedom, not only economic, but also political, cultural and religious.

Pope Pius XII

More information about this quote

Topic

Property rights

Speaker

Pope Pius XII

Medium

Radio broadcast Speech

Language

Italian

Time

1944 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Pope Pius XII. "Radiomessaggio di su Santita Pio XII Nel V Anniversario Dall'inizio della Guerra Mondiale [Radio Message from His Holiness Pius XII on the Fifth Anniversary of the Beginning of the World War]." Federal Communications Commission. 1 Sept. 1944, Vatican City, Rome, Italy.

The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.

William Ralph Inge

More information about this quote

Topic

Forces of history History Boredom

Author

William Ralph Inge

Source

End of an Age

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1948 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Inge, William Ralph. The End of an Age and Other Essays. Putnam, 1948, ch. 6.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

Christopher Dawson

More information about this quote

Topic

End justifies the means Justifications and rationales

Author

Christopher Dawson

Source

The Judgment of the Nations

Genre

Historical literature

Language

English

Time

1942 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Dawson, Christopher. The Judgment of the Nations. Sheed & Ward, 1942, pt. 1, ch. 1.

In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school-
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."

Randall Jarrell

More information about this quote

Topic

Razing cities World War II War

Author

Randall Jarrell

Source

Losses

Medium

Poem

Genre

War poetry

Language

English

Time

1948 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Jarrell, Randall. Losses. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948, I. 22.