Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World Quotes

“He constantly modified and updated his thinking, so that each of the three Critiques is a further development of his thought.”
― Stephen Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World

“I will never forget my mother, for she implanted and nurtured in me the first germ of goodness; she opened my heart to the impressions of nature; she awakened and furthered my concepts, and her doctrines have had a continual and beneficial influence in my life’.”
― Stephen Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World

“Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance, nevertheless gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians.”
― Stephen Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World

“However, the work of those scientists is highly relevant for philosophers, since it gives rise to questions that philosophers are uniquely qualified to phrase and to answer. The single most important question that psychology raises for philosophers is a fundamental one that has been with us from the time immemorial: is the mind merely a bundle of nerves and vessels charged with electricity and driven by complex chemicals? Or is it something else, the final mystery, the invisible, indivisible, undefinable essence of humanity?”
― Stephen Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World

“As the Nazi persecution of the Jews began in Germany in 1933, preparing the ground for the horrors of the Second World War, both the United States and Britain benefitted from the arrival on their shores of philosophers and scientists fleeing for their lives. Eventually, the United States would be the first nation to develop a nuclear weapon using the science brought there by German refugees, including Albert Einstein (1879–1955). When the war was over and the US and Soviet victors moved in to cherry pick the best Nazi scientists to come and work for them, the United States got Wernhervon Braun (1912–77). Braun was the physicist and rocket designer who created the deadly long-range V-2 rocket that rained death and destruction on London. But he was not merely a rocket designer; he was also a member of the Nazi Party and an SS officer. The Americans grabbed him before the Soviets could, giving them the edge in ballistic missiles with which to project thermonuclear weapons at targets several thousand miles away. Braun was responsible for the rocket science that made the United States the first nation to put a man on the moon.”
― Stephen Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World

“The price of totalitarianism With the establishment of totalitarian regimes in Russia and Germany, intellectuals in those countries found themselves in danger. Their role was often simply to agree with a system that was both morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest.”
― Stephen Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World