Contemporary Context Quotes

One who uses an ancient rule to govern the present does not necessarily see the changes that have taken place.

There's no recreating what Michael Jackson and Diana Ross did in 'The Wiz'. We're trying to figure out who these characters are in 2015. How would these times change their motives, change the things they would say and do?

Our interest in history always reflects our own times.

I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.

The political biographies most popular in the modern era often tell us less about their subjects than about the moment in which the books themselves are published.

Religious laws should be interpreted according to this era's circumstances … Benefit from the modern laws of other nations and cultures

That has been everybody's challenge, above the dancing, the singing, the lines: getting into who these characters would be in 2015. Today's Tin Man is heartfelt, but he wouldn't be soft. Today's Dorothy would be sassy.

Nerds are running the world. Andrew Garfield made a movie [called “The Social Network”] about it. Nerds are no longer pariahs and knowing how to write computer code is longer a [mocked] quality. What was important in those early comics was this notion that Peter Parker is an outsider and how we define that in a contemporary context. That, I think, was one of the challenges for us — getting Peter Parker’s outsider status to be current.

What can realistically be done depends on the historical moment. The same is true with regard to the agents.

The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable inall ages.... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only sort of man who writes about all people and about all time.

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

It is my interpretation from the Koran that all people have equal rights. That means men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims too, and in a society where all people have equal rights, that means all people should make decisions equally. ... This doesn't mean that we're changing God's law, It just means we're reinterpreting laws according to the development of science — and the realities of the times.

As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz's spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time.

No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms.

Whenever you do a new interpretation of a great, previous text of any kind, you always look for some kind of immediate significance right now.

History is not a blueprint for present practice.

I think a lot of times, the historical piece is often a way to comment on the present.

While history has its limitations in shaping contemporaneous and forward-looking strategic choices, it does shape popular perceptions.

Every age sort of has its own history. History is really the stories that we retell to ourselves to make them relevant to every age. So we put our own values and our own spin on it.

I want to re-mythologize 'The Green Hornet' in a contemporary context, with an emphasis on story and character, while at the same time incorporating themes that speak to my heart.

Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.