Alex Steffen
Alex Steffen

In tough times, some of us see protecting the climate as a luxury, but that's an outdated 20th-century worldview from a time when we thought industrialization was the end goal, waste was growth, and wealth meant a thick haze of air pollution.

Alveda King
Alveda King

As a survivor of the 20th-century Race Wars, my back remains unbent, and I move forward for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all who were created equal in God's eyes.

Anthea Butler
Anthea Butler

Graham promoted a white evangelical respectability that wanted to 'put the brakes' on the civil rights movement, and never really accepted women as equal to men. He may have been the country's greatest evangelist, but he was also an apologist for the racist and sexist beliefs pervasive among white evangelical men in 20th-century America.

Barry Marshall
Barry Marshall

The 20th-century ulcer epidemic was a sign of good health in American people - good diet, strong acidity and healthy immune response actually make ulcers more likely. That's why businessmen eating giant T-bone steaks were prone to ulcers.

Bill Kristol
Bill Kristol

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

Billy Collins
Billy Collins

In the long revolt against inherited forms that has by now become the narrative of 20th-century poetry in English, no poet was more flamboyant or more recognizable in his iconoclasm than Cummings.

Chris Fussell
Chris Fussell

The reality, as the battlefield taught us, is that a 20th-century organizational system is simply insufficient for the speed of the information age.

Christian Scott
Christian Scott

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!

Damon Knight
Damon Knight

As his talent expands, some of his stories become pointed social commentary; some are surprisingly effective religious tracts, disguised as science fiction. Others still are nostalgic vignettes, but under it all is still Bradbury, the poet of 20th-century neurosis.

Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim

I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.