Millennium

A millennium (plural millennia or millenniums) is a period of one thousand years, sometimes called a kiloyear. Sometimes, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting point (initial reference point) of the calendar in consideration (typically the year "1") and at later years that are whole number multiples of a thousand years after the start point. The term can also refer to an interval of time beginning on any date. Millennia sometimes have religious or theological implications.

Quotes

• MILLENNIUM, n. The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Many religions speak of the End of Days. It refers not to the end of the world, but rather the end of our current age – Pisces, which began at the time of Christ’s birth, spanned two thousand years, and waned with the passing of the millennium. Now that we've passed into the Age of Aquarius, the End of Days has arrived.
  • Dan Brown, in The Da Vinci Code (2003).

• There are no maps to lead us where we are going, to this new world of our own making. As the world looks back to nine decades of war, of strife, of suspicion, let us also look forward—to a new century, and a new millennium, of peace, freedom and prosperity.
  • George H. W. Bush made those comments on January 1, 1990. The Watchtower magazine; In Search of a New World Order (July 15, 1991).

• "The whole earth," said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow-citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, — "the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men." All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory.
  • Edward Everett, Gettysburg Oration (19 November 1863).

• Although I am unacquainted with astrological lore, I was drawn to the symbolic power of the pervasive dream in our popular culture: that after a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light—in the words of the popular song, "The Age of Aquarius," the time of "the mind's true liberation." Whether or not it was written in the stars, a different age seems to be upon us; and Aquarius, the waterbearer in the ancient zodiac, symbolizing flow and the quenching of an ancient thirst, is an appropriate symbol.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) Introduction

• At the beginning of the new millennium the most famous unsolved problem in Analytic number theory and complex analysis, if not in all of mathematics, is to determine whether the Riemann Hypothesis holds.
  • Theodore Gamelin (17 July 2003). Complex Analysis. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 370. ISBN 978-0-387-95069-3. 

• On December 22, 1986, finding I was body positive, I set myself a target: I would disclose my secret and survive Margaret Thatcher. I did. Now I have set my sights on the millennium and a world where we are all equal.
  • Derek Jarman At Your Own Risk.

• I wołam, ja, syn polskiej ziemi, a zarazem ja: Jan Paweł II papież, wołam z całej głębi tego tysiąclecia, wołam w przeddzień święta Zesłania, wołam wraz z wami wszystkimi: Niech zstąpi Duch Twój! Niech zstąpi Duch Twój! I odnowi oblicze ziemi. Tej ziemi!
  • And I cry – I who am a son of the land of Poland and who am also Pope John Paul II – I cry from all the depths of this Millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost: Let your Spirit descend! Let your Spirit descend! And renew the face of the earth. The face of this land!
  • Pope John Paul II, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, homily during the Holy Mass in Victory Square in Warsaw on 2 June 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to Poland. Note: the Polish word ziemi means both "earth" and "land"; on the former utterance, it refers to the entire planet, on the latter – to Poland.

• Young people of every continent, do not be afraid to be the saints of the new millennium! Be contemplative, love prayer; be coherent with your faith and generous in the service of your brothers and sisters, be active members of the Church and builders of peace.
  • Pope John Paul II, Message of the Holy Father to the Youth of the World on the Occasion of the 15th World Youth Day, From the Vatican, 1999.

• Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium.
  • Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1959).

• Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells's, "Of Things to Come," the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy.
  • Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn writing under the pen name Francis Stewart Campbell (1943), Menace of the Herd, or, Procrustes at Large, Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Company, pp. 35-36.
• The eleventh century was an impassioned time. The excitement about the new millennium in 2000 focused largely on whether computers would continue working; but in the year 1000 Europe was focused on the first millennium of Christ. All events—storms, comets, wars, floods, epidemics—were given momentous significance. God's wrath was seen at every turn. Christians seemed to believe they had strayed very far from God's will. People flocked to the churches and clung to the words of the clergy. But the Church was not talking about restoring the teachings of Jesus Christ; rather, the clergy spoke of defending the Church against its enemies. In the course of the first century of the new millennium, the Church, the most powerful institution in Europe, had overwhelmed European princes, to the point where its only remaining challengers were the Saracens. The fact that these Saracens were in decline made battling them all the more irresistible. It was time for a Christian lesser jihad.
  • Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2006), ISBN 9780679643357

• Dying in America / At the end of the millennium / We're dying in America / To come into our own / And when you're dying in America / At the end of the millennium / You're not alone
  • Jonathan Larson, Rent (1996).

• What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.
  • Robert Owen, Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark (1816).

• Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium.
  • Vijay Prashad, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (2002), p. 38.

• New laws, in themselves, do not bring a millennium; new laws do not pretend to prevent labor disputes, nor do they cover all industry and all labor.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at San Diego Exposition, San Diego, California (October 2, 1935).

• That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eighth State of the Union Address, known as the Four Freedoms Speech (6 January 1941).

• This was the country the Mormons settled, the country which, as Brigham Young with some reason hoped, no one else wanted. Its destiny was plain on its face, its contempt of man and his history and his theological immortality, his Millennium, his Heaven on Earth, was monumentally obvious. Its distances were terrifying, its cloudbursts catastrophic, its beauty flamboyant and bizarre and allied with death.
  • Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country (1982).