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We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution, and the powers of the atom are about to be harnessed for ever greater production. We live at a time when even the ancient spectre of hunger is vanishing. This is the age of abundance! Never in history has there been such an opportunity to show what we can do to improve the quality of living now that the old, terrible, grinding anxieties of daily bread, of shelter and raiment are disappearing.

Adlai Stevenson#57

ProgressFutureAbundanceEconomyTechnology

About this quote

What does it mean?
Modern technology has created abundance and reduced basic survival fears.
In plain terms
Automation and energy have solved hunger and made life much easier than before.
What can you take from it?
Abundance offers a chance to improve quality of life.

Where it applies

  • economic policy
  • innovation strategy
  • future planning

Putting it to work

  • leverage technology for good
  • focus on quality of life
  • reduce basic anxiety

Questions to consider

  • Has abundance improved quality of life?
  • What risks come with progress?

Another view

It assumes progress is evenly distributed.

More from Adlai Stevenson

  1. Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.

    Permalink to quote #56
  2. We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all shoul…

    Permalink to quote #58
  3. I have learned that In quiet places, reason abounds, that in quiet people there is vision and purpose, that many things are revealed to the humble that are hid…

    Permalink to quote #55

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