Selected progress quotes

1. The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

2. God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

3. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.

4. Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort.

5. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

6. I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

7. I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.

8. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

9. Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem - in my opinion - to characterize our age.

10. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

11. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

12. Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the 'greatest good for the greatest number' can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.

13. People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

14. The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

15. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.

16. The reports on human progress are beginning to come in, and some are a little discouraging.

17. You can't stop progress, but you can help decide what is progress and what isn't.

18. Doing it wrong fast is at least better than doing it wrong slowly.

19. I'm just moving clouds today, tomorrow I'll try mountains.

20. And there hasn't been much progress in Darwinism since [the life of Darwin].

21. Art and science coincide insofar as both aim to improve the lives of men and women. The latter normally concerns itself with profit, the former with pleasure. In the coming age, art will fashion our entertainment out of new means of productivity in ways that will simultaneously enhance our profit and maximize our pleasure.

22. Little changes are the enemies of great changes.

23. I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

24. Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

25. Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.

26. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.

27. A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

28. It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

29. David Brin is a technological determinist. He thinks that we understand the trend and we need to hop on it. I don't have any such illusions.

30. Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.

31. Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.

32. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

33. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

34. False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.

35. It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

36. The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

37. The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.

38. In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field.

39. The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.

40. Progress comes from finding better ways to do things. Don't be afraid of innovation. Don't be afraid of ideas that are not your own.

41. Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

42. In my time I've been very fortunate to see many of my dreams come true! Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, I never expected to see so much happen in the span of a few decades. We 'space cadets' of the British Interplanetary Society spent all our spare time discussing space travel - but we didn't imagine that it lay in our own near future: I still can't quite believe that we've just marked the 50th anniversary of the Space Age! We've accomplished a great deal in that time, but the 'Golden Age of Space' is only just beginning. Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to Earth orbit - and then, to the Moon and beyond. Space travel - and space tourism - will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet.

43. Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

44. The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.

45. When you look closely it is a question whether that which is a wrong to the present community may not prove to have been a right to the interests of posterity. That sounds a little foggy; but I will make my meaning more clear when I say that I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply into the ultimate effect.

46. No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers.

47. I think that science would never have achieved much progress if it had always imagined unknown obstacles hidden round every corner. At least we may peer gingerly round the corner, and perhaps we shall find there is nothing very formidable after all.

48. My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.

49. In a progressive country change is constant;: change : is inevitable.

50. In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.

51. Folks: It's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? Didn't end there. We're at the point, now, where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution. And the reason our institutions, our traditional religions, are all crumbling, is because : they're no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant. So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's okay 'cause that's our right, 'cause we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything, and that's kind of our role.

52. I have been a deliberate half-century-fused inciter of a cool-headed, natural, gestation-rate-paced revolution, armed with physically demonstrable livingry levers with which altogether to elevate all humanity to realization of an inherently sustainable, satisfactory-to-all, ever higher standard of living. Critical threshold-crossing of the inevitable revolution is already underway.

53. 'Creatures, I give you yourselves,' said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. 'I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.' (ch. 10)

54. When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start to go right they often go on getting better and better. (ch.15)

55. It is not enough to teach our young people to be successful... so they can realize their ambitions, so they can earn good livings, so they can accumulate the material things that this society bestows. Those are worthwhile goals. But it is not enough to progress as individuals while our friends and neighbors are left behind.

56. The poor, you know, have a way of solving problems... they have a tremendous capacity for suffering. And so when you build a vehicle to get something done, as we've done here in the strike and the boycott, then they continue to suffer - and maybe a little bit more - but the suffering becomes less important because they see a chance of progress; sometimes progress itself. They've been suffering all their lives. It's a question of suffering with some kind of hope now. That's better than suffering with no hope at all.

57. We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.

58. It is better to have a bad method than to have none.

59. I have seen the future, and it looks a lot like the present.

60. 'Being a physicist, my father was a great believer in progress, but he also loved nature. He was a photographer, and outside of taking the occasional family photographs, all he did was photograph nature. He loved birds. That meant a lot to me growing up. Healthy progress also means we have to be concerned for the environment. That may have something to do with what I believe about farming.'

61. Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail.

62. In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.

63. 'Yay, Old'uns' Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds and made miracles ord'nary, but it din't master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts of humans, yay, a hunger for more: Human hunger birthed the Civilise, but human hunger killed it too.' ? (p.287)

64. 'Grandpa, like most of the fun-loving gang who built the Plants, just wanted to die or have his brain turn to oatmeal before it becomes too apparent exactly what a nightmare he and his buddies have saddled their descendants with.'

65. Technology does not always equal progress.

66. Who climbs the mountain does not always climb. The winding road slants downward many a time; Yet each descent is higher than the last.

67. Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.

68. The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

69. I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years past been working to undo the botched job your God has made. (p. 207)

70. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

71. Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

72. No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

73. Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass.

74. The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

75. Well, my brother says 'hello'! So, hooray for speech therapy.

76. That's not it. That's not it at all. You always have a tendency to add. But one must be able to subtract too. It's not enough to integrate, you must also disintegrate. That's the way life is. That's philosophy. That's science. That's progress, civilization.

77. If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.

78. Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

79. Yes, when I was here the first word of the alma mater was 'Men:Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse:' Well, now the first word is 'Dear.' Some things change for the better.

80. Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.

81. We 'conserve' nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not by any means 'liberal'; we do not work for 'progress'; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place sing of the future: their song about 'equal rights,' 'a free society,' 'no more masters and no servants' has no allure for us.

82. He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

83. It speaks to some basic human needs, that there is a tomorrow - it's not all going to be over in a big flash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids - human beings built them because they're clever and they work hard. And 'Star Trek' is about those things.

84. It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.

85. I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

86. He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.

87. Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together.

88. History and experience tells us that moral progress cannot come in comfortable and in complacent times, but out of trial and out of confusion.

89. You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

90. Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

91. Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

92. The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

93. He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray.

94. The history of the human race, viewed as a whole may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.

95. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.

96. Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.

97. Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.

98. Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

99. When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

100. Ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses degres; Et jamais on n'a vu la timide innocence Passer subitement a l'extreme licence.