Quotes About Progress

When big organizations scale well, they focus on "moving a thousand people forward a foot at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet.

As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.

If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization.

It is far cheaper to build schoolhouses than prisons, and it is much better to have scholars than convicts.

contrast with, say, Whig historians, such as Macaulay in nineteenth-century England, is striking. The Arab historians had no belief in the progress of humanity. Instead they waited for God to declare the End of Time.

David Jeremiah says, "We're grateful for our memories, but our dreams should be greater than our memories. Our best work is still to come.

The great successful men of the world have used their imagination...they think ahead and create their mental picture in all it details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building--steadily building.

If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100 and get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside. —Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine

advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into a narrow sphere of human activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. For the rest of what humans care about—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and working conditions both inside and outside the home—progress slowed down after 1970,

Chief among these headwinds is the rise of inequality that since 1970 has steadily directed an ever larger share of the fruits of the American growth machine to the top of the income distribution.

This paradox is resolved when we recognize that advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into a narrow sphere of human activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. For the rest of what humans care about—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and working conditions both inside and outside the home—progress slowed down after 1970, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our

But the cable cars did not last long. They had disappeared from the streets of most cities by 1900 and from Chicago by 1906, and they remain to this day only in the single city of San Francisco, where they are primarily a tourist attraction.

The economic revolution of 1870 to 1970 was unique in human history, unrepeatable because so many of its achievements could happen only once.

Our central thesis is that some inventions are more important than others, and that the revolutionary century after the Civil War was made possible by a unique clustering, in the late nineteenth century, of what we will call the "Great Inventions.

both the Great Depression and World War II directly contributed to the Great Leap.

Pioneers in the development of particular products and industries have been described by Schumpeter as "innovators," those "individuals who are daring, speculative, restless, imaginative and, more pertinently, eager to exploit new inventions.

Electric light, the first reliable internal combustion engine, and wireless transmission were all invented within the same three-month period at the end of 1879. Within

Between 1940 and 1970, output per person and output per hour continued to increase rapidly, in part as a result of three of the most important subsidiary spinoffs of IR #2—air conditioning, the interstate highway system, and commercial air transport—while the world of personal entertainment was forever altered by television.

The most important unmeasured benefit of all, the extension of life expectancy, occurred much more rapidly from 1890 to 1950 than afterward.

So move before the wave. If you don't you'll end up flailing in its backwash.

For who has despised the day of small things? – Zechariah 4:10

Every day is different when lived with anticipation.

There are grave difficulties on every hand and more are looming ahead. Therefore we must go forward. —William Carey

What I am referring to is the Theory of Next, which states: The key to maintaining a positive mental attitude is to recognize that no one deal is that important. The person with a true positive mental attitude possesses the power to say "Next!" and quickly move on to the next deal when things don't work out.