Quotes About Progress

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom!

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

These students were taking part in an experiment that had never been tried before. They wanted to prove that blind youngsters were capable of being taught, that they could master their handicap and lead useful, productive lives. Founded in 1784

Germany was an ambitious young nation.

Life is not advancement. It is growth. It does not move upward, but expands outward, in all directions.

Begin where you are and what you are.

Let every man or woman here, if you never hear me again, remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are, in Philadelphia, now.

Let every man or woman here, if you never hear me again, remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and what you are, in Philadelphia, now. He that can give to his city any blessing, he who can be a good citizen while he lives here, he that can make better homes, he that can be a blessing whether he works in the shop or sits behind the counter or keeps house, whatever be his life, he who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.

The fundamentally important issue in the design of constitutions is to enable rather than hinder economic transitions that are not well understood in advance.

Have you paused to consider that there is no way out? Each way out of one situation necessarily being the way into another situation.

The mouse and his child, who had learned so much and had prevailed against such overwhelming odds, never could be persuaded to teach a success course... The whole secret of the thing, they insisted, was simply and at all costs to move steadily ahead, and that, they said, could not be taught.

O what we ben! And what we come to!

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

My argument is this: unless we begin to think of humanizing our American economy, our cities will continue to disintegrate, and the American people increasingly will grow bored and violent.

When a society is advancing in some respects, usually it is declining in others.

All through school, we are shown that making a mistake is a bad thing, something for which we are downgraded. This reveals how little conventional schools are interested in learning, because we never learn by doing something right; we already know how to do it. Doing it right does confirm what we already know, and this has some value, but it contributes nothing to learning. We

If living conditions don't stop improving in this country, we're going to run out of humble beginnings for our great men.

Capitalism involves struggle, but it has an invisible heart beating at its core that transforms people's lives.

Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird.

The first Manhattanites didn't arrive with lofty ideals. They came--whether as farmer, tanner, prostitute, wheelwright, barmaid, brewer, or trader--because there was a hope for a better life. There was a distinct messiness to the place they created. But it was very real, and in a way, very modern.

uncomfortably modern sound. With only a little nudging

Manhattan is where America began.

The Dutch were among the earliest adopters of a new technology—the printed book—and

when you embrace the process of your work, instead of focusing on the results, you'll always be happier, plus do a much better job.