Quotes About Progress

The belief system, with all its ancestor worship, is anathema to progress, or so I have concluded given the evidence.

Listen, friend, I've known a lot of drunks in my time. You look at four, five months being sober and think it's eternity. But me, I see a man still brushing the puke from his clothes. A man who could get knocked right back down.

What makes a better human being? Is it just a question of faster, stronger, smarter? But smarter in what way? Computationally? This idea of augmenting our species through technology, adding new RAM to the old hard-drive as it were, seems to miss the point. And that is that we can be better right now, without technology. Augmentation is pointless if we keep repeating the same old mistakes. And efficiency is not the same as better, not even close. You want to be a better human being? Start today.

To fit into a new thing you had to leave the old thing behind, and that wasn't as easy as it sounded, since it meant accepting that the old thing was dead, for ever gone, no matter where you tried standing or how stubbornly you held fast.

His route to them met with one obstacle after another as he negotiated his way across the room, excusing himself at every turn and twist.

Is civilization

Change was rarely chosen, and its common arrival was slow, subtle.

Whatever we do as adults, we make in our children more of what we are. Is there no end to this? Scholars speak of progress, but I fear now that they are mistaken. This is not progress that we see, it is elaboration. Nothing of the old ways ever goes away, it just hides beneath modernity's confusion.

But what mattered beyond just that? This single moment, pitching headlong into the next one, over and over again, as firm and true as each step he took

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

Its the actions one produces that will lead them toward the unknown.

Civilisation isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he even would have thought possible".

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away. As long as there's war, life is a preventative measure.

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily.

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It

As the writer Arthur Koestler astutely observed, "Johannes Kepler became enamored with the Pythagorean dream, and on this foundation of fantasy, by methods of reasoning equally unsound, built the solid edifice of modern astronomy. It is one of the most astonishing episodes in the history of thought, and an antidote to the pious belief that the Progress of Science is governed by logic.

Our place in the universe, the universe itself, it all changes faster and faster by the second. Every one of us standing on this planet, we're all moving forwards and we're never ever coming back. The truth is, stillness is an idea, a dream. It's the thought of friendly, welcoming lights still shining in all the places we've been forced to abandon.

Let failure be your workshop. See it for what is is: the world walking you through a tough but necessary semester, free of tuition. (from Workbook)

The Death of Trade Unionism, and toward the Birth of a Labor 3.0,

That the epic journey of Homo sapiens has taken us from the savannah to space is indisputable, but we do not have one simple, comprehensive account of this multigenerational sojourn—and we never will, no matter how much we excavate. Rather, we have grainy snapshots, faded sketches, souvenirs of mysterious purpose, maps of unspecified scales drawn long after the fact, and stories which change with each storyteller and occasion.

Think of a caterpillar entering a cocoon. Once he does so, one of two things will happen: He will either transform into a butterfly, or he will die. But no matter what else happens, he will never climb out of the cocoon as a caterpillar. So it is with your protagonist.

mentor once told me that every dead end shows you more clearly the pattern of the labyrinth, that each one you encounter gives you one more piece of information that'll help you as you methodically fail your way to success. That's how he put it: failing your way to success.

And technology is a clock you cannot turn backward.

Life is for living, for moving on, for letting the past lie behind us.