Quotes About Progress

The constant tug between nature and civilization is what keeps on our toes. Though of course, that did rather beg the question of how you defined nature and how you defined civilization.

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? This was the question Adrian's fragment set off in me. There had been addition—and subtraction—in my life, but how much multiplication? And this gave me a sense of unease, of unrest.

most people didn't experience "the sixties" until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties—or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.

Isn't there something between stagnation and heading somewhere?" "Like?" "Like having a nice time. Enjoy the day and all that?

Gradually, he didn't doubt, the world would calm down into a gigantic welfare state devoted to sporting, cultural and sexual exchange, with the accepted international currency being items of hifi equipment.

We could not be further from ballooning's established tropes: freedom, spiritual exaltation, human progress. Redon's eternally open eye is deeply unsettling. The eye in the sky; God's security camera. And that lumpish human head invites us to conclude that the colonisation of space doesn't purify the colonisers; all that has happened is that we have brought our sinfulness to a new location.

the history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it's the most deliquescent. We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history—even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?

There had been addition—and subtraction—in my life, but how much multiplication?

Vivimos con suposiciones muy fáciles, ¿no? Por ejemplo, que la memoria es igual a sucesos más tiempo. Pero es algo mucho más extraño. ¿Quién dijo que la memoria es lo que creíamos que habíamos olvidado? Y debería ser obvio que el tiempo no actúa como un fijador, sino más bien como un disolvente. Pero no conviene —no es útil— creer esto; no nos ayuda a seguir adelante; por lo tanto, lo pasamos por alto.

How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted?

d) (1850) «De vez en cuando, en las ciudades, abro un periódico. Tengo la sensación de que todo avanza rápidamente. No estamos bailando sobre un volcán, sino sobre las tablas de una letrina, que a mí me huele bastante a podrido. Próximamente, la sociedad se precipitará en la mierda de diecinueve siglos, y se ahogará rápidamente en ella. Se oirán muchos gritos.»

Loši snovi ne daju ostatku života da ide dalje.

Why did people imagine that progress consisted of believing in less, rather than believing in more, in opening yourself to more of the universe?

The more you learn, the less you fear.

He did not want to make himself into a dramatic character. But sometimes, as his mind skittered in the small hours, he thought: so this is what history has come to. All that striving and idealism and hope and progress and science and art and conscience, and it all ends like this, with a man standing by a lift, at his feet a small case containing cigarettes, underwear and tooth powder; standing there and waiting to be taken away.

Later—well, what came later, came later.

Daha önce bir araya getirilmemiÅŸ iki kiÅŸiyi bir araya getirebilirsiniz. Bu bazen ateÅŸle çal??an bir balona, hidrojenle çal??an bir balonu baÄŸlaman?n ÅŸu ilk denemesinde olduÄŸu gibi bir ÅŸeydir; yere çak?l?p yanmay? m? yeÄŸlersiniz yoksa yan?p yere çak?lmay? m?? Ama bazen de deneme baÅŸar?l?r ve yeni bir ÅŸey yarat?l?r dünya deÄŸiÅŸir.

Language too is a brake upon social change.

Now I feel like we weren't made for each other. We're making each other -- into the people we should become.

Olmak istedi?imiz ki?i olamay?z her zaman.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a woman, I put away childish things.

And much like a catapult, my dear, the lower you begin in life, the higher you can eventually fly. All it requires is the right person to, shall we say, effect the launch." -Miss Endicott.

It might have begun a bit like a chess game, but it had taken on its own momentum, and owned both of them.

What I know is you can't go back. You can't press delete and re-key your life.