Quotes About Progress

By the late eighteenth century, the lowlands of Scotland had developed the most extensive system of education in

This has often been carried to the point of encouraging lagging groups to proudly cling to their own culture, or even resurrect it in some cases, with little concern that these groups' economic and educational lags might be— at least in part— a result of the cultures they were being encouraged to cling to.

What seems a more tenable conclusion is that, as economic historian David S. Landes put it, The world has never been a level playing field.

At the lower end of the social scale, as well as among the gentry, enterprise and social mobility were part of the pattern in England.

Britain was overtaken not only in gross output but also in output per worker. It lost its lead in technological innovation.

Perhaps an even more remarkable contribution of Britain to the growth of freedom in the world was its leading role in the destruction of the international slave trade, and then of slavery itself.

How, in the first place, did a peripheral island rise from primitive squalor to world domination?

Those who have promoted the prevailing social vision, in which lags, gaps or disparities to the detriment of black people are the fault of white people, are trapped in the corollary that these lags, gaps or disparities should disappear, once those other people are constrained by civil rights laws and policies. But nothing of the sort has happened in the wake of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.

If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes almost all the difference.

building and patronizing churches and schools, both of which were outstanding by the standards of the times.

In no society have all regions and all parts of the population developed equally. Fernand Braudel

La asunción de riesgos es la leche materna del capitalismo. The Wall Street Journal

nineteenth century economic development was the development of continents instead of coast lines.98

En retrospectiva, todos somos unos genios, pero el riesgo siempre implica mirar hacia el futuro, no hacia el pasado.

enabling Germans to become major producers of steel and with it one of the leading industrial powers of the world.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy... you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them.

My biggest challenge is trust, and really believing that trust, in letting things just happen personally and professionally and trust with myself. But I'm getting better at it.

To all users of technology who are willing to take a chance, make a choice, and try a new way of doing things so that we can nurture and enjoy a happy, healthy planet.—K.M.

La felicidad es aceptar la lucha, el esfuerzo, la duda y avanzar, avanzar franqueando cada obstáculo.

he makes the case that "the move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally."61

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward. C. S. LEWIS