Quotes About Progress

Sixty-some years ago, biochemical organisms began to assemble digital computers. Now digital computers are beginning to assemble biochemical organisms. Viewed from a distance, this looks like part of a life cycle. But which part? Are biochemical organisms the larval phase of digital computers? Or are digital computers the larval phase of biochemical organisms?

The obsidian flake and the silicon chip are struck by the light of the same campfire that has passed from hand to hand since the human mind began.

Are we using digital computers to sequence, store, and better replicate our own genetic code, thereby optimizing human beings, or are digital computers optimizing our genetic code—and our way of thinking—so that we can better assist in replicating them?

Humans were still in the loop but no longer in control.

The digital universe and the hydrogen bomb were brought into existence at the same time. "It is an irony of fate," observes Françoise Ulam, "that much of the high-tech world we live in today, the conquest of space, the extraordinary advances in biology and medicine, were spurred on by one man's monomania and the need to develop electronic computers to calculate whether an H-bomb could be built or not.

Software was born. Numerical codes would be granted full control—including the power to modify themselves.1

As in the inflammations and fevers of physical illness, what looks like trouble may be the very process by which healing takes place. As we become better able to endure life's slings and arrows, our coping mechanisms mature, and vice versa.

The laws of adult development are nowhere near as well known as the laws of the solar system or even the laws of child development, which were only discovered in the last century.

It is reasonable to ask whether this book is necessary. Over its seventy-five years of existence, the Study of Adult Development has so far produced 9 books and 150 articles, including quite a number of my own (see Appendix F). Why

"Old times" never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better.

You press the button, we do the rest.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step towards solution. Do something. Then try again. At the worst, so long as you don't do it the same way twice, you will eventually use up all the wrong ways of doing it and thus the next try will be the right one.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

We used to be a nation that celebrated people who got things done. Now we celebrate people who stop things getting done.

We have come a long way from sod huts and muddy boots to an economy that produces billions of dollars' worth of soap. And we may be learning what Mark Twain meant: "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.

When problems arise, you will usually find two types of people: whiners and winners. Whiners obstruct progress; they spend hours complaining about this point or that, without offering positive solutions. Winners acknowledge the existence of the problem, but they try to offer practical ideas that can help resolve the matter in a manner that is satisfactory to both parties.