Quotes About Progress

The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth.

Lamentarsi è una caratteristica innata della specie umana. Nel Secolo del Carbone la gente imprecava contro la macchina a vapore; in una commedia di Shakespeare un personaggio lamenta l'invenzione della polvere da sparo. Mille anni dopo ci si lamentava per la fabbricazione del cervello positronico.

Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.

After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication—and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking—and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation—and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful—and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions—and intensified the population explosion.

It lasted for a long time, I believe. A very long time. It was a great success, but even great successes come to a natural end.

I wouldn't want [the people of Baleyworld] to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay - as your world has done.

The word "robot" is from a Czech word meaning "compulsory labor.

He never created a finish product. Finished products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism and the Second Foundation was the instrument of that evolution.

if we look forward to a future in which mankind behaves rationally and avoids self-destruction, we can visualize a world that will be more complicated than the one we know today, but a world that will run better and, most of all, a world in which the individual will count for more, not less.

Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech—and both are still dangerous to this day—but human beings would not be human without them.

Feet, for tens of thousands of years, had clogged and shuffled in the mud – and held down the minds which, for an equal time, had been fit for the companionship of the stars.

It was a sign of decaying culture, of course, that dams had been built against the further development of ideas.

Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

The machines do not solve problems with greater insight than men do, only faster. Only faster!

It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration—a stagnation!

Every man's position on Earth is restricted to the distance he can walk.' -- The Last Trump

Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all parts of it are exposed to the sunlight at one time or another. Well, what can I do except say that I wish astronomers would get things right to begin with? And I certainly refuse to change the story to suit their whims.

And after the Fall will come inevitable barbarism

Groups, like individuals, will rise to strange heights in answer to a challenge, and vegetate in the absence of a challenge.

To mankind, and the hope that the war against folly may someday be won after all.

centuries would yet pass before the mighty works of fifty generations of humans would decay past use. Only the declining powers of men, themselves, rendered them useless now.

During the century after Newton , it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.

For it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works

You are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.