Quotes About Progress

even the purest and most high-minded scientist finds it expedient sometimes to assault the fortress of truth with the blunt weapon of trail and error. sometimes it works beautifully.

There was no doubt about it: the City was the culmination of man's mastery over the environment. Not space travel, not the fifty colonized worlds that were now so haughtily independent, but the City.

He threw his cigar away and looked up at the outstretched Galaxy. "Back to oil and coal, are they?" he murmured—and what the rest of his thoughts were he kept to himself.

I grow grandiose, which is a good sign I should become prosaic.

If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.

Golan, spuse Pelorat, am impresia ca progresul civilizatiei nu reprezinta nimic altceva decat un exercitiu de limitare a intimitatii.

Science is constructed out of approximations that gradually approach the truth

But now, Earthmen are all so coddled, so enwombed in their imprisoning caves of steel, that they are caught forever.

when the old empire began to rot at the fringes, it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be re-accepted it would have to present itself in another guise

it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be reaccepted it would have to present itself in another guise—and it has done just that. It works out beautifully." "Interesting!" The mayor placed his arms around his

And then—U. S. Robots has interstellar travel, and humanity has the opportunity for galactic empire.

Essentially they were those who had not adapted themselves to what had once been called the Atomic Age, in the days when atoms were a novelty. Actually, they were the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who had lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.

One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.

If it's the product of nonhuman minds and hands, what may seem primitive may, in actual fact, be merely nonhuman.

última parte de la serie…

When you think of human history, you think of the occasional human being whose minority view may be condemned by society but who wins out in the end and changes the world. What chance is there on Gaia for the great rebels of history?

If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.

And finally, people are against it." "But why?" "Because they're against science in general. You should know this as well as anyone, Professor.

Andar es el mejor modo de transporte en las distancias cortas, el más conveniente, más barato y más sano. Incontables años de avances tecnológicos no han podido cambiar esto…

Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.

Science fiction is important because it fights the natural notion that there's something permanent about things the way they are right now.

You are now too old to be made a scholar after my fashion, but you are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.