Quotes About Progress

Musicians add to songs and they evolve: For as was true of human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride. p. 380

If every generation helps the next take one step up, imagine where we might all be someday.

as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained.

No looking back. Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past have nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.

We all reach a point where we would like to draw a line across time and declare everything on the far side null. Shed

educated beyond the point considered wise for females

I move the previous question

You are the same today that you are going to be five years from now except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read.

The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.

Pues si los cambios que experimentan los animales inferiores son tan maravillosos y difíciles de descubrir, ¿por qué no habría de haber cambios igual de maravillosos o más, e igualmente difíciles de descubrir, en los seres superiores? ¿No

Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilise, and then burn the world? There is a March of Science. But who shall beat the drums, for its retreat?

wolf bone was the Stone Age equivalent of a supercomputer.

Once we crack the problem of fusion, we have an assured source of energy for as long as you want to think about it. It will cease to be a reason for war or an influence on foreign affairs.

Scientists would then build a demonstration fusion power plant that would begin operations in 2035 or 2040. After five decades of broken promises, lies, delusions, and self-deception, it will finally be true. Fusion energy will be thirty years away.

if history is any guide, a long, long road lies ahead before physicists will be able to tame fusion reactions

December 31, 1999, is the evening when the great odometer in the sky clicks ahead.

But there is a dirty little secret. Fusion is not clean.

Life begets intelligence, intelligence begets smart matter and a singularity.

Accelerating to speeds faster than light was, of course, impossible. General relativity had made that clear enough back in the twentieth century. However, since then a number of ways of circumventing the speed limit had turned up; by now, there were at least six different known methods of moving mass or information from A to B without going through c.

The Rapture of the Nerds has been followed by the Resurrection of the Extremely Confused. (318)

butcher, baker, fusion-reactor maker.

Better get accustomed to it, she told herself, mentally adding a note to her checklist: relearn how to human.

the domes and dildos of pressurized buildings cast slowly lengthening shadows.

Of course I grew it in a fucking tank! What do you think I am, a farmer?