Quotes About Progress

Twelve percent of all the photographs ever taken in human history have been taken in the last twelve months. And 40 percent of them are on Facebook.

fewer and fewer of our progenitors were replicating themselves via the weird, squishy process to which they devoted their organs of entertainment.

This document describes progress to date in establishing a defensive network capable of repelling wide-scale incursions by reconfiguring the national closed-circuit television surveillance network as a software-controlled look-to-kill multiheaded basilisk. To

Technologies are not neutral: they come with attached agendas, with associated ways of thinking. Industrial revolutions are inherently political revolutions.

Annette sighs. Manfred's been upgrading this robot cat for years, and his ex-wife Pamela used to mess with its neural configuration, too: This is its third body, and it's getting more realistically uncooperative with every hardware upgrade. Sooner or later it's going to demand a litter tray and start throwing up on the carpet.

Some of my people are well on their way to becoming formidable practitioners (like Alex, but best not to tell the little oik that).

People who soar are those who refuse to sit back and wish things would change.

And then the colossal success of modern natural science and the associated technology can lead us to feel that it unlocks all mysteries, that it will ultimately explain everything, that human science must be developed on the same basic plan, or even ultimately reduced to physics, or at least organic chemistry. And

Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do no wish to happen.

Had Julius lived in a happier age for men of his complexion, the world might have had a black Aesop or Grimm

Technology displaces workers in the short run but does not lead to mass unemployment in the long run.

As the Economist points out, "If you consider people, not countries, global inequality is falling rapidly.

If you consider people, not countries, global inequality is falling rapidly.

Politician B (more of an elitist): "Our economy is showing appreciable gains: Seventy percent of Americans had rising incomes last year.

Given the disparity in the size of the states, it's entirely possible that the majority of states are doing worse while the majority of Americans are doing better. The key lesson is to pay attention to the unit of analysis.

The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income."4

It may not be written in any book, but it is written— You can't go back, you can't repeat the unrepeatable.

So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what good or bad language is, and the issue of language change needn't come into question here. But no coherent criterion has ever been given: upon examination, the pronouncements of the self-appointed pundits are always a mix of cultural biases, half-understandings of languages, and an obvious compulsion for telling people what to do.

We are what we do. If you want to change, you have to work at it. Change what you do. You have to repeat and reinforce. Over and over. Do the same thing again and again. Until it is you.

John Laroche: You know why I like plants? Susan Orlean: Nuh uh. John Laroche: Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world. Susan Orlean: [pause] Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting almost shameful. It's like running away.

start. It occurs to me that both in my dreams and in my waking life there exists the same question: What now? Something happens or nothing happens, and either way, I have to decide what to do next. There is no end to it. Well, no, there is one end to it, and that revelation leads me to this conclusion: "What now?" is the definition of life.

Who knows how we should be? We simply do our best, over and over and over.

Who knows how you should be? We simply do our best, over and over and over.

The soap in the bathroom, the flowers in the garden, the book on the bedside table are all strong symbols of a life in progress. You look at these details and a world unfolds.