Quotes About Progress

The city is a means to a way of life. It can be a reflection of all our best selves. It can be whatever we want it to be. It can change, and change dramatically.

Most recently, the task of assembling the genetic story for specific phenotypic traits has begun. It is still in its early stages, but progress is accelerating nonlinearly. Hence the nervousness that has prevented open discussion of what's going on in the geneticists' parallel universe: the fear that we will discover scary population differences in what I have called cognitive repertoires.

To live in today's world is not only to have access to all the best that has come before, but also to have a breadth and ease of access that is incomparably greater than that enjoyed even by our parents, let alone earlier generations.

In the decades ahead, a life well-lived will often have to be one that does not involve a job traditionally defined. A universal basic income will be an essential part of the transition to a world unlike any in the history of our species.

natural selection has almost become irrelevant in human evolution. There's been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we've built with the same body and brain."6

When in doubt, move, even if it's in the wrong direction.

This is the way history happens: it is measured out in days rather than epochs.

I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.

What does not change / is the will to change.

What never changes is your desire to change

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to the standards of that context, any scientific theory is turned into mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample.

Some people believe that Moore's Law will continue to be accurate until about 2015.

Today's computers use transistors. When used in computers, transistors basically function the same way relays do, but (as we'll see) they're much faster and much smaller and much quieter and use much less power and are much cheaper. Building an 8-Bit Adder still requires 144 transistors (more if you replace the ripple carry with a look-ahead carry), but the circuit is microscopic.

We can laugh all we like at Micromaniacs, but they will have the last laugh - because they are designing the future that the rest of us will have to live in.

I, for one, would think both about how far we have come as a country and how much further we need to go to erase racism and discrimination from our society.

the management of a polity, there needs to be an end of things.

Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.

Man with all his noble qualities… with his godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness.

Do not block the way of inquiry.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

Just remember, when you're over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.