Quotes About Progress

Africa has no future.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

What's certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba's can't continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.

In any case, ideals are something we strive for; they are somewhere on the horizon of our efforts; they provide meaning and direction; they are not, however, static quotas that we either fulfill or do not.

the world now consumes in one year nearly as much steel as it did during the first post-World War II decade, and (even more incredibly) more cement than it consumed during the first half of the twentieth century.

A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern civilization is withdrawing accumulated solar capital at rates that will exhaust it in a tiny fraction of the time that was needed to create it.

Energy will do anything that can be done in the world. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Despite these advances, internal combustion engines remain rather inefficient prime movers and the overall process of converting the chemical energy of gasoline to the kinetic energy of a moving passenger car is extraordinarily wasteful.

The end of any path, is the beginning of the next path.

I don't know at what point you stop hurting and start healing

To move forward, you have to accept the truth of a situation. Not persist in myth-making.

I haven't thought about her for nearly twenty minutes. With a bit of practice, I might make it to thirty.

May be it's hard to tell from us what people were like in the old days, but no one looks behind himself anymore. Everyone's rushing headlong. They're out of breath, stumbling on every step, but they keep on running...No time to look back, there's no time to look underfoot...as though someone's chasing them.

If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens in him without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he will remain such as he is. But if a struggle begins in him, and particularly if there is a definite line in this struggle, then, gradually, permanent traits begin to form themselves, he begins to 'crystallise'…Crystallisation is possible on any foundations.

Please be assured that as we move along through the implementation of health insurance reform, making sure that we find efficiencies within the existing system, is foremost on the President's mind.

History will catch up with us. It isn't dead more than we are. It lives in and upon us, parasitically, like the bacteria in our intestines without which we would die. If you want to see the future, keep looking steadily behind you, because the future, no matter how we may pretend we don't know it, is history.

Applying effort is more than just reading a book on recovery; it is about bringing some of the tools that have been suggested into action.

Women are thus being allowed to enter the professions at precisely the time when these professions are being devalued and high-flying men are going elsewhere

A community like this is held together not by blood ties, but by laws under which all citizens are equal. The law corrects the flaws and the imperfections of individuals, limits conflict and competition, rewards the will to do and to achieve, encourages the strong, supports the weak. In a society like this the shame lies not in being humble and poor, but rather in doing nothing to improve one's condition.

si un pueblo alcanza un gran nivel de civilización se desarrolla al mismo tiempo también un cierto grado de corrupción.

no hay civilización que no entrañe un cierto número de actos bárbaros y no hay barbarie que no contenga algún germen de civilización.

No hay hombre capaz de avanzar seguro por su camino si no tiene el espíritu sereno.

History sometimes reproduces, at a distance of many years, the same combinations of circumstances that generate great achievements. But nothing ever repeats itself in exactly the same way.

The end is never worth the beginning.