Quotes About Progress

In our time we maintain colonies on Mars, on Luna; we're perfecting workable interstellar flight—these people have not been able to cope with the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. This

He built, and the more he built the more he enjoyed building. By now the city was over eighty miles deep and five miles in diameter. The whole island had been converted into a single vast city that honeycombed and interlaced farther each day. Eventually it would reach the land beyond the ocean; then the work would begin in earnest.

You're confusing technology with culture. You look at this and say, 'What a great civilization man has built,' when you really mean, 'What a great technology mankind has developed.' There's all the difference in the world. Technology is of the mind and hands. Civilization is of the spirit—and spiritually we are still in the Dark Ages.

Science fiction acts best as a guide to help people cope with the present. It should sharpen our concern and ability to handle current problems. It shouldn't just be an escape.

Es como la fábrica totalmente automatizada que se repara a sí misma. ¿Sabe a lo que se refiere la palabra «retroalimentación»?

Una legge di sopravvivenza, aveva detto Ragle. Chi rifiutava di rispondere ai nuovi stimoli era destinato a perire. Adattarsi o morire... Nuova versione di una regola senza tempo.

All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man's needs. The human race had slowly evolved until it was in a position to operate things, run them as it saw fit. Now all at once it had been plunged back down the ladder again, prostrate before a Power against which they were children.

Even the most base schemes of human beings are preferable to the most exalted tropisms of machines.

A rolling stone gathers no moss

If peace is to come to earth through change in man's environment, instead of through change in man himself, it will never come. -- Philip Mauro in The Number of Man the Climax of Civilization

For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.

Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.

We'll find a way. There is a way. We just don't know it yet. Don't stop….

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

I'm working on another Lyra book right now – it's called The Book of Dust. "It's going very well and it will be finished when I write the words 'The End'.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do

For a human being, nothing comes naturally," said Grumman. "We have to learn everything we do.

I'm a tin princess. Like chess: I come all the way across the board and turned into a queen, Still only tin, though.

That's interesting," said Dr. Lieberson. "History's not over, you see. It's happening all the time.

In Geneva, Olivier Bonneville was becoming frustrated.

One future would close for ever as the other began to unfold.

some of what's good has to hurt us a little