Quotes About Progress

Talent is only the starting point.

The immediate future is not in the hands of our first Negro President. It is in our hands, for better or for worse.

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centures since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.

Until now in world's history, whenever we've had a dark age, its been temporary and local. And other parts of the world have been doing fine. And eventually, they help you get out of the dark age. We are now facing a possible dark age which is going to be world-wide and permanent! That's not fun. That's a different thing. But once we have established many worlds, we can do whatever we want as long as we do it one world at a time.

Considering what human beings do and have done to human beings (and to other living things as well) ... I can never imagine what the devil people think computers can add to the horrors.

You just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

People think of education as something they can finish.

While some distance from the wide sea, smoke rises from factories and Karl Marx does his usual work.

Gorky is a forerunner—the most powerful in our time.

There is a plan to this universe. There is a high intelligence, maybe even a purpose, but it's given to us on the installment plan.

For a subject people, independent statehood is a vital necessity and an advance; but once such a people has reached the stage of independence nothing can be more retrograde for it than to fix its mind on that stage and to refuse to look beyond it. The nationalism of a sovereign people cannot claim for itself the justification claimed by the nationalism of an oppressed people.

At the center of all achievement is personal growth.

Even the master plan has room for improvement.

Feeling uncomfortable about a situation is oftentimes the indicator that growth is about to take place.