Quotes About Progress

Catrin Mattsson was doing all right. She was still screwed up and admitted it, but drugs and shrinks were moving her around to the place where she could live with herself. She'd become friends with his wife and daughter, and would occasionally drop around for dinner and a chat.

The universe isn't going to be conquered by legions of geriatrics. No offense.

Colonization is the key to our race's survival. It's as simple as that. We must colonize or be closed off and contained by other races.

Are we there yet?" I asked Joshua. "No," Joshua said. "Are we there yet?" I said. "No." "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we there yet?" "Yes," Joshua said. "Stop the car.

It's the end of civilization as we know it. And it's going to be great for business.

Life goes on even when Jenkins' 'Narrative' is supposed to apply.

That's nuts," Niamh said. "That's evolution

His progress was more lateral than forward.

But imagine you're a tapeworm, and then suddenly you're Goethe. It's like that.

Whether they are up to our standards or not, the fact remains: We need more crew.

The diagnostics and modifications screens. Ugly and utilitarian, just like they have been since the very beginnings of visual user interface. They were beautiful.

I'll do my best," Wilson said. "Your best got you stationed on the Clarke," Abumwe said. "Do better than that.

Capitalism had made it to space and was doing reasonably well.

ex machina. I

at the moment, the number of fundamentally selfish and self-interested people that human civilization could tolerate, particularly in the social tranche that could actually have an impact on the fate of humanity, had shrunk considerably

You don't win by getting through all your life not having done anything.

It's easier to be the aspirational leader when the thing you're building doesn't exist. But now it exists, and you're not aspirational anymore. Now you're just the chief bureaucrat. Bureaucrats don't inspire awe.

comes immediately after.

The only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don't even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.

The Harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there's gold in letting go of them.

A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.

the world of commerce is restless; it's like a hungry child that keeps growing and never quite grows up

Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished you are always surprised. - John Steinbeck from the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review