Quotes About Progress

Back in Mother Ivy's time I would have been obliged to cook you gingerbread and show you my spickle dancing, and yet now I have permission to chop you up into little pieces. I cry myself to sleep every night, and feel dead inside, but society is definitely improving.

Even the bad experiences serve a purpose

Everything gets smaller over time. Computers, phones, apples, knives, souls.

And even if you were a pawn - maybe we all are - then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn't. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward.

Sometimes things are a change for the better and the worse at the same time, like the internet.

That change can take different forms. It can mean using technology to help our minds, by getting an app that limits our social media use, or getting a dimmer switch, or walking more, or being more considerate to people online, or choosing a car less likely to contaminate the air. Being kind to ourselves and being kind to the planet is, ultimately, the same thing. 'Progress

Tolstoy wrote, back in 1894, in The Kingdom of God Is Within You: The more men are freed from privation; the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers, and journals there are; the more means there will be of diffusing inconsistent lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently miserable will men become, which indeed is what we see actually taking place.

Walking one foot in front of the other, in the same direction, will always get you further than running around in circles. It's about the determination to keep walking forward.

When I first traveled around the globe, it took over a year, on a boat full of men, who were lucky if they made it. Now, the world is just there. All of it. In an hour I will be on a flight to Sydney, and by lunchtime I will have arrived. It makes me feel claustrophobic, as if the world is literally shrinking, like a balloon losing air.

Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don't expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer

After all, we aren't just who we are born. We are who we become. We are what life does to us. And she, born four hundred years ago, has had a lot of it, has done a lot of living.

Nora stared at the books around her. 'So, are you saying I only have pawns to play with?' 'I am saying that the thing that looks the most ordinary might end up being the thing that leads you to victory. You have to keep going.

History is people. Everyone loves history.' Daphne looks at me doubtfully, her face retreating into her neck as her eyebrows rise. 'Are you sure about that?' I offer a small nod. 'It's just making them realise that everything they say and do and see is only what they say and do and see because of what has gone before. Because of Shakespeare. Because of every human who ever lived.

the main lesson of history is: humans don't learn from history.

Be less robot, more human. Be more imperfect. Evolution happens through mistakes.

People didn't feel the enormity of the world or their own smallness within it. When I first travelled around the globe, it took over a year, on a boat full of men, who were lucky if they made it. Now, the world is just there. All of it. In an hour I will be on a flight to Sydney, and by lunchtime I will have arrived. It makes me feel claustrophobic, as if the world is literally shrinking, like a balloon losing air.

Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.

Keep allowing yourself the human privilege of mistakes.

Homo sapiens sabahlar? bir canl?y? öldürebileceÄŸi bilgisiyle uyanan ilkel bir avc?yd? eskiden. Åžimdi ise, sabahlar? bir ÅŸey sat?n alabileceÄŸi bilgisiyle uyan?yordu yaln?zca.

Evolution happens through mistakes.

I had been to sea before, but being at sea no longer felt like being at sea. The progress of humanity seemed to be measured in the distance we placed between ourselves and nature. We could now be in the middle of the Atlantic, on a steam ship such as the Etruria, and feel as if we were sitting in a restaurant in Mayfair.

I am just a caveman in a world that has arrived faster than our minde and bodies expected.

Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don't expect, I feel civilization has become a little safer.

The trouble with ladders is they give you no room to move around. Just room to fall.