Quotes About Progress

Once moral progress in a particular area is under way, most religions eventually get on board—as in the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, women's rights in the twentieth century, and gay rights in the twenty-first century—but this often happens after a shamefully protracted lag time.

Evolution does not just produce new species; it produces an increasing number of new species.

And sometimes, by focusing on a life to come, we miss what we have in this life. It is a different source of hope, but it is hope nonetheless: hope that human intelligence, combined with compassion, can solve our myriad problems and enhance the quality of each life; hope that historical progress continues on its march toward greater freedom and acceptance for all humans; and hope that reason and science as well as love and empathy can help us understand our universe, our world, and ourselves.

Inherent in being a good experimenter is being OK with the losses. Therefore, remember that every time you purchase a book that turns out to be a dud, you are just one step closer to a book that will change your life.

series The March of Time visited

From the vantage point of the present, the prize promised by the idea of progress can look less like an achievement than an affront.

Pilots sometimes called this "the 200th hour" – when you knew just enough, and were confident enough, to make your first really big fuck-up.

What a magnificent race of creatures, he thought, that could build an airport on top of a sailing ship. But what a wretched one that mainly used it to bomb one another back into the Stone Age…

The world changes. We adapt to it. That's the whole way we stay ahead, survive – and prevail.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

The first transatlantic cable was not laid until 1956, and it could transmit only 36 calls at any one time. As late as 1966, only 138 simultaneous calls could take place between Europe and all of North America,

Live and learn,learn and apply,apply and overcome.

Mistakes unviels our individual flaws that blocks our paths to perfection

This is an instructive model for the proliferation of other infectious diseases as population growth and "progress" create better roads and more mobility while reducing jungle and forestland. As a result, microbes that may have stayed in their particular niches for centuries or longer are now emerging into far larger problems.

Albert Einstein once said, "a person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

We're still in the Dark Ages. The scared and the superstitious savage still lurks behind the mask of civilization and he will remain there for untold generations to come.

I'm still kind of a mess. But I think we all are. No one's got it all together. I don't think you ever do get it totally together.

A hundred years ago behavior was explained by one shelf of books, now it's explained by a different shelf of books, and in a hundred years they'll explain it differently again.

Powerful Leaders are intentional about not repeating history by always being open to the unprecedented; what's in your future?

we became truly modern only in 1999, with the launch of LiveJournal.

Come here and look out this window. You see that contraption down there?" Frank pointed at an automobile sputtering down the street. "I think people are going to buy quite a few of these new buggies and they need gasoline to make 'em go. It may be the thing of the future. There might only be a few gas wagons now, but someday there will be millions of the things. Oil is only twenty-eight cents a barrel right now. But what will it be in ten years?

God is just as much in the journey as He is the destination.

you don't really have to know all that much yourself; you just do it differently than it was done before.

Careers advance by how well you learn on the job and how well you get along with the rest of the swamp and play its game.