Quotes About Progress

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

but make the self grow? To fill free time with activities that require concentration, that increase skills, that lead to a development of the self, is not the same as killing time by watching

The gods of the Greeks were like helpless children compared to humankind today and the powers we now wield.

For several years the researchers did not let anyone else in on their work, not because they were afraid it would be stolen, but because they were afraid that their colleagues would laugh at their seemingly crazy ideas.

unless a person learns to set goals and to recognize and gauge feedback in such activities, she will not enjoy them.

When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, they may quickly lose courage and determination in the face of the first signs of adversity.

In many ways, competition is a quick way of developing complexity: "He who wrestles with us," wrote Edmund Burke, "strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.

Oppression is often made possible by a new technological advance—sometimes as dramatic as the introduction of farming, sometimes as apparently trivial as the stirrup.

One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. We grow either bored or frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again pushes us to stretch our skills, or discover new opportunities for using them.

one society is "better" than another if a greater number of its people have access to experiences that are in line with their goals.

civilization is built on the repression of individual desires

ningún cambio social puede suceder mientras no cambie primero la conciencia de los individuos. Cuando

Altius, citius, fortius—is

For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.

humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.

These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives (chapter 3).

Almost every situation we encounter in life presents possibilities for growth.

Progress is relatively fast in fields that apply knowledge to the material world, such as physics or genetics. But it is painfully slow when knowledge is to be applied to modify our own habits and desires.

The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow.

Compared to people living only a few generations ago, we have enormously greater opportunities to have a good time, yet there is no indication that we actually enjoy life more than our ancestors did. Opportunities alone, however, are not enough. We also need the skills to make use of them.

mientras que la humanidad ha incrementado colectivamente sus poderes materiales cientos de veces, no ha avanzado mucho en términos de mejorar el contenido de su experiencia.

Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically.

Esta paradoja de las expectativas en alza sugiere que mejorar la calidad de vida es una tarea inacabable.