Quotes About Progress

We're meant to go. We're not meant to stay forever.

All scientific work is incomplete—whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, to postpone action that it appears to demand at a given time. Who knows, asks Robert Browning, but the world may end tonight? True, but on available evidence most of us make ready to commute on the 8:30 next day.9

This is a characteristic pattern in science: first there is scattered evidence of a phenomenon, published in specialist journals or reports, and then someone begins to connect the dots.

We took modest steps, and then did nothing to strengthen them as time went on, even as the science increasingly indicated that we needed to. We went on faith that the market would do its "magic.

The dichotomy of man versus environment, or jobs versus environment, or prosperity versus environment, is a dangerous fiction constructed to justify greed. It cynically warrants destruction in the name of the false prophet of progress. That is what I believe.

If you want to change who you are, change what you want

We clean it up and we keep going," I say firmly. "Life is one mess after another, and there's nothing you or I or anyone else on this planet can do to change that. So when messes happen, like they always will, there's only one thing to do: you clean it up. And you keep going. Say that to me.

From triumph to failure is only one step.

Since sixt week j learn the Englich and j do not any progress. Six week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivity word four day I could konow it two thusands and two hundred.

On peut s'arrêter quand on monte, jamais quand on descend.

Occupation is the scythe of time.

A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.

In France, only the impossible is admired.

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.

The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.

Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.

A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.

Under a good administration, the Nile gains on the desert. Under a bad one, the desert gains on the Nile.

You wish to sail a ship up stream by lighting a fire under its decks, I have no time for such nonsense.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

Do not wait: the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.

The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.

To Robert Fulton: What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me, I have no time to listen to such nonsense.