Quotes About Progress

The Age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

The greatest statesmen are those able at once to preserve and reform.

Stephen felt personally these inconveniences; but because the evil was too stubborn to be redressed at once, he resolved to proceed gradually

What are you going to do with your self now?'... 'I? said Fen. 'I shall pursue my orderly and dignified progress towards the grave.

Conservatives, he said, "are taught to believe that change means destruction. They are wrong.… Life means change; where there is no change, death comes.

Edison averaged one patent for every ten to twelve days of his adult life.

Any black or red man who could win admission to "the fellowship of the doers" was superior to the white man who failed. Roosevelt's long-term dream was nothing more or less than the general, steady, self-betterment of the multicolored American nation.

We cannot, when the nation becomes fully civilized and very rich, continue to be civilized and rich unless the nation shows more foresight than we are showing at this moment.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

A closed country is a dying country... A closed mind is a dying mind.' from a radio broadcast in 1947

You're in a straight line, buddy-boy, and it doesn't lead anywhere.....except maybe the grave.

Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end.

One might well think of [Going Mobile by Glen Engel-Cox] as a Carol Emshwiller or Connie Willis story...with balls.

When the positive revolution takes hold it will no longer be enough for politicians to gain points through attack or being negative. Politicians will be expected to be constructive.

las fallas deben corregirse, las debilidades deben suprimirse y los problemas, resolverse.

A person who knows all the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.

In an atomic pile an explosion is prevented by inserting rods of cadmium, which mop up the particles that are shooting around. In this way the energy in the pile is controlled. If there are too many rods, the chain reaction stops and the pile can no longer produce any energy. People who are unable to appreciate new ideas are like the rods: some of them are necessary to prevent a destructive explosion, but too many make it impossible for the pile to produce any energy.

If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [of gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind (Chapter 65,p. 68)

During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment. 

Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second more personal and important, from himself.

Edward Gibbon

and the most civilized portion of mankind.

Notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past, and to depreciate the present

Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins. 93 In the love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate;