Quotes About Progress

The fixation on the heap of information in the textbooks is itself part of the problem because the world we are educating learners for is something of a moving target, itself as much unknown as known.

You might not remember the days when doctors endorsed smoking cigarettes,

Young visitors to the museum ask me, "What was it like to live during the civil rights struggle?" I gently tell them that we are living during the civil rights struggle. -David Pilgrim

Another way to comprehend it is this: From the time of our beginning as a species (about 200,000 years ago) until the year 1804, human population rose to a billion; between 1804 and 1927, it rose by another billion; we reached 3 billion in 1960; and each net addition of a billion people, since then, has taken only about thirteen years. In October 2011, we came to the 7-billion mark

disappointment, in science, is sometimes a gateway to insight.

It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it.

Eventually, it can lead us to have compassion for everyone, when we see how we all must struggle with the downside of human nature. Everyone is crippled in some area, and everyone is somewhere on the path of evolution, some ahead of us, and some behind.

Getting stuck on the past will weigh you down and looking into the future will only create worries.

Suffering is to cyclists what poll data are to politicians; they rely on it to tell them how well they are doing their job.

Perhaps one day Russia might even become somehow ordinary, a country of problems rather than catastrophes, a place that develops rather than explodes. That would be something to see.

Without recognizing it, we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change. I believe that we are at the end of nature.

Self-actualization is not a sudden happening or even the permanent result of long effort. The eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint Milarupa suggested: "Do not expect full realization; simply practice every day of your life." A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one.

once we understand that what happens beyond our control may be just what we need, we see that acceptance of reality can be our way of participating in our own evolution.

THE FIRST GIVEN of life is that changes and endings are inevitable for any person, relationship, enthusiasm, or thing. Nothing is perfect, permanently satisfying, or permanently anything. Everything falls apart in time. Every beginning leads to a finale. Built into all experiences, persons, places, and things is a life span. Our relationships pass through phases, from romance through struggle to commitment. Then they end with death or separation.

Just a little progress is freedom from fear.—Bhagavad Gita

As we become more courageous, getting on with life becomes more valuable than the narcotic comforts of the status quo.

Then we become more adult, because we are fulfilling the inner urge that all humans were born with: to go on a heroic journey, to move on rather than stay stuck. Where we are is not our fate. It is where we can best begin the journey.

The wrong answers are stopping the right ones from emerging.

testing out models, and then refining everything further, I developed a set of ideas that was transforming people's ability

As Lucy says, "Winning isn't everything; winning big is!" Most of us need to win big. The problem, however, is that there seems to be a law of diminishing returns: the bigger wins give a decreasing measure of satisfaction.

out here in "the real world," every day was sort of like the one before. I guess that's why people freaked out about birthdays: Those at least put a stake in the ground, somehow ended one chapter and opened a next.

I believe we have two lives. The life we learn with, and the life we live with after that.

respond that we unfortunately seem to be running

Experts think that China will lead the world in the coming century? No chance. Just look at a pair of chopsticks and a fork, and you tell me who is more advanced.