Quotes About Progress

You can use your idealism to further your aims, if you realize that nothing is Nirvana, nothing is perfect.

What are you so mad about? That we still have a government? We still have "traffic lights." We're sorry. The government's not perfect, but some people wish it was better, not gone.

To have a viable civilization, people have to have a benign government, a semblance of education, spare time, imagination, and manners

The gods would be moving on, in other words; and I, a mere mortal, would be left behind, forgotten

You're right, Margaret, absolutely right. Things have changed a lot, even since I've been here. It's a different place now. Better in some ways, worse in others. Better! she echoed, scornfully.

If ever I'm disheartened by failures such as these, I simply reflect on my humble beginnings and marvel at the enormous distance I have travelled since then.

For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing . . . the final tipping balance.

What lived on-in me- was the discomfort of how completely I'd outgrown the novel I'd once been so happy to live in

As she left her parents' neighborhood, the houses got newer and bigger and boxier. Through windows with no mullions or fake plastic mullions she could see luminous screens, some giant, some miniature. Evidently every hour of the year, including this one, was a good hour for staring at a screen.

Walking is broken falls, the body leaning, the legs advancing to catch it.

Her very difficulty created friction, and friction led to satisfaction...

advancing through my schedule without volition, feeling more and more like the graphical lozenge on a media player's progress bar.

Y se fue. Y ella se convirtió en mejor lectora.

Once upon a time, it had sufficed to write 'The Sound and the Fury' or 'The Sun Also Rises.' But now bigness was essential. Thickness, length.

AT LEAST THE WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT IS GOING WELL.

el amor verdadero altera el mundo del tecnoconsumismo, y a éste no le queda más remedio que alterar, a su vez, el amor.

Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.

The slowness of change is always respectable and reasonable in the eyes of the ones who are only watching; it is a different matter for the ones who are in pain.

One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms. I thank God, he said, that there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them...God save us from both!

The key to mostly anything is pretending your first time *isn't*.

There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.

Every generation is born innocent, and if that is bad for history, it is nevertheless necessary for

Every generation is born innocent, and if that is bad for history, it is nevertheless necessary for life.

Every moment before this one depends on this one.