Quotes About Progress

Whichever way speech and language emerged in humans, it was a transition, with all those necessary but not sufficient pieces being nudged in one way or the other, by chance, by selection. The fact that it was a transition, not a revolution, means it took time.

It was the co-evolution of minds, brains and hands that drove us to use sticks, knap stones, refine those flakes, and eventually, after long periods of stasis, develop our technological prowess so that we could carve statues, and musical instruments, and weapons that made resources ever-more available. Despite a few animals having similarly complex brains, none has come close to our tool skills for many millions of years.

The revolution was not televised; it was livestreamed.

Nowadays, only the willfully ignorant dismiss the truth that we evolved from earlier ancestors.

Life is transition: The only things that are truly static are already dead.

you have the potential to be a Formula 1 champion. It is easier to measure something than to understand what it is you are measuring.

Adam Rutherford

The greatest achievement of the Human Genome Project was working out exactly how little we knew— known unknowns. Once you know what you need to know, the future is laid out in front of you. And so, the map was sketched, and the landscape was set out— where to explore, and what we might be hunting for.

Darwin, with typical prescience, suspected that this might be the case: Man alone is capable of progressive improvement. That he is capable of incomparably greater and more rapid improvement than is any other animal, admits of no dispute; and this is mainly due to his power of speaking and handing down his acquired knowledge.

All scientists need to be wrong as often as they can be, for that is the place from which we discover what is correct, and inch ever closer to the truth.

For our purposes, if we are to look at the evolution that led to where we are now, instead of the nice neat tree, I think it could reasonably be described as one big million-year clusterfuck. Whenever humans met - Sapiens, Neanderthal, Denisovans - they had sex. What a time to be alive.

Some researchers suppose that the presence of tools represents the boundary between the genus Homo and what came before, meaning that humans are actually defined by tool use.

Failure is always an option.

Notwithstanding these setbacks, the dream of a beautiful American orchestra goes on, and I share Dr. King's faith that each year we move inexorably closer to a magnificent opening night.

Each year on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, America has the opportunity to reflect on our nation's progress towards the realization of his dream.

An America that inspires hope in its ideals must complement an America that inspires awe in its strength.

The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.

The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster.

The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition... is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.

a team sunk at the end of the first segment stands a good shot of staying alive, or even coming in first, at the leg's end. And even teams that fall irretrievably far behind, have a chance of catching up to others at a bunching point.

All we are given is possibilities— to make ourselves one thing or another. JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET  

Or maybe I was just in progress. Hatching another character for another extraordinary story, yet untold.

The past is for learning from and letting go. You can't revisit it. It vanishes.

I'm beginning to grow into who I thought I might be.