Quotes About Progress

lifetime: the invention of the telephone, the transatlantic cable, the automobile, the airplane, and the introduction of modem warfare, with great armies massed against each other, with tanks, armored cars, flame-throwers, and poison gas-a far cry from the days when Cody and the troopers of the Fifth

A seed is not an imperfect plant, and a caterpillar is not an imperfect butterfly. Each is the manifestation of a particular stage in the process of development. Similarly, while we may not have yet remembered or understood our gifts, it is not because we are imperfect, but because we have not yet matured into memory and understanding.

It's best never to think that the worst of today will be the framework of tomorrow.

Errors carry the keys to your salvation.

Errors should free you from the prison of your ignorance rather than shackle you to your lowest moments.

Measure your life by improvements rather than mistakes.

Focus away from ideas that get you nowhere and toward ideas that can change your life.

There is something to be gained with each misstep that is ultimately understood.

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

it is almost always the case that whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.

We must always couch our current scientific knowledge as "currently unfalsified.

The greatest intellectual and moral offense the modern intellectual can be found guilty of is that of seeming to think or act outside what is commonly held to be the linear progress of civilization.

The idea of decline is no more, no less, correct than the idea of progress. History is neither progress nor decline alone. It is both. What is determinative in the historian's judgment is simply that aspect of the present he chooses to illuminate.

If as individuals we can improve the geography only slightly, if at all, perhaps the more appropriately scaled subject for reshaping is ourselves.

There are no beautiful houses in England now. Only ruins, mental homes, and Government offices.

After all, that was a main purpose of science: to make things of all kinds happen sooner than they otherwise would.

In the end I came to see that the true prophet of the modern world was Samuel Butler: when he suggested that the machine was an evolutionary development, destined to supersede man as the dominant species and reduce him to greenfly status, the status of machine-minder, homo mechanicus instead of homo sapiens ; and to modify his nature accordingly.

Why should I keep doing things that I've done before?

Hoping and Wishing are excuses for not Doing.

The rewards in life go to those who are willing to give up the past.

If you don't start, it's certain you won't arrive.

we will always be attracted to the situation or person that we need, in any given moment, in order to learn whatever lesson that we need to learn. The most important thing is to learn the lesson quickly, let go, and then move on.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.