Quotes About Progress

Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

Little by little, the look of the land changes by the men we admire.

Jake, you're a dern grasshopper," Augustus said. "You ride in yesterday talking Montana, and today you're talking California.

You told me to stay," July said. "I know I did, son," Augustus said. "I'm sure you wish you had. But yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back. Go on with your digging and I'll tidy up.

The best to do with a death was to move on from it.

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit

But yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving. A

travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. - Robert Louis Stevenson

Heat is produced as a waste product of civilization. I

brachiating hominids.

Nothing lasts. You can't do any one thing for two hundred years. A marriage, a career, a hobby—they're good for twenty years, and maybe you go through a phase more than once. I did some experimental medicine. I wrote a big chunk of that documentary on the Trinoc culture that won a—

He might become ultra conservative, rejecting the impossible even after it had become fact

Skyscrapers, said Speaker. With so much room on the Ringworld, why build so tall? To prove they can do it. No, that's asinine, said Louis. There'd be no point, if they could build something like the Ringworld itself. Perhaps the tall buildings came later, during the decline of civilization.

It—it ought to be pretty well closed off for an intelligent species, she said. Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.

What is it that keeps us in motion? Not seldom, the fear that the bitterness of the past will catch up with us. The bitterness over all missed opportunities. Bitterness at being who you are, and still not more like yourself.

the notion that having a job or an income of any kind should be happiness enough has become outdated.

Every ending is an opportunity for something better.

YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE WORST TO GET TO THE BEST

Dan: Finn and Bobby are fighting over the wrong thing. But at least they're fighting. Georgia: And how is that good? Dan: Because that's the only way to get somewhere better. If you fight, you work it out. If you don't fight, you move into your own corners, and nothing gets decided there

Rotten wood cannot be carved. —Confucius

It feels like a victory that we are moving closer to the truth. But when the truth is taking you somewhere you don't want to go, you also aren't sure. You aren't sure you want that win.