Future Progress Quotes

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. ~ Andrew Carnegie

Trust is precious and easily wasted, and guessing is a lousy foundation for future progress. ~ Seth Godin

The level of our educational development is high and serves as a strong basis for our future progress. ~ Hassanal Bolkiah

[Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together. ~ Julian Barnes

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration. ~ Burt Rutan

A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism. ~ Irving Babbitt

And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress. ~ Terry Pratchett

I am firmly convinced that, in future years, China and India will join hands in playing a more active role in maintaining peace and stability in the region and the world at large and make due contribution to the cause of human progress and development. ~ Li Peng

The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo. ~ Bob Iger

With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress of the experimental sciences. ~ Claude Bernard

You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it. ~ Charles Babbage

We need to make progress. Otherwise we're waiting for news in a world where there is no longer any news. ~ Ray Bradbury

The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge ... ~ Sri Aurobindo

As more and more work is done by machines, people can spend more time on other activities. Not just leisure and amusements, but also on the deeper satisfactions that come from invention and exploration, from creativity and building, and from love, friendship, and community ... If the first machine age helped unlock the forces of energy trapped in chemical bonds to reshape the physical world, the real promise of the second machine age is to help unleash the power of human ingenuity. ~ Erik Brynjolfsson And Andrew McAfee

Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we give our children a future of more or a future of less - this, too, is a choice. ~ Martin O'Malley

Oh, girl! He's got a big one," the fortune teller exclaimed, her dark eyes briefly flickering up to Violet's face before returning back to the cards spread out in front of her. She paused for a moment as she studied them, her pointer finger tapping against her jaw. Finally, she added, "Just like a summer sausage, and I'm not talking about the snack-sized ones. And it's attached to a body that could put Dwayne Johnson to shame. What women could resist a package like that? I'd say the future is definitely going to be bright ... at least for you. ~ Rose Wynters

Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Inexpensive Progress

Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
B ~ John Betjeman

The history of socialism offers a twofold lesson: the fall of the collective as a transforming agent of everyday life, and the rise of technology and its problems. Given this twofold experience, and given that the idea of a revolutionary transformation of the everyday has almost vanished, the withdrawal into an everyday which has not been transformed but which has benefited from a small proportion of technical progress becomes perfectly understandable. No, what is most astonishing is perhaps the fact that this withdrawal has in no way stopped collective organization and overorganization continuing to operate on its own level: the state, important decisions, bureaucracy. 'Reprivatized' life has its own level, and the large institutions have theirs. These levels are juxtaposed or superimposed. ~ Henri Lefebvre

He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. He lived in the past, by his diary. He was a history man, his head full of dead leaves. It was a form of reassurance, he knew. There were too many roads into the future and he didn't like not having a map for it.
("Wait") ~ Conrad Williams

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future. ~ P.D. James

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you. ~ Branford Marsalis

She knew what he had in mind.
He'll propose in Scotland on my birthday.
There was no doubt as to what her answer would be. ~ Jana Oliver

I firmly believe this ... that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. ~ Benjamin Franklin

But if you judge safety to be the paramount consideration in life you should never, under any circumstances, go on long hikes alone. Don't take short hikes alone, either – or, for that matter, go anywhere alone. And avoid at all costs such foolhardy activities as driving, falling in love, or inhaling air that is almost certainly riddled with deadly germs. Wear wool next to the skin. Insure every good and chattel you possess against every conceivable contingency the future might bring, even if the premiums half-cripple the present. Never cross an intersection against a red light, even when you can see all roads are clear for miles. And never, of course, explore the guts of an idea that seems as if it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time. ~ Colin Fletcher

... if a thing can be said to be, to exist, then such is the nature of these expansive times that this thing which is must suffer to be touched. Ours is a time of connection; the private, and we must accept this, and it's a hard thing to accept, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted. And if you're thinking how awful these sentiments are, you are perfectly correct, these are awful times, but you must remember as well that this has always been the chiefest characteristic of the Present, to everyone living through it; always, throughout history, and so far as I can see for all the days and years to come until the sun and the stars fall down and the clocks have all ground themselves to expiry and the future has long long shaded away into Time Immemorial: the Present is always an awful place to be. ~ Tony Kushner

Apologies aren't meant to change the past, they are meant to change the future. ~ Kevin Hancock

Quite often, young lady, it seems we're not getting anywhere, when in fact we are. ~ A.C.H. Smith

He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy. Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future. ~ Ian McEwan

People who expect to feel guilty tend to be more sympathetic, to put themselves into other people's shoes, to think about the consequences of their behaviour before acting, and to treasure their morals. As a result they are less prone to lie, cheat or behave immorally when they conduct a business deal or spot an opportunity to make money, studies suggest. They are also likely to make better employees because people who think less about the future results of their actions are more likely to be late, to steal or to be rude to clients. ~ David D. Burns

Your life is in your hands. Only YOU have the capacity to turn it into a rosy path or a thorn filled one. Increase your vibrational output with Cosmic Ordering and your future will be rosy. ~ Stephen Richards

I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. ~ Emma Goldman

Anyway, that's the past, and what matters is the future. That's how life works, because it's short and precious and kind of doubtful. ~ Terry Brooks

A sensually-driven lifestyle. The future of sensual living is here. ~ Lebo Grand

To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in. ~ Milan Kundera

He´s been shown a world in which he was more than just a kid, more than just a victim of injustice. He´d been shown a future where he could take his revenge. I´d been there, I knew exactly how that felt. ~ Alexander Gordon Smith

When I wrote 'Neuromancer', I had a list in my head of all the things the future was assumed to be which it would not be in the book I was about to write. In a sense, I intended 'Neuromancer', among other things, to be a critique of all the aspects of science fiction that no longer satisfied me. ~ William Gibson

By recalling God's past provision, we can reassure ourselves that what He has done in the past, He will do again in the future. ~ Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson

A world to be born under your footsteps ... ~ Saint-John Perse

The surest signs of spiritual progress
are a lack of concern about spiritual progress and
an absence of anxiety about liberation. ~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

To know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. I require more freedom than that. Jessica ~ Frank Herbert

My parents were European immigrants. They came to the States with $1,500, two suitcases, and me, and they managed to build a business, a family, and a future for their family. They didn't have any of the resources of people who have lived here for two or three generations. ~ Stana Katic

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.
"It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.
"Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
"I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
"That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed at home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could point your finger at.
...
"Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. ~ Margaret Atwood

I try to eat vegetarian, though I'm not very good at it, and it's a work in progress. But we basically are what we eat. Eat fat, and there's fat in your body. Eat protein, and there's protein in your body. Eat magic, and there's magic in your body. ~ Greg Van Eekhout

Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I strive to find materials that will engage students, expand their capacities as critical readers and thinkers, and feel immediately relevant to their daily lives and future work in court and social service systems. ~ Dean Spade