Quotes on Fortschritt

We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one.

Life has become better, and no one seems to know about it.

It must be remembered that necessity is only the mother of invention; socially accumulated knowledge is its father.

Once, the governing human metaphor was pastoral or agricultural, and it clarified, and so preserved in human care, the natural cycles of birth, growth, death, and decay. But modern humanity's governing metaphor is that of the machine. Having placed ourselves in charge of creation, we began to mechanize both the creation itself and our conception of it. We began to see the whole creation merely as raw material, to be transformed by machines into a manufactured Paradise.

Roads, better harnesses for horses, time-keeping devices, financial instruments like a currency that was recognized everywhere in the kingdom, enforceable contracts - all of this made commerce more appealing than plunder.

Without deviation, progress is not possible.

Any theory that makes progress is bound to be initially counterintuitive.