Progress

"From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the evil in its nature."

"New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth."

""Spiral" the memorable Lady terms Our mind's ascent."

"That in our proper motion we ascend Up to our native seat; descent and fall To us is adverse."

"Quod sequitur, fugio; quod fugit, usque sequor."

"Vogue la galère."

"Il est un terme de la vie au-delà duquel en rétrograde en avançant."

"The march of intellect."

"L'esprit humain fait progrès toujours, mais c'est progrès en spirale."

"If you strike a thorn or rose, Keep a-goin'! If it hails or if it snows, Keep a-goin'! 'Tain't no use to sit and whine 'Cause the fish ain't on your line; Bait you hook an' keep on tryin', Keep a-goin'!"

"When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders."

"The stone that is rolling, can gather no moss."

"Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son âge, De son âge a tout le malheur."

"Press on!—"for in the grave there is no work And no device"—Press on! while yet ye may!"

"The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity, and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end."

"According to the ancient Chinese proverb, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step"."

"I walk slowly, but I never walk backward."

"Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then [these?], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things."

"The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family."

"Expositions are the timekeepers of progress."

"Two conditions render difficult this historic situation of mankind: It is full of tremendously deadly armament, and it has not progressed morally as much as it has scientifically and technically."

"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end,… We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

"The day of large profits is probably past. There may be room for further intensive, but not extensive, development of industry in the present area of civilization."