Quotes about Progress

It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life; any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones…Thus evolution by addition and the functional preservation of the preexisting structure must occur for one of two reasons-either the old function is required as well as the new one, or there is no way of bypassing the old system that is consistent with survival.

No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.

Abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness.

The most important step we can take toward Mars is to make significant progress on Earth. Even modest improvements in the social, economic, and political problems that our global civilization now faces could release enormous resources, both material and human, for other goals.

As the pioneering physicist Benjamin Franklin put it, "In going on with these experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves obliged to destroy?

If we can accomplish the integration of the search without obliterating cultural differences or destroying ourselves, we will have accomplished a great thing.

This zest to explore and exploit, however thoughtless its agents may have been, has clear survival value. It is not restricted to any one nation or ethnic group. It is an endowment that all members of the human species hold in common.

Taken together, the dramatic societal shifts — often in ten generations or less — provide a compelling refutation of the claim that we are condemned, without hope of reprieve, to live out our lives in a barely disguised chimpanzee social order.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Discovery is for forward lookers. So, no one is born with great knowledge.

As grateful as I am to have been a part of a show like 'LA Ink,' I'm ready to end this chapter and want to focus on other projects now.

I can't just say one time of the year I'm going to do something different. I have to commit to a lifestyle behavioral change and just try to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday.