Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Quotes

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

At the same time, we are keenly aware that China is still the largest developing country in the world and we need to make long and hard efforts if we are to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and basically achieve modernization.

The locomotive is coming into contact with the framework of our institutions. In this country of simple government, the most powerful civilizing force which civilization has yet produced must … assume its relation to that political machinery which is to control and regulate it.

The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.

Well into the 20th century, scholars viewed economic advances as resulting from commercial innovations enabled by the discoveries of scientists - discoveries that come from outside the economy and out of the blue.

Electricity is an example of a general purpose technology, like the steam engine before it. General purpose technologies drive most economic growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like lightbulbs and, yes, factory redesign.

Prosperity in human society is misunderstood. The difference between a rich and poor society is the number of problems that society solves for its citizens. That means technological innovation is the source of all prosperity, but with every tech innovation, you also get disruption - ultimately, social and civic disruption.

In my fifty years of experience and memory, I have seen the most amazing increase in the standard of living of a people ever achieved anywhere in the world. This is why I am so sure that our system of free competition and industrial development is sound and must be preserved.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draw all, even the most barbarian of nations into civilization.

The War of 1812 has given new direction to wealth and industry in the United States, and manufacturers grew up as if by magic.

So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us, who cannot be your anarchic and destroying Devil, and therefore may be the Ordering and Creating God.

We have built cities, developed industry and cultivated agriculture - we have transformed the State of Israel into an example and symbol for many other countries in the world.

Upbuilding is necessary for the uplifting of our soul... Indonesia must be a strong country packed with factories. This is our utopia.

Innovation and commerce are as powerful tools for creating social progress as they are for driving technological advancement.

As humans, we've always innovated our way out of problems, whether it was the first torch to light a dark cave or the steam engine that sparked a revolution.

Manufacturing establishments not only occasion a positive augmentation of the produce and revenue of the society . . . they contribute essentially to rendering them greater than they could possibly be, without such establishments. These circumstances are . . . greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other.

Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic.

The more one observes, the more clearly does he see that it is in the soil of pure science that are found the origins of all our modern industry and commerce. In fact,our civilization is wholly built upon our scientific discoveries.

Even the development of the steam engine owed but little to the advancement of science.

The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation.

Before information age, living standards basically were flat. Since then, they've been growing 2 percent a year were about 30 times richer. So technology, machines is really, you know, arguably the most important thing that's happened to humanity in terms of our living standards. You could look to the introduction of digital computers in the 1950s.