Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

With capitalism and prosperity came something new: the idea of progress. This is the notion that things are getting better and will continue to get better in the future.

It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

The speed of change makes you wonder what will become of architecture.

As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.

The future is here.

Late-19th-century America, with all its chaotic change and immense potential, seems to have been the perfect place to become not someone else, but someone new.

Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about.

The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.

Some people think technology has the answers.

History has repeatedly shown that when a new method or material becomes available, new uses for it arise.

And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not know everything.

Members of the rising new generation! The future is yours. The republic has been founded by us. It is up to you to guard and exalt it.

To endeavor to rehabilitate the sabbath of our forefathers is as foolish as to try to make people go back into log houses and cook in a fire-place. Some persons can never realize that the world grows; that what was a help to one age becomes a hindrance to another; that time corrects the mistakes of men and that respect and reverence for our ancestors does not necessarily require us to adopt their clothes or their habits.

I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements, nor bigoted to the practices of our forefathers. It is that bigotry which keeps the Indians in a state of barbarism in the midst of the arts and would have kept us in the same state even now

Globalization is the speed of light.

The move to modernity has its risks but the greater risk is not moving at all.

We presumably believe that most of the technological progress over the arc of humanity to date has been good. I don't see any argument to go back to 1600.

Modernity is disruptive, and I endorse that.

It's fun to sentimentalize the 20th-century lifestyle and the 20th-century brain, but it helps nobody, it makes you look ancient, there's no going back, and you'd be miserable if you did.

We can't look for greatness in the past.

I am very fond of technology and like to keep pace with change.

If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood.

I like the present. I'm always interested in new ideas, and what's happening. I'm not nostalgic.

The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.