I. F. Stone Quotes

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

We should explore ways to make us a more amazing species. A more fascinating society. We should embrace our innovations and evolve with them.

History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends.

Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.

The social states of human kinds Are made by multitudes of minds, And after multitudes of years A little human growth appears Worth having, even to the soul Who sees most plain it's not the whole.

When I contemplate the immense advances in sciences and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

It is common to think of our own time as standing on the apex of human history.

The general idea of history seems to be that it is the biography of a society…. History is to the common life of many what biography is to an individual.

I am now playing for 100 years hence.

One person can make a difference, even if it takes forty years.

I think the best things are the ones that happen organically and take a while because nothing really happens overnight if you think about it.

We think we can play a small part in the evolution of culture.

Making small changes every week over a few months will result in huge changes.

The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous.

The energy problems that we face today were built up over a long period of time and are not going to be solved overnight.

Always history is being made; opinions attitudes and institutions change, and there is evolution in the nature of capitalism

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.

There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.