There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature.

Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they’ve done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

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.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

One thing I’ve tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

No great thing is created suddenly.

To make headway, improve your head.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from?

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.

The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

Love to everybody who is out there progressing and taking things to the next level.

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

Even though you are on the right track – you will get run over if you just sit there.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

It’s a pity that nobody has found an exploding black hole. If they had, I would have won a Nobel prize.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.