The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

The march of the human mind is slow.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it’s like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

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

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community – not from governmental restraints.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

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.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years, we had to grow and raise all of our food, even our animals. And I remember in my early life, we didn’t even have electricity. So it was very, very hard times then.

It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.

We walk together, we move together, we think together, we resolve together, and together we take this country forward.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

Who, being loved, is poor?

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

Revolutions go not backward.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

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

Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.

Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It’s a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

I have now exactly the same weight I had when I was 18, 20.

Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

An important priority for me is a business must get their own house in order. Be or become an agent of positive change in your own enterprise and adopt responsible practices to eliminate the risks that often lie at the root of inequality and poverty.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.