"Wealth and speed are what the world..." - Quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.
More by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.”
“Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.”
“The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.”
More on Society
“Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it. A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial influences which are at its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer's receptiveness of new truth.”
“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.”
“A Nation's character is typified by its dancers.”
More on Progress
“According to the ancient Chinese proverb, A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
“Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward”
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”