Quotes about growth
page 4

Robert Ley photo

“To grow or not to grow is neither a well-defined nor a relevant question until the location, sense, and subject of growing and the growth process itself are defined”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Cited in: John Cunningham Wood (1993) Thorstein Veblen: Critical Assessments. p. 408
Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974)

Harold Macmillan photo

“In the course of some ninety years, the wheel has certainly turned full circle. The Protectionist case, which seemed to most of our fathers and grandfathers so outrageous, even so wicked, has been re-stated and carried to victory. Free Trade, which was almost like a sacred dogma, is in its turn rejected and despised… many acute and energetic minds in the ’forties “looked to the end.” They foresaw what seemed beyond the vision of their rivals— that after the period of expansion would come the period of over-production… [Disraeli] perceived only too clearly the danger of sacrificing everything to speed. Had he lived now, he would not have been surprised. The development of the world on competitive rather than on complementary lines; the growth of economic nationalism; the problems involved in the increasing productivity of labour, both industrial and agricultural; the absence of any new and rapidly developing area offering sufficient attractive opportunities for investment; finally, the heavy ensuing burden of unemployment, in every part of the world— all these phenomena, so constantly in our minds as part of the conditions of crisis, would have seemed to the men of Manchester nothing but a hideous nightmare. Disraeli would have understood them. I think he would have expected them.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

‘Preface’ to Derek Walker-Smith, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), pp. vii-viii.
1920s-1950s

J. R. D. Tata photo

“At the Crossroads. The effective execution of a Plan is what counts and not mere planning on paper; it is not what we put on our plate or even what we eat that provides nourishment and growth, but what we digest.”

J. R. D. Tata (1904–1993) Indian businessman

The Central Advisory Council of Industries, New Delhi, August 13, 1965
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
Diodorus Siculus photo
Robert Costanza photo
Éric Pichet photo
Fernando J. Corbató photo
Thomas Friedman photo
Federica Mogherini photo
Tjalling Koopmans photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Michael Friendly photo

“Many schools are now introducing computers into the educational curriculum. Within 10 years it is predicted that computers will play a significant role in every classroom in North America. The question is, how will they be used? Many educators have been focusing on the use of computers for drill and programmed instruction—to provide individualized practice and instruction in the usual curriculum areas. There is another use for computers in education which some educators, myself included, find more exciting. These involve using the computer:
• to provide an environment in which learning can be intrinsically motivating and fun.
• to allow children to discover, explore and create knowledge.
• to help develop skills of thinking and problem solving.
• to make some of the most powerful ideas of the burgeoning computer culture accessible and tangible to children at an early age.
If you have ever watched a child playing good video games or if you play them yourself, then you know the powerful motivation that graphics displays can create. As I’ve watched children play these games, every bit of their attention focused on the screen, I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to harness this motivation and channel it toward intellectual growth and learning…”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. Advanced Logo: A Language for Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1988. Preface

Nyanaponika Thera photo
Allen West (politician) photo
Georges Bataille photo
George W. Bush photo
James A. Garfield photo

“It was a doctrine old as the common law, maintained by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors centuries before it was planted in the American Colonies, that taxation and representation were inseparable correlatives, the one a duty based upon the other as a right But the neglect of the government to provide a system which made the Parliamentary representation conform to the increase of population, and the growth and decadence of cities and boroughs, had, by almost imperceptible degrees, disfranchised the great mass of the British people, and placed the legislative power in the hands of a few leading families of the realm. Towards the close of the last century the question of Parliamentary reform assumed a definite shape, and since that time has constituted one of the most prominent features in British politics. It was found not only that the basis of representation was unequal and unjust, but that the right of the elective franchise was granted to but few of the inhabitants, and was regulated by no fixed and equitable rule. Here I may quote from May's Constitutional History: 'In some of the corporate towns, the inhabitants paying scot and lot, and freemen, were admitted to vote; in some, the freemen only; and in many, none but the governing body of the corporation. At Buckingham and at Bewdley the right of election was confined to the bailiff and twelve burgesses; at Bath, to the mayor, ten aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen; at Salisbury, to the mayor and corporation, consisting of fifty-six persons. And where more popular rights of election were acknowledged, there were often very few inhabitants to exercise them. Gatton enjoyed a liberal franchise. All freeholders and inhabitants paying scot and lot were entitled to vote, but they only amounted to seven. At Tavistock all freeholders rejoiced in the franchise, but there were only ten. At St. Michael all inhabitants paying scot and lot were electors, but there were only seven. In 1793 the Society of the Friends of the People were prepared to prove that in England and Wales seventy members were returned by thirty-five places in which there were scarcely any electors at all; that ninety members were returned by forty-six places with less than fifty electors; and thirty-seven members by nineteen places having not more than one hundred electors. Such places were returning members, while Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester were unrepresented; and the members whom they sent to Parliament were the nominees of peers and other wealthy patrons. No abuse was more flagrant than the direct control of peers over the constitution of the Lower House. The Duke of Norfolk was represented by eleven members; Lord Lonsdale by nine; Lord Darlington by seven; the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord Carrington, each by six. Seats were held in both Houses alike by hereditary right.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Helen Keller photo
Rudolf Steiner photo
Edward Jenks photo

“It is the glory of English Law, that its roots are sunk deep into the soil of national history; that it is the slow product of the age long growth of the national life.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter I, Old English Law, p. 3

George MacDonald photo

“A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

The Consuming Fire
Unspoken Sermons, First Series (1867)

Dexter S. Kimball photo
Jane Roberts photo
Paul Keating photo
James Bovard photo

“The growth of government is like the spread of a dense jungle, and the average citizen can hack through less of it every year.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press, 1999) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Freedom%20in%20Chains.htm

Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
William Thomson photo
Gordon Brown photo

“Our new economic approach is rooted in ideas which stress the importance of macro-economics, post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between growth and investment, and people and infrastructure.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Michael White, "The gift of tired tongues", The Guardian, 30 September 1994; Norman Macrae, "You've never had it so incoherent", Sunday Times, 2 October 1994.
Speech at an economic seminar, Tuesday 27 September 1994.
Member of Parliament

Clifford D. Simak photo
Simon Kuznets photo
Talcott Parsons photo

“Theory in the social sciences should have three major functions. First, it should aid in the codification of our existing concrete knowledge. It can do so by providing generalized hypotheses for the systematic reformulation of existing facts and insights, by extending the range of implication of particular hypotheses, and by unifying discrete observations under general concepts. Through codification, general theory in the social sciences will help to promote the process of cumulative growth of our knowledge. In making us more aware of the interconnections among items of existing knowledge which are now available in a scattered, fragmentary form, it will help us fix our attention on the points where further work must be done.
Second, general theory in the social sciences should be a guide to research. By codification it enables us to locate and define more precisely the boundaries of our knowledge and of our ignorance. Codification facilitates the selection of problems, although it is not, of course, the only useful technique for the selection of problems for fruitful research. Further than this, general theory should provide hypotheses to be applied and tested by the investigation of these problems…
Third, general theory as a point of departure for specialized work in the social sciences will facilitate the control of the biases of observation and interpretation which are at present fostered by the departmentalization of education and research in the social sciences.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Source: Toward a general theory of action (1951), p. 3

Helen Keller photo
Edward Elgar photo
Marcus Orelias photo

“As influences faces growth, some will want my buzz cut. Growing bolder in my vision but I often feel stuck.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Portraits
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

Kwame Nkrumah photo
Philo photo
Daniel Berrigan photo

“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm… in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016) American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet

No Bars to Manhood (1971), p. 49.

Milton Friedman photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“Lip service to disarmament is insufficient; the goal is to find ways to redirect the resources used for the military and reduce the danger of war while liberating funds to finance development and all-inclusive growth.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A.67.277_en.pdf.
2012

Seneca the Younger photo

“Growth is slow but collapse is rapid.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

[Ugo Bardi, 2017, The Seneca Effect: Why growth is slow but collapse is rapid, 7, Springer, 1612-3018, 10.1007/978-3-319-57207-9]
Other works

James Anthony Froude photo
Sudhir Ruparelia photo

“When starting out, ensure your business has adequate capital for growth.”

Sudhir Ruparelia (1956) Ugandan businessman

Interview http://www.newvision.co.ug/mobile/Detail.aspx?NewsID=630054&CatID=3 with New Vision

Peter D. Schiff photo

“Real economic growth emanates from increased productivity, which tends to hold prices down.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

Geoffrey Hodgson photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo

“If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI to the Bishops Priests and Deacons Men and Women Religious and All the Lay Faithful On Christian Hope, 30 November 2007
2007

Robert Solow photo
Don Soderquist photo

“Complacency is the mortal enemy of growth and continued success. It is easy to take success for granted and presume that because we have been successful in the past, success will continue to be our friend in the future.  Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that you have to work harder the more successful you become—your competitors have learned from your success and are all out to beat you.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 115.
On working hard

“Characteristic of our times are the concepts of complexity, growth and change.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), p. 1

Pope Benedict XVI photo
David Crystal photo
Amory B. Lovins photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo

“There is the growth of applied science, the increased interest in the control and reconstruction of nature, accompanied by a decline in the practice of meditation or the vocation of the intellectual life.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

[describing the historical causes of the modern tendency to make intellect the servant of alien interests]
The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

Eric R. Kandel photo
Alfred North Whitehead photo
Joni Mitchell photo
Daniel J. Boorstin photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“People, when cognizant, influence their personal growth and their environment by their will.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

Thomas Jefferson photo
Friedrich List photo
Eric R. Kandel photo
Gerald Durrell photo

“Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The garden, surrounded by tall fuschia hedges, had the flower beds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. The white cobbled paths, scarcely as wide as a rake's head, wound laboriously round beds hardly larger than a big straw hat, beds in the shape of stars, half-moons, triangles, and circles all overgrown with a shaggy tangle of flowers run wild. Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame-red, moon-white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent's progress through the sky. In the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent faces through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heart-shaped leaves. The bougainvillaea that sprawled luxuriously over the tiny iron balcony was hung, as though for a carnival, with its lantern-shaped magenta flowers. In the darkness of the fuschia-hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects.”

My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Joel Mokyr photo
Steve Blank photo

“While there is an occasional bad apple, the public market rewards companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Steve Blank, Not All Who Wander Are Lost, K&S Ranch, 2010, p. 54.

Kelli Ward photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Maria Mitchell photo
Leo Buscaglia photo
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus photo

“Great things come crashing down upon themselves – such is the limit of growth ordained by heaven for success.”
In se magna ruunt: laetis hunc numina rebus<br/>crescendi posuere modum.

In se magna ruunt: laetis hunc numina rebus
crescendi posuere modum.
Book I, line 81 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Andrei Sakharov photo
Dennis Skinner photo

“Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the 1970s and a lot of the 1980s, we would have thanked our lucky stars in the coalfield areas for growth of 1.75 per cent.? The only thing growing then were the lines of coke in front of boy George and the rest of them.”

Dennis Skinner (1932) British politician

8 Dec 2005 : Column 988 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo051208/debtext/51208-04.htm publications.parliament.uk/
2000s

Lars Løkke Rasmussen photo

“Growth and prosperity. These are the blocks with which we must build our welfare society.”

Lars Løkke Rasmussen (1964) Danish politician

From the Opening Address to the Folketing (The Danish Parliament) on Tuesday 6 October 2009.
2000s, 2009

Reese Palley photo
Mark Ames photo

“As the Economic Policy Institute reported, "What income growth there was over the 1979-1989 period was driven primarily by more work at lower wages."”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part III: Ragenomics, page 87.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

Gertrude Breslau Hunt photo
V. V. Giri photo

“Unemployment is the problem of problems which has made our youths naxalites. Educated youth are deprived of all deserving comforts and their growing discontent has given scope for the sppedy growth of naxalism.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Saleem Shaikh in: Business Environment, 2/E http://books.google.co.in/books?id=sfOH_n1vseUC&pg=PA287, Pearson Education India, 1 September 2010

Isaac Asimov photo

“[In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate? ] "It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Interview by Bill Moyers on Bill Moyers' World Of Ideas (17 October 1988); transcript http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/print/pdfs/woi%20asimov1.pdf (page 6) - audio (20:12) http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/media_players/asimovwoi_audio.html
General sources

Neal Stephenson photo
Evelyn Underhill photo