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There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

Too often new ideas are studied and analyzed until they are suffocated.

At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?

One may say that in a state of science where fundamental concepts have to be changed, tradition is both the condition for progress and a hindrance. Hence, it usually takes a long time before the new concepts are generally accepted.

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

Since the Renaissance, a concept called 'progress' has been baked into our society. Progress - founded on an accumulation of knowledge through experience (and in the case of science, through experiment). To build on the past rather than endlessly relive it. That's what separates us from the beasts.

Ideas move rapidly when their time comes.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.