No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid.
Interpretation
Progress is a collective effort, and smooth paths allow for faster advancements.
This quote highlights the idea that progress is not solely achieved by individuals, but rather it is a collaborative endeavor. When the circumstances are favorable and the path is clear, advancements can occur more swiftly and effectively, emphasizing the importance of teamwork and the conditions that facilitate growth and success.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about teamwork in the workplace.
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere; and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing; and little children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville- great Casey has struck out.
Certainly, it may bring to light such a deeper knowledge of the structure of matter as to constitute a veritable discontinuity in the progress of science.
From the beginning of the Radiation Laboratory, I have had the rare good fortune of being in the center of a group of men of high ability, enthusiastic and completely devoted to scientific pursuits.
In the Radiation Laboratory we count it a privilege to do everything we can to assist our medical colleagues in the application of these new tools to the problems of human suffering.
We have reached the age, those of us to whom fortune has assigned a post in life's struggle, when beaten and smashed and biffed by the lashing of the dragon's tail, we begin to appreciate that the old man was not such a fool after all. We saw our parents wrestling with the same dragon, and we thought, though we never spoke a thought aloud, 'Why doesn't he hit him on the head?' Alas, comrads, we know now. We have hit the dragon on the head and we have seen the dragon smile.
I am mindful that scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in favorable environment. No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid. In my own work this has been particularly true.
We try to think with 'and' rather than 'or.' It doesn't have to be healthy or tasty. It can be healthy and tasty. It can be wholesome and convenient.
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed -- and who try to make slaves of all of us -- and they have their music and we have ours.
The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the humanβat the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God.
In the mythic tradition, the Mountain is the bond between Earth and Sky. Its solitary summit reaches the sphere of eternity, and its base spreads out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the way by which man can raise himself to the divine and by which the divine can reveal itself to man.
All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.
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