Improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility.

Charles Babbage

More information about this quote

Topic

Technological progress Progress Industrial revolution

Author

Charles Babbage

Source

On the Economy of Manufactures

Genre

Economic literature

Language

English

Time

1832 1830s 19th century

Occupation

Inventor

From

United Kingdom Europe

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Babbage, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. London: Charles Knight, 1832, ch. 29.

Current Citation

Babbage, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. Cambridge University Press, 2010, ch. 29.

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Related Quotes

Below are one or more quotes that share at least one tag with the quote at the top of the page

Another quote from the 1830s

They have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

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Read Democracy in America, vol. 1 at Project Gutenberg
More information about this quote
Topic
American character Americans

Author

Alexis de Tocqueville
Source
Democracy in America
Genre
Political literature
Language
French
Time
1835 1830s 19th century
Authentication Score 2
Original Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. De La Democratie en Amerique [Democracy in America]. Vol. 1, London: Saunders and Otley, 1835, ch. 18, pt. 6.

Current Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II, translated by Henry Reeve. Bantam Classics, 2000, vol. 1, ch. 18, pt. 6.

Another quote about Progress

There can be no progress (real, that is, moral) except in the individual and by the individual himself.

Charles Baudelaire

More information about this quote
Topic
Personal growth Nature of progress Progress

Author

Charles Baudelaire
Language
French
Time
1867 1860s 19th century
Authentication Score 3
Original Citation

Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur mis a nu [My Naked Heart]. Paris, 1887, no. 15.

Current Citation

Baudelaire, Charles. "My Heart Laid Bare." Late Fragments: Flares, My Heart Laid Bare, Prose Poems, Belgium Disrobed, translated by Richard Sieburth. Yale University Press, 2022, no. 15.