What we have lost was old and what we have gained is merely new (Muir)
June 14th, 2007 | Published in Progress, Ecology, History, Quotes, Technology
If I look back over the last hundred years it seems to me that we have lost more than we have gained, that what we have lost was valuable, and that what we have gained is trifling, for what we have lost was old and what we have gained is merely new.
–Edwin Muir in The Story and the Fable, quoted in Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000), p. 74