Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1536 |
| AUTHOR: | Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59) |
| QUOTATION: | The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | “Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for civilization” was inscribed on one side of the Golden Door of the Transportation Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. |
| SUBJECTS: | Progress |