“Two centuries ago, 12% of the world could read and write; today 85% can. Literacy and education will soon be universal, for girls as well as for boys.”

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“A century ago, the richest countries devoted 1% of their wealth to children, the poor, the sick and the aged; today they spend almost a quarter of it.”

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“At the turn of the 20th century, women could vote in just one country; today they can vote in every country where men can vote save one (Vatican City).”

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“Despotism has persisted through history because the alternative was often worse... democracy is a form of government that threads the needle—a course between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny—exerting just enough force to prevent people from preying on each other without preying on the people themselves.”

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“During most of the history of nations and empires, war was the natural state of affairs, and peace a mere interlude between wars. Today war between countries is obsolescent, and war within countries is absent from five-sixths of the world. The proportion of people killed annually in wars is about a quarter of what it was in the mid-1980s, a sixth of what it was in the early 1970s, and a 16th of what it was in the early 1950s.”

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“In most times and places, homicides kill far more people than wars. But homicide rates have been falling as well and not just in the U.S. People in the rest of the world are now seven-tenths as likely to be murdered as they were two dozen years ago”

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“Not long ago half the world’s countries had laws that discriminated against racial minorities; today more countries have policies that favor their minorities than policies that discriminate against them.”

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“Our ancestors replaced dogma, tradition and authority with reason, debate and institutions of truth-seeking. They replaced superstition and magic with science.”

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“People are not clones in a monoculture, What satisfies one will frustrate another. The only way they can end up equal is if they are treated unequally.”

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“The only kind of progress we can have is a kind that is easy to miss while we are living through it... long term gains with short-term setbacks... Pulling us forward are ingenuity, sympathy, and benign institutions. Pushing us back are the darker sides of human nature and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”

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“The poor may not always be with us. The world is about a hundred times wealthier today than it was two centuries ago, and the prosperity is becoming more evenly distributed across countries and people. Within the lifetimes of most readers, the rate of extreme poverty could approach zero.”

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“Two centuries ago a handful of countries, embracing 1% of the world’s people, were democratic; today, more than half of the world’s countries, embracing 55% of its people, are… Secular liberal democracies are the happiest and healthiest places on earth, and the favorite destinations of people who vote with their feet.”

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“Violent crime was tamed by a replacement of the code of vendetta by the rule of law, by fairer judicial systems and, most recently, by data-driven policing.”

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“We live longer, suffer less, learn more, get smarter, and enjoy more small pleasures and rich experiences. Fewer of us are killed, assaulted, enslaved, oppressed, or exploited by others... peace and properity are growing and could someday encompass the globe.”

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“You can always fool yourself into seeing a decline if you compare rose-tinted images of the past with bleeding headlines of the present.”

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