"Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest"
About this Quote
Progress, in Grillparzer's hands, is a lantern that mostly helps you see how lost you are.
The opening feint - "Mankind is getting smarter every day" - mimics the sugary confidence of Enlightenment-era self-congratulation, the kind of line that could sit comfortably in a pamphlet about education, industry, or moral improvement. Then he yanks the rug: "Actually, it only seems so". The joke is not just that we're deluded; it's that the delusion is structured. Modernity produces the optics of intelligence: more information, more technique, more institutional polish. Smartness becomes a vibe, not a verdict.
The second pivot is even darker. He grants "progress" only to twist it into a fairy-tale image with teeth: the forest. In European literary tradition, the forest is where maps fail and instincts take over - a place of enchantment, danger, and moral disorientation. To "progress... ever more deeply" is to take the modern faith in forward motion and reveal its blind spot: direction. Movement is not meaning. Accumulated capacity can be indistinguishable from accumulated complication.
Grillparzer lived through the post-Napoleonic order and the cautious, censorious Austrian Empire, where official narratives of stability and improvement often masked stagnation and repression. His irony isn't the fashionable cynicism of a salon; it's a survival skill in a culture that sold "advancement" while tightening its grip. The line lands because it refuses the easy binary of optimism versus despair. Yes, we are going somewhere. No, that doesn't mean we know where we are.
The opening feint - "Mankind is getting smarter every day" - mimics the sugary confidence of Enlightenment-era self-congratulation, the kind of line that could sit comfortably in a pamphlet about education, industry, or moral improvement. Then he yanks the rug: "Actually, it only seems so". The joke is not just that we're deluded; it's that the delusion is structured. Modernity produces the optics of intelligence: more information, more technique, more institutional polish. Smartness becomes a vibe, not a verdict.
The second pivot is even darker. He grants "progress" only to twist it into a fairy-tale image with teeth: the forest. In European literary tradition, the forest is where maps fail and instincts take over - a place of enchantment, danger, and moral disorientation. To "progress... ever more deeply" is to take the modern faith in forward motion and reveal its blind spot: direction. Movement is not meaning. Accumulated capacity can be indistinguishable from accumulated complication.
Grillparzer lived through the post-Napoleonic order and the cautious, censorious Austrian Empire, where official narratives of stability and improvement often masked stagnation and repression. His irony isn't the fashionable cynicism of a salon; it's a survival skill in a culture that sold "advancement" while tightening its grip. The line lands because it refuses the easy binary of optimism versus despair. Yes, we are going somewhere. No, that doesn't mean we know where we are.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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