From Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), British politician and writer, who twice served as Prime Minister, at a banquet speech in Glasgow, 1873:
How much has happened in these fifty years—a period more remarkable than any, I will venture to say, in the annals of mankind. I am not thinking of the rise and fall of Empires, the change of dynasties, the establishment of Governments. I am thinking of those revolutions of science which have had much more effect than any political causes, which have changed the position and prospects of mankind more than all the conquests and all the codes and all the legislators that ever lived.
And look where we are now!