PROGRESS QUOTES II
quotations about progress
How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted.... It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass.
J. B. BURY
The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry Into Its Origin and Growth
Progress is only possible in those happy cases where the force of legality has gone far enough to bind the nation together, but not far enough to kill out all varieties and destroy nature's perpetual tendency to change.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man as yet.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
Progress, that great heresy of degenerates.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III", L'art romantique
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
EDWARD GIBBON
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Progress is the child of doubt.
CARNEADES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Step by step, progress is made.
COMMODUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history.
LEN DEIGHTON
An Expensive Place to Die
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Note Books
The true law of the race is progress and development; whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.
JONATHAN STURGES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.
ALFRED A. MONTAPERT
attributed, Have Your Say
We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey. For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
BARACK OBAMA
Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2009
We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
The condition of all progress is experience. We go wrong a thousand times before we find the right path. We struggle, and grope, and hurt ourselves until we learn the use of things, and this is true of things spiritual as well as of material things. Pain is unavoidable, but it acquires a new and higher meaning when we perceive that it is the price humanity must pay for an invaluable good.
FELIX ADLER
Life and Destiny
The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"First Visit to England", English Traits
There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.
RONALD REAGAN
State of the Union Address, February 6, 1985
Progression is nature's ordinance.
O. S. FOWLER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Our words must be judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Nobel Lecture, Oslo, Norway, May 5, 1910
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt
All nations contribute to the great march of progress.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims