quotations about progress
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.
THOR HEYERDAHL
attributed, Quotable Quotes
But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity -- that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.
IMMANUEL KANT
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
The march of the human mind is slow.
EDMUND BURKE
speech on conciliation with America, 1775
Restlessness is discontent -- and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man -- and I will show you a failure.
THOMAS EDISON
The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison
Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
The Life of Vivekananda
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
HENRY GEORGE
Progress and Poverty
It has long been my desire to be a little worm in the fair apple of Progress.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Sherwood Anderson's Notebook
Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail", 1963
Progress is the stride of God.
VICTOR HUGO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Nation and the Ethics of War and Preparedness: An Address
I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
JOHN STEINBECK
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may make advances in morality, but all mankind together are making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older; so that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be considered as one man, who never ceases to live and learn.
BLAISE PASCAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Our habitual instructors, our ordinary conversation, our inevitable and ineradicable prejudices tend to make us think that "Progress" is the normal fact in human society, the fact which we should expect to see, the fact which we should be surprised if we did not see. But history refutes this. The ancients had no conception of progress; they did not so much as reject the idea; they did not even entertain the idea.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
ROBERT BROWNING
"De Gustibus"
There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off.
HENRY FORD
My Life and Work
There are three great elements of progress, the steam-engine, the printing-press, and the ballot-box.
EDWARD CHRISTIAN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.
HUMPHRY DAVY
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
The world progresses only through misunderstanding.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare