“Expect not… that efforts for the moral regeneration of man can be immediately crowned with success; operations upon masses are ever slow in progress, and their effects distant.”

— Adolphe Quetelet

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

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Adolphe Quetelet 52

Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociolo… 1796–1874

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” p. 5 [The phrase “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.” is from Max Weber]
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

“Great achievements require gigantic efforts, without which our progress sounds to be slow.”

Fatima Jinnah (1893–1967) Pakistani dental surgeon, biographer, stateswoman and one of the leading founders of Pakistan

Message to the Nation of Pakistan, 14 August 1950 [citation needed]

“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Russell vs. Copleston (1948)
1940s

“Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Αs translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
The Vocation of the Scholar (1794)
Context: Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, —what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come —"As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; — for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, — I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them."

“The regeneration of a sinner is an evidence of power in the highest sphere — moral nature; with the highest prerogative — to change nature; and operating to the highest result — not to create originally, which is great; but to create anew, which is greater.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 491.

“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Letter to the downthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubček (August 1969), as translated in Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope, p. 115

“All men without distinction, are allured by immediate advantages. Great minds alone are excited by distant good. So long as wisdom in it's projects, calculates upon wisdom, or relies upon it's own strength, it forms none by chimerical schemes - and runs the risk of making itself the laughter of the world. But it is certain of success, and can reckon upon aid and admiration, when it finds a place in it's plans for barbarism, rapacity and superstition and can render the selifsh passions of mankind the executor of its' purposes.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

History of the Thirty Years War - Volume II
The Thirty Years War

“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

“Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the wat'ry glade.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 1
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

“Expect not… that efforts for the moral regeneration of man can be immediately crowned with success; operations upon masses are ever slow in progress, and their effects distant.”

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Adolphe Quetelet 52

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