“Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six—the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.”
Letter to Abigail Adams (17 July 1775); in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Adams Family Correspondence (1963), vol. 1, p. 216
1770s
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John Adams 202
2nd President of the United States 1735–1826Related quotes
“I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it lean, sturdy, prepared.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it lean, sturdy, prepared. I harden it and I pity it. I have no other steed.
I keep my brain wide awake, lucid, unmerciful. I unleash it to battle relentlessly so that, all light, it may devour the darkness of the flesh. I have no other workshop where I may transform darkness into light.
I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind, harsher than that of my heart — to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.
“Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.”
Robert Sheckley
(1928–2005) American writer
Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 3 (p. 30)
“I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.”
Charles Darwin
(1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"
volume I, chapter IX: "Life at Down", page 385 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=405&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-1489 to William Darwin Fox (24 October 1852)
quoted in At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2011) by Bill Bryson
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)
“Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”
John Adams
(1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
As quoted by Josiah Quincy III, in Looking Toward Sunset : From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected (1865) by Lydia Maria Francis Child, p. 431
Attributed
Frits Zernike
(1888–1966) Dutch physicist
His Nobel lecture, "How I Discovered Phase Contrast" (11December 1953) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1953/zernike-lecture.html
Sadao Araki
(1877–1966) Japanese general
Quoted in "Dragon in the Dust" - Page 229 - by Post Wheeler - 2007
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
(1802–1838) English poet and novelist
The Golden Violet - title poem - introduction
The Golden Violet (1827)
Haile Selassie
(1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia
Interview in The Voice of Ethiopia (5 April 1948).
Context: The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement. When this comes to be realized man's journey toward higher and more lasting values will show more marked progress while the evil in him recedes into the background. Knowing that material and spiritual progress are essential to man, we must ceaselessly work for the equal attainment of both. Only then shall we be able to acquire that absolute inner calm so necessary to our well-being.
It is only when a people strike an even balance between scientific progress and spiritual and moral advancement that it can be said to possess a wholly perfect and complete personality and not a lopsided one.