“The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.”

— Barbara Kingsolver , Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

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Barbara Kingsolver 119

American author, poet and essayist 1955

Bradley Burston israeli journalist

What Does 'Death to Israel' Mean to You? (2011)

“Humanity … is never stationary. Its progressive march leads it to equality. Its regressive march goes back through every stage of privilege to human slavery, the final word of the right to property.”

Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) French socialist and political activist

in "August Blanqui, Heretical Communist," Radical Philosophy 185 (2014)

“Death and it's associates, after the initial shock produce callousness.”

R. K. Narayan (1906–2001) writer of Indian English literature

“Human beings face ever more complex and urgent problems, and their effectiveness in dealing with these problems is a matter that is critical to the stability and continued progress of society”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: Program On Human Effectiveness, 1996, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/Archive/Post68/PrHumanEffectiveness.html

“Compared to what human life has mainly been like here on earth, our current societies are WEIRD.”

Michael Stevens (educator) (1986) Internet personality

"Our Narrow Slice", Vsauce (8 October 2013)

“If it should be shown further that this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the classification of mental types.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 151
about Handwriting

“To see your own visage up there, it's terrifying. I have to see a film twice, the first time just to get over the shock: the fact that my face seems to be dripping off my skull into my chest.”

William H. Macy (1950) American actor, screenwriter, teacher and director in theater, film and television

Interview in The Guardian (2011)

“I was brought up to believe that human beings are good, which is why it shocks me to the core when I see human beings behaving badly.”

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan

Destiny’s daughter (2007)

“The involuntary shock treatment described here is against the law today. It is a violation of human liberty. The culture has changed.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)
Context: Uncle Tom's Cabin was no literary masterpiece but it was a culture-bearing book. It came at a time when the entire culture was about to reject slavery. People seized upon it as a portrayal of their own new values and it became an overwhelming success.
The success of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seems the result of this culture-bearing phenomenon. The involuntary shock treatment described here is against the law today. It is a violation of human liberty. The culture has changed.

“The progress of society is mainly—is, in its proper sense, the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary(27 February 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.”

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