Quotes about improvement (1478 quotes, page 12)

“But now let me return to my theme of the many changes that have taken place since I was last here. There is a jocular saying: ‘To improve is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.’ I had to use that once or twice in my long career.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C., (17 January 1952) "We Must Not Lose Hope", in The Great Republic : A History of America (2000), Churchill, Random House, p. 399 ISBN 0375754407
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Change , Perfection

“In televisionland we are all sophisticated enough now to realize that every statistic has an equal and opposite statistic somewhere in the universe. It is not a candidate's favorite statistic per se that engages us, but the assurance with which he can use it.
We are testing the candidates for self-confidence, for "Presidentiality" in statistical bombardment. It doesn't really matter if their statistics be homemade. What settles the business is the cool with which they are dropped.
And so, as the second half hour treads the decimaled path toward the third hour, we become aware of being locked in a tacit conspiracy with the candidates. We know their statistics go to nothing of importance, and they know we know, and we know they know we know.
There is total but unspoken agreement that the "debate," the arguments which are being mustered here, are of only the slightest importance.
As in some primitive ritual, we all agree — candidates and onlookers — to pretend we are involved in a debate, although the real exercise is a test of style and manners. Which of the competitors can better execute the intricate maneuvers prescribed by a largely irrelevant ritual?
This accounts for the curious lack of passion in both performers. Even when Ford accuses Carter of inconsistency, it is done in a flat, emotionless, game-playing style. The delivery has the tuneless ring of an old press release from the Republican National Committee. Just so, when Carter has an opportunity to set pulses pounding by denouncing the Nixon pardon, he dances delicately around the invitation like a maiden skirting a bog.
We judge that both men judge us to be drained of desire for passion in public life, to be looking for Presidents who are cool and noninflammable. They present themselves as passionless technocrats using an English singularly devoid of poetry, metaphor and even coherent forthright declaration.
Caught up in the conspiracy, we watch their coolness with fine technical understanding and, in the final half hour, begin asking each other for technical judgments. How well is Carter exploiting the event to improve our image of him? Is Ford's television manner sufficiently self-confident to make us sense him as "Presidential"?
It is quite extraordinary. Here we are, fully aware that we are being manipulated by image projectionists, yet happily asking ourselves how obligingly we are submitting to the manipulation. It is as though a rat running a maze were more interested in the psychologist's charts on his behavior than in getting the cheese at the goal line.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"And All of Us So Cool" (p.340)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Life , Men , Behavior , Exercises

“The Communist dream of a great new "one world" of the future is based on the belief that a regime of violence and coercion under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would permit the establishment of a society which would produce a new order of men who would acquire the habit of observing what Lenin called the "simple fundamental rules of every-day social life in common." The fallacy of this hope lies in Communism's perverted interpretation of human behavior. It assumes, on the basis of Dialectical Materialism, that if you change things outside of a man this automatically compels a change on the inside of the man. The inter-relation between environment on the outside and the internal make-up of man is not to be disputed, but environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature. For example, just as men will always laugh, eat, propagate, gravitate into groups and explore the unknown, so likewise they will always enjoy the pleasure of possessing things (which alone gives pleasure to sharing); they will always possess the desire for individual expression or self-determination, the ambition to improve their circumstances and the motive to excel above others. These qualities are inherent in each generation and cannot be legislated away nor ignored.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Life , Men , Pleasure , World

“Before explaining these methods let us recall exactly the conditions of the problem which we are attempting to solve. Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. We should therefore, study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do either with his past history or with his future; consequently we shall neglect his etiology, and we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy; for a stronger reason we shall set aside all consideration of pathological anatomy which might explain his intellectual deficiency. So much for his past. As to that which concerns his future, we shall exercise the same abstinence; we do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The development of intelligence in children, 1916, p. 37 : lead paragraph of "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals"

Truth , Exercises , History , Question

“Waterways. Meantime our internal development should go on. Provision should be made for flood control of such rivers as the Mississippi and the Colorado, and for the opening up of our inland waterways to commerce. Consideration is due to the project of better navigation from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Every effort is being made to promote an agreement with Canada to build the, St. Lawrence waterway. There are pending before the Congress bills for further development of the Mississippi Basin, for the taking over of the Cape Cod Canal in accordance with a moral obligation which seems to have been incurred during the war, and for the improvement of harbors on both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts. While this last should be divested of some of its projects and we must proceed slowly, these bills in general have my approval. Such works are productive of wealth and in the long run tend to a reduction of the tax burden.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

War , Effort , Wealth

“It is my honor to serve as President-elect Trump’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs, President-elect Trump’s commitment to caring for our veterans is unquestionable, and he is eager to support the best practices for care and provide our Veterans Affairs’ teams with the resources they need to improve health outcomes. We are both eager to begin reforming the areas in our Veterans Affairs system that need critical attention, and do it in a swift, thoughtful and responsible way.”

David Shulkin (1959) 9th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs

President-Elect Donald J. Trump Nominates Dr. David J. Shulkin as Secretary of Veterans Affairs https://greatagain.gov/shulkin-302876b6595a#.dym68v896 (January 11, 2017)

Health , Way , Support

“Backlash happens to be the title of a 1947 Hollywood movie in which a man frames his wife for a murder he's committed. The backlash against women's rights works in much the same way: its rhetoric charges feminists with all the crimes it perpetrates. The backlash line blames the women's movement for the “feminization of poverty” ñwhile the backlash's own instigators in Washington pushed through the budget cuts that helped impoverish millions of women, fought pay equity proposals, and undermined equal opportunity laws. The backlash line claims the women's movement cares nothing for children's rightsñwhile its own represetatives in the capital and state legislatures have blocked one bill after another to improve child care, slashed billions of dollars in federal aid for children, and relaxed state licensing standards for day care centers. The backlash line accuses the women's movement of creating a generation of unhappy single and childless womenñbut its purveyors in the media are the ones guilty of making single and childless women feel like circus freaks.”

Susan Faludi book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Page 17.
Backlash (1992)

Women , Children , Law , Way

“These contributions [federal taxes on consumption of foreign goods] enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short day their final redemption, and that redemption [of debt] once effected," he said, "the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied, in time of peace, to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war,—if injustice, by ourselves or others, must sometimes produce war,— increased as the same revenue will be increased by population and consumption, and aided by other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past. War will then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state of peace a return to the progress of improvement.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Advising the origination of an annual fund from surplus revenue.
1800s, Second Inaugural Address (1805)

War , Education , Peace , Art

“In the making both of lace and of statues, the remuneration to the artists can only be reduced by producing a larger number of them through more extended education. The expense of the raw material is small in both. The expense of labour in lacemaking is very large, and it is perhaps considerable also in sculpture. The discovery of more convenient localities yielding marble, may make some diminution in its cost; and the improved manufacture of thread may slightly reduce the price of lace. A reduction in the price of labour may to a very moderate extent reduce the cost of the raw material of both. But it is evident that any very great reduction is not to be expected.
Let us now contrast this possible reduction with the past history of some industrial art. The plain lace made at Nottingham, called patent net, will supply us with a good example. In the year 1813 that lace was sold in the piece at the rate of 218. a-yard. At the present time lace of the same kind, but of a better quality, is sold under the same circumstances at 3d. per yard. Thus, in less than forty years the price of the industrial produce has diminished to one eighty-fourth part of its original price.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 51-52

Education , Art , History , Time

“Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture.”

Richard L. Daft (1964) American sociologist

Source: The Leadership Experience, 2008, p. 141.

Confidence , Thinking

“How can we address concerns about 'use of force', how can we address concerns about officer-involved shootings if we do not have a reliable grasp on the demographics and circumstances of those incidents? We simply must improve the way we collect and analyze data to see the true nature of what’s happening in all of our communities.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Way , Communication , Nature

“We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 137.

Understanding , Nature , Knowledge , Problem

“Julia Hayden, the colored school teacher, one of the latest victims of the White man's League, was only seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of respectable parents in Maury County, Tennessee, and had been carefully educated at the Central College, Nashville, a favorite place for the instruction of youth of both sexes of her race. She is said to have possessed unusual personal attractions as well as intelligence. Under the reign of slavery as it is defined and upheld by Davis and Toombs, Julia Hayden would probably have been taken from her parents and sent in a slave coffle to New Orleans to be sold on its auction block. But emancipation had prepared for her a different and less dreadful fate. With that strong desire for mental cultivation which marked the colored race since their freedom, in all circumstances where there is an opportunity left them for its exhibition, the young girl had so improved herself as to become capable of teaching others. She went to Western Tennessee and took charge of a school. Three days after her arrival at Hartsville, at night, two white men, armed with their guns, appeared at the house where she was staying, and demanded the school teacher. She fled, alarmed, to the room of the mistress of the house. The White Leaguers pursued. They fired their guns I through the floor of the room and the young girl fell dead within. Her murderers escaped.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

"Louisiana and the Rule of Terror" http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=EL18741010.2.9#, The Elevator (10 October 1874), Volume 10, Number 26.

Men , Fate , Youth , Age

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Quoted in profile by Israel Shenker, "E. B. White: Notes and Comment by Author" http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/lifetimes/white-notes.html, The New York Times (11 July 1969)

World , Problem

“But while in these first years the prospects of success are apt to seem remote and high hopes seem doomed to frustration, the worst thing to do is to eat one's heart out in idleness. There are many occupations which can be devised to improve one's fitness to profit by the chance when it does come.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 39

Hope , Chance , Success , Heart

“If we recognize, following the materialist theories, that only the physical nature exist, and that man contain ("renferme", Fr.) no higher essence, divine, which, by one side of his being, raise (promote or improve…) him above his animal nature, it would be a question ("il ne saurait être question", Fr.) neither of obligation, nor of moral responsability; then the supreme good would consist for him, indeed, to satisfy his appetites and his natural inclinations (fondness or partiality, -"penchant", Fr.), to look for the pleasure and flee from (scud, shun, avoid, -"fuir", Fr.) pain. In this case, there could be neither religion nor moral, since religion is precisely what raise man above vulgar (or common, - "vulgaire", Fr.) reality, and that moral is the very negation of selfishness.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 41.

Pain , Pleasure , Religion , Question

“Politics is about public service. Everything we do - in parliament, in our constituencies, here in Bournemouth - should be motivated by one goal. Improving the lives of our fellow citizens.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Conservative Party conference http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/07/conservatives2002.conservatives1 (07 October 2002)

Motivation

“Under the guise of eugenic improvement and racial purity, and what the implementation of eugenic measures could supposedly do to improve human society, notions of racial superiority continued in popularity, but with a purported scientific foundation.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 18.

“There is no greater goal than to truly improve Mr and Ms Everyone's health, as an innovator that is where I want to spend my energy.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

NPR Interview January 2007, regarding innovative uses of the camera phone http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/01/06/father_of_the_camera.html.

Health

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Love , Children , Pleasure , Books

“The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how these powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 7: General View of the Remainder of My Life (p. 192)

God , Hostility , Truth , Sex

“Almost all men improve on acquaintance.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Men

“We should not delude ourselves into thinking that an incomes policy is other than a serious infringement of freedom…Nor have the Liberals explained how it is to be worked, and even if they had, it is certainly not a permanent answer to our economic troubles…At present, the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance occasionally looks too much like a half-way house on the old road to state socialism. It will spend more than the Tories but rather less than Labour…Such compromises may win votes, but they will not improve the country.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

In the Journal of Economic Affairs (October, 1981).

Way , Thinking , Freedom , Housing

“Life is a gift that the humblest may boast of
And one that the humblest may well make the most of.
Get out and live it each hour of the day,
Wear it and use it as much as you may;
Don't keep it in niches and corners and grooves,
You'll find that in service its beauty improves.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Life, stanza 2, p. 64.

Life , Beauty

“They are the working class ‘sublated’ – improved upon and replaced. They may be as clueless as to strategy as the workers of the early nineteenth century were, but they are no longer in thrall to the system. They are enormously dissatisfied with it. They are a group whose diverse interests converge on the need to make postcapitalism happen, to force the info-tech revolution to create a new kind of economy, where as much as possible is produced free, for collaborative common use, reversing the tide of inequality. Neoliberalism can offer them only a world of stagnant growth and state-level bankruptcy: austerity until death, but with an upgraded version of the iPhone every few years. And the freedom they cherish is perennially hemmed in by the neoliberal state – from the NSA’s mass surveillance techniques to those of the Chinese internet police. Above their heads, politics in many countries has become infested by a kleptocratic mafia, whose strategy is to deliver growth at the price of suppressing freedom and expanding inequality.”

Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

Death , World , Freedom , Country

“Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Exercises , Question , Business , Personality

“Homeland security will make America not only stronger, but, in many ways, better. Knowledge gained from bioterrorism research will improve public health. Stronger police and fire departments will mean safer neighborhoods. Stricter border enforcement will help combat illegal drugs. And as government works to better secure our homeland, America will continue to depend on the eyes and ears of alert citizens.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Health , Way , Knowledge , Help

“The last chapter modeled technological progress as an increase in the number of types of products, N. In this chapter, we allow for improvements in the quality or productivity of each type. This approach has come to be known as the Schumpeterian approach to endogenous growth. We can think of increases in N as basic innovations that amount to dramatically new kinds of goods or methods of production. In contrast, increases in the quality of the existing products involve a continuing series of improvements and refinements of goods and techniques.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Robert J. Barro, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Economic growth 2nd ed. (2004), Ch. 7 : Technological Change: Schumpeterian Models of Quality Ladders

Thinking

“I noticed an immediate difference and so did my friends and teammates. My body composition changed — my body fat went down, my lean muscle went up, and I got stronger. I could also run faster and my recovery time improved.”

Griff Whalen (1990) American Football player

About his switch to a vegan diet. "NFL Player Griff Whalen on the Perks of Being a Plant-Powered Athlete", interview with ForksOverKnives.com (15 December 2016) https://www.forksoverknives.com/nfl-player-griff-whalen-perks-plant-powered-athlete/#gs.FZBR210.

Change , Time

“Three centuries of increasingly intense application of the quantitative method had exhausted its guarantee of the progressive improvement of thought, because the regions where the method is adequate have already been explored. […] It is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that a new method is now necessary to supplement the method of quantitative analysis.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 180

“Experience also shows that to be effective, we must adopt a model of partnership, not paternalism. This approach is based on our conviction that people in the developing world have the capacity to improve their own lives, and will rise to meet high expectations if we set them. America has sought to apply this model in our Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Every nation that receives American support through this initiative develops its own plan for fighting HIV/AIDS and measures the results. And so far, these results are inspiring. Five years ago, 50,000 people in sub-Sahara Africa were receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS. Today, that number is nearly 1.7 million. We're taking a similar approach to fighting malaria, and so far, we've supported local efforts to protect more than 25 million Africans.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

People , World , Support , Effort

“If I can anyway contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.”

Stephen Grellet (1773–1855) American Quaker missionary

Statement in The Spectator (1711), as quoted in The Reign of Queen Anne (1902) by Justin McCarthy
Misattributed

Thinking , Country

“We cannot rely on mass inspection to improve quality, though there are times when 100 percent inspection is necessary. As Harold S. Dodge said many years ago, 'You cannot inspect quality into a product.' The quality is there or it isn't by the time it's inspected.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Out Of The Crisis (1982), p. 139

Time

“I think almost everyone, including me, thought the election of our first black president would lead to new efforts to improve the dismal economic condition of African-Americans. In fact, Obama has seldom touched on the issue of race, and when he has he has emphasized the conservative themes of responsibility and self-help. Even when Republicans have suppressed minority voting, in a grotesque campaign to fight nonexistent voter fraud, Obama has said and done nothing.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

2010s, Obama is a Republican (2014)

Fraud , Thinking , Effort , Help

“What made Ingolfur Arnarson a great man was first and foremost his ideals, his unquenchable love of mankind, his conviction that the people needed improved conditions of life and better facilities for cultural advancement, his determination to mitigate his fellow men's sufferings by establishing a better form of government in the country... Middlemen and other parasites would no longer be allowed to batten on the farming classes. Ingolfur wanted to elevate the farmer's life to a position of honor and dignity, not in word alone, but in deed.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

Love , Life , Men , People

“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. "Populists" believe in conspiracies and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. Because of my name and prominence as head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of "conspirator in chief" from some of these people.
Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted in our active international role during the past half-century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet Communism overcome, but there have been fundamental improvements in societies around the world, particularly in the United States, as a result of global trade, improved communications, and the heightened interaction of people from different cultures. Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and expansion of our political power without them.”

David Rockefeller (1915–2017) American banker and philanthropist

Source: Memoirs (2003), Ch. 27 : Proud Internationalist, p. 406

People , Secret , World , Family

“I am sure that I would not make a good taxidermist; the temptation to improve upon nature would certainly be too strong for me. Think how easy it would be, when stuffing somebody's pet terrier, to slip a couple of human glass eyes into a sockets, instead of the usual buttons. Then the owner would really be justified in saying that his pet looked almost human. If I were stuffing this two-headed calf, for instance, I could not resist making one head smile and the other one frown, so that they looked like masks of Comedy and Tragedy.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Smile , Nature , Thinking , Strong

“Journalism is a character defect. I think most non-journalists would agree with this. It is life lived at a safe remove: standing off to one side of the parade as it passes, noting its flaws, offering glib and unworkable suggestions for its improvement. Every journalist must know that this is not, really, how a serious-minded person would choose to spend his days. Serious-minded people do things; a journalist chatters about the things serious-minded people do, and so, not coincidentally, avoids having to do them himself. A significant body of research indicates that non-journalists find us insufferable, perhaps for this reason.”

Andrew Ferguson (1956) American journalist

"Scotty: All the news that's fit to schmooze" http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=2248&R=ECC0849, The Weekly Standard, 24 February 2003

Life , People , Thinking , Personality

“Coal being then the chief source of power, much industrial reconstruction depended on there being a plentiful and cheap supply. But the newly nationalized industry was not doing well. Productivity failed to increase in step with increases in mechanization. Men were leaving the mines in large numbers for more attractive opportunities in the factories. Among those who remained, absenteeism averaged 20 percent. Labor disputes were frequent despite improved conditions of employment. Some time earlier the National Coal Board had asked the Institute to make a comparative study of a high producing, high morale mine and a low producing, low morale, but otherwise equivalent mine.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 7

Men , Study , Time , Dependency

“We need to try and focus less on ethnicity in this country and concentrate on trying to improve the lot of the marginalized whoever they are.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club (Centenary Dinner), 12 March 2005 http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_4326.shtml.

Country

“Conversation injures more than it benefits. Men talk to escape from themselves, from sheer dread of silence. Reflection makes them uncomfortable, and they find distraction in a noise of words. They seek not the company of those who might enlighten and improve them, but that of whoever can divert and amuse them. Thus the intercourse which ought to be a chief means of education, is for the most part, the occasion of mental and moral enfeeblement.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 155

Men , Education , Silence , Parting

“If there be anything in a remark often to be met with, namely that there is, in the genius of the people of this country, a peculiar aptitude for mechanic improvements, it would operate as a forcible reason for giving opportunities to the exercise of that species of talent, by the propagation of manufactures.”

Alexander Hamilton Report on Manufactures

Report on Manufactures (1791)

People , Exercises , Country

“Treating cartography as a formal communication system implies that we can improve map communication if we can reduce the filtering or loss of information at various points in the system where in the system should have a positive effect, and an information loss should be impossible to overcome. Most efforts to study cartographic communication have been directed to the middle stages in the system: the cartographer's transformation of selected information into the map and the initial extraction of information from the map by the user.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 5

Communication , Effort , Study , Loss

“Organizational change is a set of behavioral science-based theories, values, strategies, and techniques aimed at the planned change of the organizational work setting for the purpose of enhancing individual development and improving organizational performance, through the alteration of organizational members' on-the-job behaviors.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Jerry I. Porras and Peter J. Robertson (1992). "Organisational development: Theory, practice and research", in: M. Dunnette, L. Hough (Eds), Consulting Psychologist Press, Palo Alto, p. 723

Behavior , Science , Change

“The biggest thing I learned was, especially the way I operate and how I am as a person, if I'm going to do a creative endeavor, I need to have full, complete control. Top to bottom. And with my book and website, I always had that. With the website, definitely, with the book, basically, with the movie…I didn't in a lot of ways. Nils and I, we had a lot of control, more control probably than almost any first time movie makers do within a normal studio system. We were in the middle between independent and not, because someone else paid for everything, and they kind of let us do what we wanted, but then once the movie was done creatively, it went in a direction that I did not want it to go, and there was nothing I could really do about it. It's hard enough to swim in that movie current by yourself, but when you've got weights tied to you and someone pulling you in a different direction, it's almost impossible. You need to pick a direction and go with it. If you're going to be a big studio movie, go be that, and if you're going to go be a rogue independent film, go be that. We had different people with different levels of authority on the movie that pulled us in different directions, and it just doesn't work. Either be in control or let someone else do it, but don't…too many chefs. I'm going to be better next time. Failure instructs, failure improves. Failure shouldn't deter you, unless you're just bad at it.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC6zdVKoNr8 (March 2010).

People , Books , Way , Failure

“Reconstruction is merely a special case of economic progress. If we are to understand its problems thoroughly, we must examine what is meant by economic progress and try to discover how it comes about… Economic progress is not altogether easy to define and is even more difficult to measure. Nevertheless, the phrase clearly corresponds to a meaningful idea. We have only to contrast a savage society with our own. In a savage society, the same customs, the same techniques, the same ways of doing everything, from ploughing to praying, are maintained generation after generation, son following exactly in the footsteps of his father and daughter in the footsteps of her mother, without deviating an inch from the well-trodden way. In modern civilized society, on the other hand, there is constant change and flux; we are constantly improving on the methods of our ancestors, and indeed one of the surest ways to discredit anything is to call it "old-fashioned!"”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, The Economics of Peace, 1945, p. 73

Way , Idea , Fashion , Understanding

“The Ethics of Competition is a book of Frank H. Knight's writings on a common theme: the problem of social control and its various implications. Knight believed in free economic institutions but was also aware that the competitive economic system could be improved. One of the central figures of neoclassical economics in the twentieth century, Knight pursued a lifelong campaign against irrationalities of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and group conflict, while conceding that these were fundamental orientations of human action that might yet frustrate his own work as an economist. While Knight vigorously defended human freedom and the liberal order, he also was sufficiently moved by the shortcomings of liberalism as to condemn it as rife with abuse.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Abstract
The Ethics of Competition, 1935

Books , Problem , Freedom

“Playboy: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
Jobs: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that first the public telegraph was inaugurated, in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it. So, fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
Playboy: Meaning what?
Jobs: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are "slash q-zs" and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel—one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy, Feb 1985, as quoted in “Steve Jobs Imagines 'Nationwide' Internet in 1985 Interview” https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-imagines-nationwide-internet-in-1985-intervi-1671246589, Matt Novak, 12/15/14 2:20pm Paleofuture, Gizmodo.
1980s

People , World , Faith , Way

“I believe it is through independence that we can do most to help our nation to flourish, to improve our quality of life.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Citizens Advice Bureaux (August 15, 2007)

Life , Help

“Matters often look bad, but somehow they always stop short of being disastrous. True, as in other fields, especially in social legislation, it was often an accidental event which triggered an improvement. But this would not have happened if a continuous stream of criticism had not kept us prepared to take advantage of such opportunities. It is the tragic story of the cultural crusader in a mass society that he cannot win, but we would be lost without him.”

Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976) American sociologist

Paul Lazarsfeld, "Introduction to the original edition," in: Norman Jacobs, Mass Media in Modern Society. (1992), p. 40

“Most Illustrious and most Excellent Lady, our very dear Sister,- Confident of the circumstance that there can be no more efficacious and salutary medicine for the indisposition from which you are at present suffering than the announcement of good and happy news, we advise you that at this very moment we have received sure tidings of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom we are not writing to-day.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare's letter to Lucrezia (July, 1502), as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XIII: Urbino and Camerino.

Pleasure , Law , Confidence , Sister

“I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand... How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (22 July 1812), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40
1800s - 1810s

Life , Beauty , Art , Nature

“I was angry, that in a crisis, those three women, and many others to whom Liz Broderick had spoken, had not been able to rely on their mates. In other words the very thing that we claim as our defining ethos had been used to exclude and humiliate others. I am resolved to make improvements to our culture one of the fundamental elements of the legacy that I hope to leave the Australian Army.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Women , Hope

“Unfortunately, as technology has improved, that which was 'underground' now heads towards obsolescence.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

“Such as have made a considerable improvement of their gifts and graces, have hearts as large as their heads; whereas most men's heads have outgrown their hearts.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Quotes from secondary sources, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 1860

Men , Heart

“The key issues facing managers in sales are no different than those faced by managers in other disciplines. Sales managers say they face problems such as "It takes us too long… we need to reduce the error rate." They want to know, "How do customers perceive us?" These issues are no different than those facing managers trying to improve in other fields. The systematic approaches to improvement are identical…. There should be no reason our familiar principles of quality and process engineering would not work in the sales process.”

Joseph M. Juran (1904–2008) Quality guru

Joseph M. Juran in: Paul H. Selden (1997), Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop, Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press, pp. xxi–xxii

Error , Problem

“After my son get married, finally I can focus on improving the economy of Taiwan”

Chen Shui-bian (1950) Taiwanese politician

During the engagement party of his son, June 11, 2005
Pet Phrases, 2005

“Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. God’s purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had been too terrible to be accepted without questioning. If a disaster of such magnitude, the most lethal ever known, was a mere wanton act of God or perhaps not God’s work at all, then the absolutes of a fixed order were loosed from their moorings. Minds that opened to admit these questions could never again be shut. Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 123

Death , God , Pain , People

“The moral improvement demands an evolution leading to a higher consciousness”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 60 - Hélène's Claparède-Spir underlined.

“Better pay, better recruiting, and a difficult economy all helped improve the quality of the force. While I'd struggled as a young lieutenant in the 82nd to persuade soldiers to reenlist for a second or third tour of duty, by the early 1980s we held boards to select which soldiers in the battalion would be allowed to reenlist. The conditions were set for a renaissance.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 38

Help

“The question therefore now comes forward, To what other objects shall these surpluses be appropriated, and the whole surplus of impost, after the entire discharge of the public debt, and during those intervals when the purposes of war shall not call for them? Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures? On a few articles of more general and necessary use the suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the great mass of the articles on which impost is paid are foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them.
Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal powers. By these operations new channels of communications will be opened between the States, the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties. Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which though rarely called for are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country and some of them to its preservation.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson's Sixth State of the Union Address (2 December 1806). Advising the origination of an annual fund to be spent through new constitutional powers (by new amendments) from projected surplus revenue.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

War , Education , Communication , Question

“If we are to select our subjects or arrange our groups with a pictorial motive we must absolutely and entirely sacrifice every other consideration, and be prepared to cut out of our composition the prettiest and most interesting item, if by so doing composition pure and simple is improved. And if some subject you are attached to will not admit of composition or will not admit of your treating it pictorially, then photograph it if you wish, but never suppose that it will form a picture.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Methods - The practical application of means to end, p. 29

Motivation

“I beseech you to take interest in these sacred domains so expressively called laboratories. Ask that there be more and that they be adorned for these are the temples of the future, wealth and well-being. It is here that humanity will grow, strengthen and improve. Here, humanity will learn to read progress and individual harmony in the works of nature, while humanity's own works are all too often those of barbarism, fanaticism and destruction.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Statement of 1878, as quoted in Crystals and Life : A Personal Journey (2002) by Celerino Abad Zapatero, p. 139

Nature , Learning , Reading , Future

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term — meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Sense , Effort , Time

“Let us never forget that, to be profited, that is, to be spiritually improved in knowledge, faith, holiness, joy, and love, is the end of hearing sermons, and not merely to have our taste gratified by genius, eloquence, and oratory.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 478.

Love , Faith , Knowledge , Joy

“He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player and half the time I would play bass on the records because I would tend to do it quicker. Right back to those early records; I mean, at least half the bass on all recorded output is me anyway. … Rog used to come in and say, "Thank you very much" to me once in a while for winning him bass-playing polls.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

On Roger Waters, as quoted in Rock Compact Disc (September 1992)

Time

“The reason of a commandment, whether positive or negative, is clear, and its usefulness evident, if it directly tends to remove injustice, or to teach good conduct that furthers the well-being of society, or to impart a truth which ought to be believed either on its own merit or as being indispensable for facilitating the removal of injustice or the teaching of good morals. There is no occasion to ask for the object of such commandments; for no one can, e. g., be in doubt as to the reason why we have been commanded to believe that God is one; why we are forbidden to murder, steal, and to take vengeance, or to retaliate, or why we are commanded to love one another. But there are precepts concerning which people are in doubt, and of divided opinions, some believing they are mere commands, and serve no purpose whatever, whilst others believe that they serve a certain purpose, which, however is unknown to man. Such are those precepts which in their literal meaning do not seem to further any of the three above-named results: to impart some truth, to teach some moral, or to remove injustice. They do not seem to have any influence upon the well-being of the soul by imparting any truth, or upon the well-being of the body by suggesting such ways and rules as are useful in the government of a state, or in the management of a household. …I will show that all these and similar laws must have some bearing upon one of the following three things, viz., the regulation of our opinions, or the improvement of our social relations, which implies two things, the removal of injustice, and the teaching of good morals.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.28

Love , God , People , Truth

“Under the limitation of armaments treaty a large saving in outlay and a considerable decrease in maintenance of the Navy has been accomplished. We should maintain the policy of constantly working toward the full treaty strength of the Navy. Careful investigation is being made in this department of the relative importance of aircraft, surface and submarine vessels, in order that we may not fail to take advantage of all modern improvements for our national defense. A special commission also is investigating the problem of petroleum oil for the Navy, considering the best policy to insure the future supply of fuel oil and prevent the threatened drainage of naval oil reserves. Legislative action is required to carry on experiments in oil shale reduction, as large deposits of this type have been set aside for the use of the Navy.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Problem , Future

“Just as in the days of the Egyptians, so today God had ordained that certain among the African race should journey westwards to equip themselves with knowledge and experience for the day when they would be called upon to return to their motherland and to use the learning they had acquired to help improve the lot of their brethren. …I had not realized at the time that I would contribute so much towards the fulfillment of this prophecy.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957). As quoted by George P. Hagan in Nkrumah's Leadership Style—An Assessment from a Cultural Perspective, in Arhin (1992), The Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah.

God , Knowledge , Learning , Time

“The hybrid frustrates the purpose of creation. All things, we are told according to Genesis, were created with their seed in themselves, destined to be fertile. Hybridization seeks to improve God’s work. It seeks to gain the best of two diverse but somewhat related things. The result is a limited advantage but a long range launched including sterility. Second, these laws clearly require a respect for God’s creation. We are not to change one kind into another, or to attempt it. All things we are told were created good. Now when we hold to evolution we cannot see all things as created good. Because evolution is the survival of the fittest, and the best you can say about anything is that it is the fittest. Not that it is the best, not that it is morally the most desirable thing. And though it has survived thus far it may not survive in the next ten thousand years, so that man for example, we are told may be a mistake. Thus we cannot under an evolutionary perspective see all things as created good. But man under God has been created good and the world around him has been created good. Man can kill and eat plants and animals to use this creation under God’s law. But he cannot tamper with it, he cannot hybridize; which is to violate God’s kind. And the penalty for it, of course, is sterility. You can cross a horse and a donkey, but the mule is sterile. You can put all kinds of new variety of squash and carrots and the like on the market, but the penalty for these is sterility. They will not produce a seed. And while they will have certain advantages --the mule has certain advantages over the horse-- they have marked disadvantages, and a greater frailty, sensitivity, nervousness (as with the mule), so that they are a real handicap.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Hybridization and the Law (n. d.)

God , World , Law , Penalty

“The various races and ethnicities into which humans have evolved represent a grand experiment in which nature has tested out some of the variations inherent in the human genome. The experiment is not being conducted in our interests - it has no purpose or goal - yet it offers considerable benefits. Instead of there being a single type of human society, there are many, creating a rich diversity of cultures whose more promising features can be adopted and improved on by others.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

Nature

“One of his [Pollock's] goals is to critique and expunge what he sees as deeply entrenched static social hierarchies, barbarisms and poisons. I do not see anything inherently wrong with this intention by itself; most Hindus welcome improvements and the evolution of their culture. The issue worth debating is that Pollock sees these ills as deeply rooted in the Vedas themselves and as requiring the abandonment of core metaphysical and sacred perspectives.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

“The goal of is to improve encapsulation. It does so by viewing a program in terms of the client/server model.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: a responsibility-driven approach (1989), p. 72

“Besides the progress of industry and technique, we see a growing discontent among the masses; we see, besides the expansion ("expansion,", Fr.) of instruction, distrust and hatred expanding among nations ("s'étendre la méfiance et la haine entre," Fr.), that vie with one another ("qui rivalisent à l'envi," Fr.), by the increase of their armies and the improvement of their engines of murder”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

"engins meurtriers", Fr
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 37 - third thought of the book, the translator.

“Many people think that the progress of the human race is based on experiences of an empirical, critical nature, but I say that true knowledge is to be had only through a philosophy of deduction. For it is intuition that improves the world, not just following a trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under one law. To look for related facts means holding onto what one has instead of searching for new facts. Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge. Intuition, not intellect, is the 'open sesame' of yourself.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 16

People , World , Law , Search

“So I had carved one face with hollows curving in-out, in-out, very simple really. I set the timber upright and Frank Stella came in and came over and looked at the chiseling and said it looked good. He turned around to the back of the piece which was uncut – the backside of the timber – and he said, you know that's sculpture too. I supposed what he meant to say was, that cutting was a good idea and the idea of not cutting was good too. But you know, I thought to myself, yes the uncut side is really much better than the cut side. The form of the timber was by no way improved by my cutting into it. From that time, I began to think that the next timbers I get I'm not going to cut. I'm going to combine the timbers; I'm going to use them as cuts in space. I began to look for what I call 'particles”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

that is, units which are identical in shape – and finding ways to combine these particles by properties of the individual particles. That is, no gluing and no nailing and no joining.
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 29

Way , Idea , Thinking , Time

“The design of my philosophical life is based on an examination of the following question: is it possible to secure improvement in the human condition by means of the human intellect? The verb 'to secure' is (for me) terribly important, because problem solving often appears to produce improvement, but the so-called 'solution' often makes matters worse in the larger system (e. g., the many food programs of the last quarter century may well have made world-wide starvation even worse than no food programs would have done.) The verb ‘to secure' means that in the larger system over time the improvement persists.
I have to admit that the philosophical question is much more difficult than my very limited intellect can handle. I don't know what 'human condition' and 'human intellect' mean, though I've done my best to tap the wisdom of such diverse fields as depth psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, public health, management science, education, literature, and history. But to me the essence of philosophy is to pose serious and meaningful questions that are too difficult for any of us to answer in our lifetimes. Wisdom, or the love of wisdom, is just that: thought likes solutions, wisdom abhors them.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1980s and later, Thought and Wisdom (1982), p. 19; cited in Werner Ulrich (1998) '" C. West Churchman-75 years". in: Systems practice. December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 4, pp 341-350

Love , Life , Wisdom , Health

“The fact that each nation came to believe in the virtue of whatever policy happened to be in effect when recovery began supports [the] argument that haphazard economic vacillations play an important role in determining which policy strategies become constructed as economically efficacious. This also tends to undermine the realist/utilitarian view, which suggests that policy improves over time as rational policymakers learn more about universal economic laws from experience, because wildly inconsistent policies won favor in different contexts.”

Frank Dobbin (1956) American sociologist

Frank Dobbin (1993), "The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain and France," in: Theory and Society 22, p. 47; As cited in: Kieran Healy, "The new institutionalism and Irish social policy." Social Policy in Ireland: Principals, Practices and Problems. Oaktree Press, Dublin (1998).

Law , Support , Learning , Universe

“.. I don't want to be a preacher who tries to improve the world according to his own opinion. For that I put too much in perspective in my thinking and perhaps I am more independent. I do not start from a reflex on tradition and on social and political structures but rather from a continual and fresh scanning for the essence of things.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): ..Ik wil geen predikant zijn die de wereld wil verbeteren volgens zijn eigen opinie. Daarvoor denk ik te relatief en wellicht ben ik onafhankelijker en ga ik niet zozeer uit van een reflex op de traditie en op de sociale en politieke structuren maar veeleer uit een steeds opnieuw tasten naar het wezen der dingen.
Quote of Raveel in the catalogue of his exhibition in the museum of Deinze in 1972; as cited by Ludo Bekkers in 'Roger Raveel en zijn keuze uit het Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Gent' http://www.tento.be/sites/default/files/tijdschrift/pdf/OKV1975/Roger%20Raveel%20en%20zijn%20keuze%20uit%20het%20Museum%20voor%20Schone%20Kunsten%20in%20Gent.pdf, in Dutch art-magazine 'Openbaar Kunstbezit', Jan/Maart 1975, p. 5
1970's

World , Thinking

“The claim set up was nothing less than the right of a general superintendence of the states of Europe, and of the suppression of all changes in their internal government, if those changes should be hostile to what the Holy Alliance called the legitimate principles of government…Every reform of abuses, every improvement in government, which did not originate with a sovereign, of his own free will, was to be prevented. Were this principle to be successfully maintained, the triumph of tyranny would be complete, and the chains of mankind would be riveted for ever…He was one of those old-fashioned politicians who thought that every great political change might be traced to previous misgovernment…Let their lordships look to the revolution of 1688, and then he would ask them, if it could have been carried into effect without the combinations of those great men, who restored and secured our religion, our laws, and our liberties, and without such mutual communications among them as would bring them under the description of a sect or party?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (19 February 1821) on the debate on Naples. After the revolution in Naples in July 1820 the protocol which affirmed the right of the European Alliance to interfere to crush dangerous internal revolutions had been issued at the Congress of Troppau, October 1820. Parliamentary Debates, N.S. iv, pp. 744-59, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 13-16.
1820s

Men , Hostility , Religion , Law

“People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Career advice from Elon Musk's latest TED interview, in one sentence http://www.businessinsider.com/brilliant-career-advice-from-elon-musk-2017-5 at 2017 TED conference (May 9, 2017)

People , Thinking

“The commencement of the last fifty years is about the beginning of that great change and improvement in the condition of women which exceeds all the gains of hundreds of years before.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women , Change

“Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

from an interview with Phil Donahue (1979): partial transcript http://www.slobodaiprosperitet.tv/en/node/847 from SiP TV ; or find link to full interview in the External links Section

People , World , Way , History

“Without the progress of equality and improvement in the level of living at least beyond the poverty line, for one quarter of the population of the world who live in South Asia, there would be grave repercussions on the rest of the world. The problem of the underdeveloped country is, in one sense, of greater concern to the advanced countries because international rivalries and tensions arise from the desire to establish spheres of inﬂuence over underdeveloped areas. The very existence of underdeveloped regions would he therefore a continuing threat to world security, and world peace. A quick transformation of the underdeveloped countries into industrialized economies would reduce the sphere of conflicting interests; and hence decrease the tension between East and West.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

World , Peace , Problem , Sense

“There is no need at present to produce new definitions of anarchism — it would be hard to improve on those long since devised by various eminent dead foreigners. Nor need we linger over the familiar hyphenated anarchisms, communist- and individualist- and so forth; the textbooks cover all that. More to the point is why we are no closer to anarchy today than were Godwin and Proudhon and Kropotkin and Goldman in their times.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

Anarchism And Other Impediments To Anarchy (1985)

Time , Dead

“To improve the economy is not just a slogan, it requires tangible actions!”

Chen Shui-bian (1950) Taiwanese politician

During the opening of the Formosa Freeway, January 11, 2004
Pet Phrases, 2004

“What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XVI, The Coming of J.M. Keynes, p. 217

Money

“Our predecessors, the Druids of Britain, tho' left in the extremest west to the improvement of their own thoughts, yet advanc'd their inquiries, under all disadvantages, to such heights, as should make our moderns asham'd, to wink in the sunshine of learning and religion.”

William Stukeley (1687–1765) English antiquarian

Stonehenge: A Temple Restor'd to the British Druids, Preface. (1740).

Religion , Learning

“The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes — the legal subordination of one sex to the other — is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1

Life , Sex , Perfection

“Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks. He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details. He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore he is called the First Teacher.”

Ibn Khaldun book Muqaddimah

Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal, p. 39 and p. 383, Princeton University Press, 1981.
Muqaddimah (1377)

Problem , Teachers , Appearance

“Although control principles are not customarily associated with international relations, there may be some significant advantages in seeing how international relations may benefit by suitable use of control concepts and methods. Over the years, control engineers and scientists have learned how to use information processing and equipment, along with energy and materials to improve the performance of various systems.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Harold Chestnut (1986) " Applications of Control Principles to International Relations http://www.ieeecss.org/CSM/library/1986/dec1986/w13-14.pdf" In: IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Vol.6, No. 6, Dec. 1986. pp. 13-14

Learning

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much;
Who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”

Bessie Anderson Stanley (1879–1952) American poet

What is success?, quoted in He Has Achieved Success Who Has Lived Well, Laughed Often and Loved Much, in QuoteInvestigator.com (26 June 2012) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/06/26/define-success/.

Success , Love , Life , Men

“Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth. The thought of a gnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good. Being anonymous, coming from within, it is more powerful and compelling. That is how the world improves-the inner aiding and blessing the outer. When gnani dies, he is no more, in the same sense in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea; the name, the shape, are no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the ocean. When a gnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Universal mind
Source: "I am That." P.89.

Wisdom , World , Sense , Universe

“Mistake me not, my brethren: I am not speaking against learning in itself; it is a precious gift of God, and may be happily improved in the service of the gospel; but I will venture to say, in the spirit of the apostle Paul's writings in general, and of this passage in particular, Accursed be all that learning which sets itself in opposition to the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which disguises or is ashamed of the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which fills the room that is due to the cross of Christ! and once more, Accursed be all that learning which is not made subservient to the honour and glory of the cross of Christ!”

John Witherspoon (1723–1794) Scottish-American Presbyterian minister and a Founding Father of the United States

From the sermon "Glorying in the Cross", published in 1768. Misquoted since 1845 as "Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not coincident with the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not subservient to the cross of Christ." So quoted by S. S. Cox in October 1845, in Permanent Documents of the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West, Volume 1, p. 30.

God , Learning , Christ

“Jack Layton improved the tone of the debate in Parliament. He firmly believed we could have passionate disagreements without being disrespectful or disgraceful to each other. Let us all honour his memory by conducting the next session of Parliament in this spirit”

Nycole Turmel (1942) Canadian politician

Parliament pays tribute to Jack Layton http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/09/19/pol-parliament-layton-tributes.html September 19,2011.

Memory , Passion

“My health has not improved. Often I get so excited that I cannot bear with myself. Then again I become calm, as I am at this present moment of writing, although I am already fatigued. Next Monday, if God permit, I will go to a bull-fight, and I wish you were able to accompany me.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Zapater, April 23, 1794; in Goya; Noticias biograficas, Francisco Zapater y Gomez, Zaragoza, 1868; first published in 'La Perseverencia', p. 53; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 203-204
1790s

God , Health , Fight

“Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Men , Error , Knowledge , Science

“Let us agree on our common goal. As public servants, we serve the highest interests of our people. Primarily, we seek to eliminate poverty and improve the quality of life of every Filipino.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Life , People

“Have confidence in yourself, you are the only one of its kind in the World, never compare yourself to any body. Improve yourself in every field be it a education, training, antiquates, attire, mannerism, knowledge, communication. Your competition should be with you.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

Shah,Sanjay. " “Nikita Ghokale on the Board of Asian School of Fashion And Design” http://blogs.rediff.com/asiannewsagency/2016/11/28/nikita-ghokale-on-the-board-of-asian-school-of-fashion-and-design/.Rediff.com. November 28, 2016.

World , Education , Confidence , Communication

“Teachers frequently talk about moments in which they became students again and how much that made them better teachers. For me, there has been no better way to improve my teaching, specifically my teaching in the composition classroom, than to take up a subject at which I am abysmal.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wadewitz, Adrianne. (August 12, 2013). "What I learned as the worst student in the class" http://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2013/08/12/what-i-learned-worst-student-class. HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance Collaboratory. — reprinted and cited in: "How Adrianne Wadewitz learnt to embrace failure" http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-adrianne-wadewitz-learnt-to-embrace-failure-20140425-zqzgx.html. The Sydney Morning Herald. April 25, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014.

Way , Teachers

Quotes about improvement page 12

Quotes about improvement
page 12