Quotes about improvement
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“I think even if they were paid an hourly wage, it’d be quite an improvement from what they get. And you know, I understand the arguments about they’re getting their education paid for, they’re this that and the other, but there are people on academic scholarships that don’t have to deal with any extra rigors. They get their education paid for. And they don’t have to deal with eight hours a day of football, and you know, if you mess up your knee you’ve got to deal with two hours of rehab everyday. So that’s 10 hours of your day gone, and there’s only 24 in a day. So, if they just gave him an hourly wage, even if they gave him 10 bucks, 12 bucks an hour, that’d be a vast improvement over what they got now.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

About college players' wages.
The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

People, Education, Understanding, Thinking

“We invalidate and desensitize our children when we try to make them feel better instead of helping them to feel like it is valid and ok to feel exactly how they feel. We do an immense disservice when we teach them by doing this to resist their own negative emotions. Anything we resist persists, and so we trap our children in their negative emotions when we try to help them avoid negative emotion by showing them how to run in the direction of positive emotion. We need to validate (mirror) their feelings and allow them to befriend the way they feel entirely before any action is taken to improve a situation or the way they feel.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Children, Making love, Way, Feeling

“it was partly by their writings that my eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the dernier mot of social improvement. The scheme gradually unfolded by the St. Simonians, under which the labour and capital of society would be managed for the general account of the community every individual being required to take a share of labour either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being classed according to their capacity, and remunerated according to their works, appeared to me a far superior description of Socialism to Owen's.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Communication, Freedom, Teachers, Appearance

“Pretending to feel differently than you actually feel is the same as lying to yourself. Lying to yourself does nothing to change your point of attraction; so it does nothing to improve your reality.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Feeling, Lying, Reality, Change

“And though I cannot conceive how any person can shut his eyes to the general state of misery throughout the universe, I still think that it is for a wise purpose; that the evils of life, which could not properly be otherwise, will in the course of time be rectified, and the exquisite pleasures for which we are formed will be enjoyed in our progeny: also that we may ourselves become the inhabitants of the improved world, or of some other world improved in a like manner; and that even if the different species of all the present animals should become extinct, as indicated by what we have observed of the different bones in the several strata, the discoveries of the present time may enrich the future, unless every trace of them should be destroyed at once.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, p. 48

Life, Pleasure, World, Thinking

“Primitive men kill with wooden clubs. We have finely tempered steel and lead shot. No difference. Killing is killing, cruelty is cruelty, aggression is aggression. Man’s weapons have improved, but not his disposition. This is the beast that we must all fight. No man must rule over another for any reason whatsoever.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Ferret: The Reluctant King (2020), p. 216

Men, Fight

“Life can be better for women—economic and political conditions improved—and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

Life, Women, Men, History

“How do we form ourselves into an activity—a force to improve the situation? I don't have the answers. I'm an academic—[we're] the most useless people in the world.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

FemiFest radical feminist conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7b59mFyREY&t=9m25s, London (31 August 2014)

People, World

“Telecenters are facilities where the general public can access computers for free. The computers are usually equipped with a variety of open source, and sometimes closed source, software and are connected to the internet. Some Telecenters offer computer lectures and workshops to communities in order to improve social and technical skills. Such activities are an attempt to promote use of the technology to fulfill individual and community needs, increasing human capital and employment. The government, NGOs, and the private sector operate Telecenter units.”

David Nemer

(p. 66)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Communication

“The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life - be it our working life, our social life, or our home life - deserves to be constantly improved.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management (ed. McGraw Hill Professional, 1997), ISBN 9780071368162

Life, Way, Home

“Where there is no standard, there can be no improvement. For these reasons, standards are the basis for both maintenance and improvement.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense Approach to a Continuous Improvement Strategy, Second Edition (ed. McGraw Hill Professional, 2012), ISBN 9780071790352

“The starting point for improvement is to recognize the need.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

“Kaizen is everyday improvement, everybody improvement, everywhere improvement.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

“Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everybody, without spending much money.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

Money

“One must standardize, and thus stabilize the process, before continuous improvement can be made.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

“Baldner contends that is "arrogant" and "paternalistic" morally to condemn something as definitive of the natural order as predation. However, it is in the nature of morality to devise ideals of a better world and to work toward realizing them. This entails judging this world to be less than ideal and working to change it. One could restrict moral evaluations to the products of human activity, but that would be arbitrary: what makes suffering (prima facie) morally bad is not that it is the result of human activity but that it is suffering. Our commitment to making the world a morally better place impels us to make moral evaluations of the natural order. There need be nothing either arrogant or paternalistic in making and acting on such evaluations, provided we recognize the very limited nature of our understanding and our power to make improvements.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Dicussion: Environmental Ethics and the Locus of Value https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=bts", Between the Species (Winter 1990), p. 9

Bad luck, World, Making love, Understanding

“Since 1997, I think the human rights situation in Hong Kong has been regressing slowly. It could be that in China, the situation has been improving slowly, and when both sides eventually meet, they can move forward together. My hope is that the regression in Hong Kong will be a little slower, and the improvement in China a little faster, so that both sides meet at a higher point.”

Szeto Wah (1931–2011) Hong Kong politician and teacher

Before Handover of Hong Kong (1997), Quote of the Day: Szeto Wah on democracy in Hong Kong and China https://shanghaiist.com/2011/01/03/szeto-wah/

Hope, Thinking

“When I was at Tek, I was frustrated that computer hardware was being improved faster than computer software. I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That’s how wiki came about.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

"Startup mines for riches in collaboration software" in The Portland Tribune (7 March 2008) http://www.portlandtribune.com/rethinking/story.php?story_id=120430910578805900

Change

“Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Poem of Difficult Hope"
What Are People For? (1990)

Hope, History, Thinking, Success

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism. ... We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new. ... The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? ... Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. ... [O]ther countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them. ... In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10
1880s

People, School, History, Thinking

“In facing this disaster, we admit we have not done enough, there is space for improvement. Here I represent the Macau government in expressing our apologies to the residents.”

Fernando Chui (1957) Chief Executive of Macau (2009-2019)

Fernando Chui (2017) cited in " Macau leader Fernando Chui apologises to residents over Typhoon Hato havoc https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/battered-macau-and-hong-kong-clean-up-after-typhoon-hato-pounds-region-leaving-trail" on The Straits Times, 24 August 2017

“Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change in decades.”

Hans Rosling book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Source: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Change

“Any possibility for improving the effective utilization of the intellectual power of society’s problem solvers warrants the most serious consideration. This is because man’s problem-solving capability represents possibly the most important resource possessed by a society. The other contenders for first importance are all critically dependent for their development and use upon this resource.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/138

Problem, Dependency

“We don't have much time left. We are moving towards temperature increases of around two degrees Celsius, which is going to have consequences in the tropics, and we will loose things like glaciers. That's not a theory; it's happening right now. It's not a prediction; it's happening right now. But you just sightsee near those glaciers. But the glaciers are a big source of water. And on the questions of water, in California we store our water in a snowpack. When that's gone, the rain will be the same but it won't accumulate. With warming temperatures the snowpack will now work. It might be possible to substitute with dams, but that's complicated. This is conjoined with a big energy problem and I think that we really have to encourage development in this area. Just waiting for technological improvement won't work. We need to encourage it.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

quoted in Conor Clarke, An Interview with Kenneth Arrow, Part Three https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/07/an-interview-with-kenneth-arrow-part-three/22330/ (2009) <br class="br">New millennium

Question, Problem, Thinking, Water

“In all parts of the world this condition existed till about half a century ago, when a few shop-keepers became inoculated with the spirit of enterprise. They grew beyond the little shop by the simple process of addition... Then it was that department stores in their early stages began to appear, and... they have continued to develop in every direction, and no man can foresee their final form and size, or say where they will stop. No one who knows the ramifications of these great modern stores can feel for a moment that they have reached their highest point of achievement. The room for improvement is still the biggest room in the world, and all that is now done means a step forward into a new and hitherto undreamed of realm, and to this much of the excitement and interest of such a business is due.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

World, Feeling, Business, Appearance

“The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

The Influence of Literature upon Society (De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1800), Pt. 2, ch. 4

Evil

“I am confident that the enactment of the right bill next year will in due course increase our gross national product by several times the amount of taxes actually cut. Profit margins will be improved and both the incentive to invest and the supply of internal funds for investment will be increased. There will be new interest in taking risks, in increasing productivity, in creating new jobs and new products for long-term economic growth. Other national problems, moreover, will be aided by full employment. It will encourage the location of new plants in areas of labor surplus and provide new jobs for workers that we are retraining and facilitate the adjustment which will be necessary under our new trade expansion bill and reduce a number of government expenditures.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Confidence, Problem, Time, Self-confidence

“The new tax bill should improve both the equity and the simplicity of our present tax system. This means the enactment of long-needed tax reforms, a broadening of the tax base and the elimination or modification of many special tax privileges. These steps are not only needed to recover lost revenue and thus make possible a larger cut in present rates; they are also tied directly to our goal of greater growth. For the present patchwork of special provisions and preferences lightens the tax load of some only at the cost of placing a heavier burden on others. It distorts economic judgments and channels an undue amount of energy into efforts to avoid tax liabilities. It makes certain types of less productive activity more profitable than other more valuable undertakings. All this inhibits our growth and efficiency, as well as considerably complicating the work of both the taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service. These various exclusions and concessions have been justified in part as a means of overcoming oppressively high rates in the upper brackets--and a sharp reduction in those rates, accompanied by base-broadening, loophole-closing measures, would properly make the new rates not only lower but also more widely applicable. Surely this is more equitable on both counts.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Making love, Effort, Parting

“There are a number of ways by which the Federal Government can meet its responsibilities to aid economic growth. We can and must improve American education and technical training. We can and must expand civilian research and technology. One of the great bottlenecks for this country's economic growth in this decade will be the shortage of doctorates in mathematics, engineering, and physics; a serious shortage with a great demand and an under-supply of highly trained manpower. We can and must step up the development of our natural resources. But the most direct and significant kind of Federal action aiding economic growth is to make possible an increase in private consumption and investment demand--to cut the fetters which hold back private spending. In the past, this could be done in part by the increased use of credit and monetary tools, but our balance of payments situation today places limits on our use of those tools for expansion. It could also be done by increasing Federal expenditures more rapidly than necessary, but such a course would soon demoralize both the Government and our economy. If Government is to retain the confidence of the people, it must not spend more than can be justified on grounds of national need or spent with maximum efficiency.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

People, Education, Making love, Way

“[I]n dealing with such money as you possess, I have no doubt that here in Brighton you will not differ from me that the first claim is the naval defence of England. (Loud and continued cheers.) ... It is our business to be quite sure in respect to this island-home of ours, whose inaccessibility is the source of our greatness, that no improvement of foreign fleets and no combination of foreign alliances should be able for a moment to threaten its safety.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Brighton (19 November 1895), quoted in The Times (20 November 1895), p. 7

Money, Home, Business

“But nature could not and cannot ever be constrained into self-improvement by sporadic or even endemic or epidemic cases of slow or swift suicide and slaughter, so long as the premature extinction of the whole human race was not and is not seriously threatened. Threaten this seriously, and she will forthwith become our most obedient humble servant. This is the forcible plan of "strikes" by labour against capital, applied in its utmost extension by man against nature; as you have already mere trades'-unions, organise a universal Man-union, and threaten, if all your demands are not immediately granted, to "strike" living, to "turn out" of human existence, and you will at once bring- the everlasting employer to reason.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part VII, p. 92
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Nature, Suicide, Universe, Self-confidence

“A true student is like a sponge. Absorbing what goes on around him, filtering it, latching on to what he can hold. A student is self-critical and self-motivated, always trying to improve his understanding so that he can move on to the next topic, the next challenge. A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.”

Ryan Holiday book Ego Is the Enemy

Motivation, Understanding, Teachers, Self-confidence

“Even the master plan has room for improvement.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

“The function of punishment is to do good, to improve the universe, to add to the sum total of happiness. And punishment which does not do this is not justified. It is a crime in itself. The penal acts of society should be judged just as other acts of conduct are judged—by their utilities.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, p. 152

Happiness, Universe

“The things we measure are the things we improve. It is only through numbers and clear tracking that we have any idea if we are getting better or worse.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://jamesclear.com/measuring

Idea

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1059504530130395136

Self-confidence

“A habit must be established before it can be improved. Start small. Master the art of showing up. Optimize later.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1054799443768287232

Art, Optimism

“In carrying on the grand work of improving national health, extirpating loathsome disease, discovering and removing the causes of disease, the distinction must be carefully drawn between the object to be accomplished and the means by which it shall be attained. The object is a grand one; the method of accomplishing it must be equally so, i.e., it must be guided by moral principle.”

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) England-born American physician, abolitionist, women's rights activist

p. 757 https://books.google.com/books?id=85o2AAAAMAAJ&pg=757 <br class="br">Medicine and Morality (1881)

Health, Disease

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.”

Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) American writer and philosopher

World, Heart

“I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Inspirational

“Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"The Nearest Star" (1989) (reprinted in The Secret of the Universe (1992), p. 82)
General sources

Universe, Science, Change

“Change is easy. Improvement is far more difficult.”

Ferdinand Porsche (1875–1951) German automobile designer

Change

“Start from scratch, stay patient, make a difference, and keep on improving.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

“Very few laws remain the same. Once enacted, they are likely to be studied, modified, amended, then often repealed altogether. This constant tinkering by judges and lawmakers is usually a good thing. Bad laws are weeded out. Weak laws are improved. Good laws are fine tuned.”

John Grisham book The Last Juror

John Grisham, The Last Juror: A Novel, p. 357 (Author's Note) (2004)
Source: [Grisham, John, 2004, The Last Juror, BCA, 357 (Author's Note), 0-385-51043-8]

Law, Study

“We need to know why things fails. If we want to improve our system, we need to put that information into that system into logs or something.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

Faults, Scaling and Erlang concurrency

“Weep not for little Leonie,
Abducted by a French Marquis!
Though loss of honour was a wrench,
Just think how it's improved her French.”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Compensation
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899)

Thinking, Loss

“I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man’s mistakes, why perpetrate the latter?”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Woman Suffrage

“Instead of paying more attention upon self-improvement. Nowadays, people are spending their valuable time to pray for LOVE. These people are similar to children who're trying to hold water firmly into their hands. Which will prove impossible at the end of the day!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Children, People, Water

“The lesser we have to care about whether someone is a narcissist or not, the better we will end up improving our private lives.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“You will simply be wasting your energy by putting too much emphasis on the improvement of the body, while leaving the mind idle — leaving it to rot.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Science gives me hope. Not just because it’s inherently optimistic, but also because it’s a practical way of improving things.”

Sheyene Gerardi Venezuelan actor and model

Hope, Way, Science

“[C]osmetic surgery is slowly shifting from being a procedure that people gossip about to being a commonplace tool for self-improvement.”

Barry Schwartz book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice (2004)

People

“Because of the nature of my work and because I was suffering from a grave ailment, my doctors advised me to take part in cultural activities to improve the balance of my sense of hearing and sense of sight. Thus, I came into contact with some literature and art.”

Jiang Qing (1914–1991) Chinese political figure and wife of Mao Zedong

Source: Speech at the Reception for the Representatives of the Beijing Workers Propaganda Team and the People's Liberation Army Propaganda Team (14 September 1968)

Art, Literature, Nature, Sense

“Can we grasp also that not only have inventions up to date, which would have contrived this, been neglected or misused, but that just around the corner new inventions... will, if they arc allowed, change and improve our lives out of all recognition?”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World

Change

“From the beginning year I was doing lot of fitness and also, like, I keep practice, try to improve my game. Maybe this time I find a way or I catch, like, right time.”

Peng Shuai (1986) Chinese female tennis player (1986-)

Source: "Playing All the Angles, Peng Shuai Keeps Her US Open Dream Alive" in ESPN https://www.espn.com/espnw/news-commentary/story/_/id/11454748/playing-all-angles-peng-shuai-keeps-us-open-dream-alive (2 September 2014)

Way, Game, Time

“I am a living member of the great Family of All Souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: "The Father's Love for Persons" https://www.google.com/books/edition/Select_Discourses_and_Essays/loYfAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22I+am+a+living+member+of+the+great+Family+of+All+Souls%22&pg=PA343&printsec=frontcover, in Selected Discourses and Essays from the works of William Ellery Channing, DD (1895)

Family, Soul, Suffering, Evil

“The issue, rather, is this: Are we prepared to embrace the undeniably vast potential of genetics to improve the human condition, individually and collectively? Most immediate, would we want the guidance of genetic information to design learning best suited to our children’s individual needs?”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Coda: Our Genes and Our Future (p. 432)
Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017)

Children, Learning

“Some of us in those days thought that we had actually identified a disease, which this clearly is not
To make people ill, to give them an illness, was the wrong thing
The fundamental problem is that the improvement that you see, which is not really great in clinical trials, is not maintained”

Frederick Wolfe (1936) researcher ORCID ID = 0000-0002-2801-6413

Source: "Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?" https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/health/14pain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, New York Times (14 January 2008)

People, Disease, Problem

“Success in financial inclusion entails reaching these users with products that can significantly improve financial lives.”

Ibukun Awosika (1962) Nigerian business magnate

Source: https://theafricadebate.com/news-2018/2018/an-interview-with-ibukun-awosika Speaking in an interview about herself (April 18 2018)

Success

“As we pass on the memories of disasters and pandemics to our posterity, we can improve our preparedness for forthcoming catastrophes. In this way, we can help to build a society in which everyone, with no one left behind, will be able to enjoy daily lives filled with health and happiness.”

Naruhito (1960) Emperor of Japan since 2019

Source: "Emperor Naruhito delivers address at U.N. meeting on water and disasters" in The Japan Times https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/06/26/national/emperor-naruhito-delivers-address-at-u-n-meeting-on-water-and-disasters/ (26 June 2021)

Happiness, Health, Way, Memory

“Development of human race takes place in discovering new options on how to improve anything, mostly the human itself”

Angelo Vulpini (2003) Venezuelan recording artist

Source: Posted on @angelovulpini, Instagram (May 29, 2019)

“My life is forever connected with aviation. I cannot live without the sky. I continue to improve my flying skills on modern domestic aircraft, I dream that, perhaps, I will have to lift a peaceful aircraft into space.”

Ivan Kozhedub (1920–1991) Soviet aviator, thrice hero of the Soviet Union

Source: As quoted in his memoirs in 1969, ""Без боя не уйду". Как летчик-ас Кожедуб сбивал вражеские самолеты" https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/8658487

Life, Peace, Dreams, Flying

“It is absolutely certain we shall have to grow a larger proportion of our food at home. ... I hope to see a vigorous revival of healthy village life on the basis of these higher wages and of improved housing.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Broadcast (21 March 1943), quoted in The Times (22 March 1943), p. 6

Life, Food, Hope, Home

“The spatial web holds so much promise for improving our lives that those companies failing to invest and embrace the future will go the way of Kodak, Radio Shack, and Blockbuster.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Future Proofing You (2021)

Way, Future

“Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in experimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a prior probability approaching ½ of finding a significant difference in the theoretically predicted direction. Hence the corroboration yielded by "success" is very weak, and becomes weaker with increased precision. "Statistical significance" plays a logical role in psychology precisely the reverse of its role in physics. This problem is worsened by certain unhealthy tendencies prevalent among psychologists, such as a premium placed on experimental "cuteness" and a free reliance upon ad hoc explanations to avoid refutation.”

Paul E. Meehl (1920–2003) American psychologist

Source: [Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox, Philosophy of Science, 34, 2, 1967, 103–115, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/288135]

Problem, Success

“I always try to improve, to find new ways of expressing myself, to keep looking for truth and originality.”

Burt Lancaster (1913–1994) American actor and producer

other quotes

Truth, Way

“If Great Britain lost her Empire and India and her share in world trade and her sea power, she would be like a vast whale stranded in one your Scottish bays, which swam in upon the tide and then was left to choke and rot upon the sands. We should be like a great shop emporium in a district from which prosperity has for ever departed. We least of all peoples and races can afford to fail. Failure to us does not mean merely that we shall not improve. It means that we shall be ruined and frozen out.”

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

Source: Rectorial address ("The present decline of Parliamentary government in Great Britain") to Edinburgh University (5 March 1931), quoted in The Times (6 March 1931), p. 19

People, World, Failure, Sea

“I always wanted a job where I could help people. I never dreamed when I ran for a seat in the Legislature that I would end up in the Governor's office. At the time, I wanted to do something to improve education in the state. It's still my highest priority.”

Gary Locke (1950) American politician

"Questions and Answers for the Governor" https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/governorlocke/kids/questions.htm

People, Education, Dreams, Time

““Eugenics Manifesto” was the name given to an article supporting eugenics. The document, which appeared in Nature, September 16, 1939, was a joint statement issued by America’s and Britain’s most prominent biologists, and was widely referred to as the “Eugenics Manifesto.” The manifesto was a response to a request from Science Service, of Washington, D. C. for a reply to the question “How could the world’s population be improved most effectively genetically?” Two of the main signatories and authors were Hermann J. Muller and Julian Huxley. Julian Huxley, as this book documents, was the founding director of UNESCO from the famous Huxley family. Muller was an American geneticist, educator and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation. Put into the context of the timeline, this document was published 15 years after “Mein Kampf” and a year after the highly publicized violence of Kristallnacht. In other words, there is no way either Muller or Huxley were unaware at the moment of publication of the historical implications of eugenic agendas.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

Books, World, Education, Family

“Why does The Holocaust persist in haunting our conscience? Why does it dominate the introspection of philosophers and historians alike? By the numbers alone, the murders were not unprecedented. At that juncture of 20th Century history, Stalin and Lenin had already brutally murdered tens of millions. The Holocaust fascinates not because of its numbers, but because of the means employed. At no point in time had an entire society dedicated its full might to the perpetual elimination of those unwanted elements of the population. Every aspect of Hitler’s National Socialism was geared towards cleansing and improving the breeding stock of Germania. Hitler’s National Socialist government was focused on the breeding, education, and training of a “master race.” The social, cultural, legislative, and industrial mechanisms of Hitler’s National Socialism were designed to perpetually “select” its populace. The central planners of National Socialism would “select” those that would live, those that would die, and those that would be sterilized slave labor. National Socialism was intended to have the “total” control to decide who would be allowed to procreate, and as a result, those that would be allowed to contribute to Hitler’s ideal society.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: H.H. LAUGHLIN: American Scientist. American Progressive. Nazi Collaborator.

Education, History, Time, Training

“An unlimited capacity of a human for self-improvement makes him an object of constant respect and admiration.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)