Quotes about improvement
page 7

“We have to prepare for what life could become in 40 years. We need to outline what is possible and what is impossible with the non-renewable resources of the Earth. What role will technological improvement play? Taking all this into account, what kind of life can we produce in the best way for 10 billion people? That's a problem that needs to be solved.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Interview (March 1996)

Life, People, Way, Problem

“In Afghanistan, a determined people are working to overcome decades of tyranny, and protect their newly free society. They have strong support from all 26 nations of the NATO Alliance. I appreciate the United Nations' decision this week to renew the mandate for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The United Nations is also an active civilian presence in Afghanistan, where experts are doing important work helping to improve education, facilitate humanitarian aid, and protect human rights. We must continue to help the Afghan people defend their young democracy so the Taliban does not return to power, and Afghanistan is never again a safe haven for terror.”

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

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

People, Education, Democracy, Support

“And, in this case, science could learn an important lesson from the literati — who love contingency for the same basic reason that scientists tend to regard the theme with suspicion. Because, in contingency lies the power of each person, to make a difference in an unconstrained world bristling with possibilities, and nudgeable by the smallest of unpredictable inputs into markedly different channels spelling either vast improvement or potential disaster.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Source: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), p. 1341

Love, World, Learning, Science

“We do have to do more infrastructure spending. That will put many Americans to work. It’s a good job that gets you on the ladder to the middle class. We need to improve the conditions for manufacturing in our country and punish those companies that want to export jobs. We need them to be incentivized to create jobs right here in America.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Country

“Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Effort, Future

“It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

A Book of Burlesques (1916)
1910s

Age, Suffering

“I do know without fear of contradiction what the definition of life is and it is 12 words long. 'Life is defined by how much you improve the lives of others.”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" " Senior Convocation Speech http://www.news.cornell.edu/campus/Olbermann_speech.html," Cornell University (1998-05-23)

Life, Fear

“The policy of affirmative action, however, was never able to distinguish someone like me (a graduate student of English, ambitious for a college teaching career) from a slightly educated Mexican-American who lived in a barrio and worked as a menial laborer, never expecting a future improved. Worse, affirmative action made me the beneficiary of his conditions.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Education, Future

“When I look down the vista of the years, with all the "improvements," "inventions" and "progress" that they hold, I am infinitely thankful that I am no younger. I could wish to be older, much older. Every man wants to live out his life's span. But I hardly think life in this age is worth the effort of living. I'd like to round out my youth; and perhaps the natural vitality and animal exuberance of youth will carry me to middle age. But good God, to think of living the full three score years and ten!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (March 6, 1933)
Letters

Life, God, Youth, Age

“Gandhi, Nehru and all did try to improve the situation. They tried to break a lot of economic and social stratifications. But inertia and the system prevail.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

We are ruled by an upper caste Hindu raj

“Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XXI Race Improvement

Marriage, Children, Health, World

“There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

The New York Times, April 19, 1992, "Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html by Richard B. Woodward

Life, Way, Soul, Idea

“We cannot improve or restructure a horse and buggy into a spacecraft regardless of how much money and effort we put into it.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 121; Banathy is self-citing a 1991 publication

Money, Effort, Horse

“If dialectical logic understands contradiction as “necessity” belonging to the very “nature of thought,” … it does so because contradiction belongs to the very nature of the object of thought, to reality, where Reason is still Unreason, and the irrational still the rational. Conversely, all established reality militates against the logic of contradictions — it favors the modes of thought which sustain the established forms of life and the modes of behavior which reproduce and improve them. The given reality has its own logic and its own truth; the effort to comprehend them as such and to transcend them presupposes a different logic, a contradicting truth. They belong to modes of thought which are non-operational in their very structure; they are alien to scientific as well as common-sense operationalism. … These modes of thought appear to be a relic of the past, like all non-scientific and non-empirical philosophy. They recede before a more effective theory and practice of Reason.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 142

Life, Truth, Behavior, Understanding

“And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry — what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you! You devote the useful energy of your mind to working out the scheme of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices and burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind together two countries which nature has separated. But once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel — you see others of them returning home carrying with them, maybe, a few pence, and the undoubted seeds of consumption; you see human corpses — the results of a groveling greed — as landmarks along each yard of your road; and, when the railroad is finished, you see, lastly, that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army…”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sadness, Dreams, Disappointment, Home

“The modern world inherits the Christian view in which salvation is played out in history. In Christian myth human events follow a design known only to God; the history of humankind is an ongoing story of redemption. This is an idea that informs virtually all of western thought – not least when it is intensely hostile to religion. From Christianity onwards, human salvation would be understood (at least in the west) as involving movement through time. All modern philosophies in which history is seen as a process of human emancipation – whether through revolutionary change or incremental improvement – are garbled versions of this Christian narrative, itself a garbled version of the original message of Jesus.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Revelation of Philip K. Dick (p. 60)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

God, Hostility, World, Religion

“We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

The teachings about this society are called socialism.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/rp/1.htm
To the Rural Poor
1903
Collected Works
6
366
Lenin
Vladimir Ilich
Marxists.
1900s

People

“Besides these improvements,… there are others,… which may… be interesting to those… engaged in those departments… Among these may be ranked, in the division of mechanics, properly so called, a simple demonstration of the law of the force by which a body revolves in an ellipsis; another of the properties of; a calculation of the effect of temperature on steel springs; an easy determination of the best line of draught for a carriage; an investigation of the resistance to be overcome by a wheel or roller; and an estimation of the ultimate pressure produced by a blow.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface, pp. ix-x
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Law, Spring

“The Prophet said, "He who has a slave-girl and teaches her good manners and improves her education and then manumits and marries her, will get a double reward; and any slave who observes Allah's right and his master's right will get a double reward."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Abu Musa Al-Ashari, in Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 46, Number 723
Sunni Hadith

Education, Girl

“A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Country

“Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.”
Recede in te ipse quantum potes; cum his versare qui te meliorem facturi sunt, illos admitte quos tu potes facere meliores. Mutuo ista fiunt, et homines dum docent discunt.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter VII: On crowds, Line 8.

Men, Learning

“Advances in technology won’t be as significant as they have been in the past, most games won’t be materially improved by simulating every drop of water in the pond you are wading through. More resources can be profitably spent to make the creation process easier. How things will play out with respect to connectivity and where the data resides and processing takes place is still a very interesting question. The overlap and convergence between desktop computers, consoles, laptops, handheld gaming devices, and cell phones is also interesting. It is all still quite exciting.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Brad Cook, "John Carmack: Making the Magic Happen" http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2009/02/johncarmack/ Apple.com

Game, Question, Water, Past

“And after tea, we play Junior Scrabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile alot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

How to Be Good (2001)

Fear, Family, Smile, Game

“The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Marriage, Help

““You ask a question that cannot be answered without knowing the nature of the primal chaos from which being arose. Is Spiral Castle like a crystal, once shattered, forever destroyed? That is what I prefer to believe. Or is it like a still pond, whose mirrored surface may be shattered and churned, but which will inevitably restore itself as the waves die down? You may believe this if you choose. You can even believe—why not?—that the restored universe will be an improvement on the old. For me, so long as I have my vengeance I care not what comes after.”
“And us?”
“We die.” An involuntary rise in the dragon’s voice, a slight quickening of cadence, told her that she had touched upon some unclean hunger akin to but less seemly than battle-lust. “We die beyond any chance of rebirth. You and I and all we have known will cease to be. The worlds that gave us birth, the creatures that shaped us—all will be unmade. So comprehensive will be their destruction that even their pasts will die with them. It is an extinction beyond death that we court. Though the ages stretch empty and desolate into infinity and beyond, there will be none to remember us, nor any to mourn. Our joys, sorrows, struggles, will never have been.
“And even if there is a universe to come, it will know naught of us.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 19 (pp. 340-341)

Death, Hunger, Age, World

“There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it..”

John Stuart Mill book Principles of Political Economy

Principles of Political Economy (1848), Book IV, Chapter VI, §3, p. 516

Life, World, Hope, Art

“I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been only a question of improving it, and learning more and more and there is almost no end. As you go through you just keep finding more and more. It's very interesting, it's fascinating.”

Ayrton Senna (1960–1994) Brazilian racing driver

Interview for Racing is in My Blood, 1991 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHuadnT588w

Life, Question, Learning

“When one recalls the first months of the Workers' Government, months which were so rich in magnificent illusions, plans, ardent initiatives to improve life, to organize the world anew, months of the real romanticism of the Revolution, one would in fact like to write about all else save about one's self.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life, World

“If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice—perhaps the best you could get—is a book you have a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Books

“Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on. We do need to intervene, to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad governments, where people are suffering.
One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive actions — reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing else works.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

BuzzFlash interview (2004)

People, World, Way, Democracy

“Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book. Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care—without it the kids have no future. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Seeing things as they really are http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0310/5905122a_7.html, Forbes (March 10, 1997) 1990s and later

Children, Health, Books, Education

“In today's business environment, more than in any preceding era, the only constant is change. Somehow there are organizations that effectively manage change, continuously adapting their bureaucracies, strategies, systems, products, and cultures to survive the shocks and prosper from the forces that decimate their competition. They move from strength to strength, adjusting to crises that bedevil others in their industry. They are masters of Renewal. No organization can maintain excellence without renewing. No organization can strive for excellence, or even attempt to improve, without the ability to renew.”

Robert H. Waterman (1950) American writer

Source: The Renewal Factor, 1987, p. xv

Business, Change

“It would be difficult for me to go back [permanently] to Cuba because Miami is my city... That's where we have made our life. That's were I feel at home... But I would love to be, you know, whatever help I can be [post-Castro] to the people who will be leading themselves. I do think Cuba does have to find its leadership from within. They have a very different society from what we are used to. They are going to need certain things that a democracy might not provide right away. And I don't think it's going to be as quick a change. I think [Castro's] death will bring change, needless to say. But I think his brother [Raul] will try to save the specter of the revolution for quite a while. And maybe start doing some opening [to improve U. S.-Cuba relations]. That is what I feel will happen.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

BBC radio interview (December 13, 2006)
2007, 2008

Love, Life, Death, People

“In brief, on net balance, machines, technological improvements, economies and efficiency do not throw men out of work.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Curse of Machinery (ch. 7)

Men

“I assure you that I shall never cease to exert myself to the utmost in the cause of reform, and that I will never decline any office which may increase my power to effect it. I am nearly certain of being nominated to the office of Moderator in the year 1818-1819, and as I am an examiner in virtue of my office, for the next year I shall pursue a course even more decided than hitherto, since I shall feel that men have been prepared for the change, and will then be enabled to have acquired a better system by the publication of improved elementary books. I have considerable influence as a lecturer, and I will not neglect it. It is by silent perseverance only, that we can hope to reduce the many-headed monster of prejudice and make the University answer her character as the loving mother of good learning and science.”

George Peacock (1791–1858) Scottish mathematician

Letter to a friend (1817) discussing, as a representative of the Analytical Society, the use of the "French" differential notation, as opposed to the "English" or "Newtonian" dot notation, for mathematical analysis, in the examination of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. As quoted by Alexander Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century https://books.google.com/books?id=43SBAAAAIAAJ (1916)

Love, Men, Books, Hope

“If you're ready to move beyond pure numbers, to a place where your right brain can envision the best in innovation and the best in gameplay improvement, well, you've come to the right place.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

Source: E3 2005

“I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist and it's something you have to earn. And because a Scientologist does, he or she has the ability to create new and better realities, and improve conditions.”

Tom Cruise (1962) American actor and film producer

Transcript of Tom Cruise on Scientology (January 16, 2008)

Thinking, Reality

“Fellows were encouraged to revisit their former industries and make a report on any new perceptions they might have. One of these Fellows, Ken Bamforth, returned with news of an innovation in work practice and organization which had occurred in a new seam in the colliery where he used to work in the South Yorkshire coalfield. The seam, the Haighmoor, had become possible to mine "shortwall" because of improved roof control.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 8

“Right now there are a lot of young actors out there. And in the next couple of years, there's inevitably going to be a thinning of the herd. I think if I improve as I go, I'll survive the slaughter.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article 'Joshua Makes a Splash" in TV Guide magazine (April 15th, 2000)

Thinking

“Industrial history shows that in modern competitive industry the motive of personal gain is most wastefully applied. On the one hand, the great mass of intelligent workers have no opportunity of securing an adequate reward for any special application of intelligence in mechanical invention or other improvement of industrial arts. Few great modern inventors have made money out of their inventions. On the other hand, the entrepreneur, with just enough business cunning to recognise the market value of an improvement, reaps a material reward which is often enormously in excess of what is economically required to induce him to apply his "business" qualities to the undertaking.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

Money, Art, History, Intelligence

“Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line…Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-dog-time-1996 of Mad Dog Time (29 November 1996) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Dogs, Time, Waiting, Madness

“I have often compared, in my own mind, the people of England with the people of ancient Egypt, and the Foreign Office of this country with the temples of the Egyptians. We are told by those who pass up and down the Nile that on its banks are grand temples with stately statues and massive and lofty columns, statues each one of which would have appeared almost to have exhausted a quarry in its production. You have, further, vast chambers and gloomy passages; and some innermost recess, some holy of holies, in which, when you arrive at it, you find some loathsome reptile which a nation reverenced and revered, and bowed itself down to worship. In our Foreign Office we have no massive columns; we have no statues; but we have a mystery as profound; and in the innermost recesses of it we find some miserable intrigue, in defence of which your fleets are traversing every ocean, your armies are perishing in every clime, and the precious blood of our country's children is squandered as though it had no price. I hope that an improved representation will change all this; that the great portion of our expenditure which is incurred in carrying out the secret and irresponsible doings of our Foreign Office will be placed directly under the free control of a Parliament elected by the great body of the people of the United Kingdom.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Glasgow (December 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 277-278.
1850s

Children, People, Secret, Hope

“Income taxation appeals to the governing class because in its everlasting urgency for power it needs money. Income taxation appeals to the mass of people because it gives expression to their envy; it salves their sense of hurt. The only beneficiaries of income taxation are the politicians, for it not only gives them the means by which they can increase their emoluments but it also enables them to improve their importance. The have-nots who support the politicians in the demand for income taxation do so only because they hate the haves; although they delude themselves with the thought that they might get some of the pelt the fact is that the taxing of incomes cannot in any way improve their economic condition. So that, the sum of all the arguments for income taxation comes to political ambition and the sin of covetousness.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 27

Money, Hate, People, Way

“Defined simply, innovation is, of course, the introduction of something new. We presume that the purpose of introducing something new into a process is to bring about major, radical change. Process innovation combines a structure for doing work with an orientation to visible and dramatic results. It involves stepping back from a process to inquire into its overall business objective, and then effecting creative and radical change to realize order-of-magnitude improvements in the way that objective is accomplished.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology, 1993

Way, Business, Change

“It is my firm belief that the only satisfactory test of economics is the ability to predict, and in crucial predictive situations such as reconversion after World War II, the settlement of the Korean War, the settlement of the Vietnam War, the abrupt economic policy switch of the Nixon Administration in August 1972, the oil shock of 1973 (forecast of a world-wide succession by LINK), the recession of 1990. In these crucial periods, econometric models outperformed other approaches, yet there is considerable room for improvement, and that is precisely what is being examined in development of high-frequency models that aim to forecast the economy, every week, every fortnight, or every month, depending on the degree of fineness of the information flow.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

War, World, Success, Dependency

“I don't really know what "intellectual" means, but if it means you've got a desire to learn, you've got a desire to look for things that haven't been presented to you, then, maybe. I think that "intellectual" is quite an exclusive word. I think it's just for anyone that has a thirst or a hunger to improve themselves, or a yearning to escape from somewhere to get to a better place.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

When asked whether he considered himself (and Carl) to be "intellectual", 2002
Definitions and objects

Hunger, Thinking, Learning

“I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 338

Thinking

“It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 303

Behavior, Thinking

“Though the destinations differ, the roads leading there would look the same, if road infrastructures are standardized. Senator Chiz Escudero's Senate Bill 2886 seeks to regulate and standardize all road infrastructures, including street signs and sidewalks, from the poorest barangays to the richest enclaves. The bill will not only improve aesthetics in all areas, it will also promote road safety in a country known as having one of the worst road conditions in the world.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, August 16). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153505589600610/ 2015, Facebook

World, Country

“We’re still working on it, we still do a lot of work to improve our communication, our efficiency together, to understand one another’s different preferences. It’s evolved over the course of two decades, for sure. Having spent so much time together, we realize it’s a unique dynamic but we’re so appreciative of what we have. It’s a special partnership. We still really enjoy skating together and I think that’s why we still are.”

Scott Moir (1987) Canadian figure skater

Tessa Virtue, Interview for Sportsnet.ca (January 2018)
Partnership with Tessa Virtue, Tessa Virtue about Moir

Communication, Understanding, Thinking, Time

“Usually, so far as improvement in the people's economic conditions is concerned, humanitarians simply play the role of the busybody.”

Vilfredo Pareto book Manual of Political Economy

page 301.
Manual of Political Economy

People

“The condition of the low castes—it is painful to call them low castes—is not only unsatisfactory as this resolution says—it is so deeply deplorable that it constitutes a grave blot on our social arrangements… I think all fair-minded persons will have to admit that it is absolutely monstrous that a class of human beings, with bodies similar to our own, with brains that can think and with hearts that can feel, should be perpetually condemned to a low life of utter wretchedness, servitude, and mental and moral degradation, and that permanent barriers should be placed in their way so that it should be impossible for them ever to overcome them and improve their lot. This is deeply revolting to our sense of justice… How can we possibly realize our national aspirations, how can our country ever hope to take her place among the nations of the world, if we allow large numbers of our countrymen to remain sunk in ignorance, barbarism, and degradation?”

Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915) social and political leader during the Indian Independence Movement

Gopal Krishna Gokhale on Caste, 3 December 2013, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs: George Ton University http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/resources/quotes/gopal-krishna-gokhale-on-caste, On caste system

Life, Pain, World, Justice

“The special effects are more sophisticated. The materials and techniques used to construct the monster costumes and miniature sets have improved, and we now use computer graphics. However, the earlier Godzilla films are much more profound. I think the reason for this is the fact that the people who worked on them experienced World War II firsthand. Shinichi Sekizawa served in the South Pacific, and Mr. Honda was a prisoner of war in China for quite some time. The earlier films also are more detailed. For example, there are more reaction shots in them. The expressions on people's faces are shown more often, and the effects of the monsters' actions are shown more often. On the other hand, the newer movies are more contemporary in that they address current issues such as bio-technology and environmental destruction. The earlier films didn't do that as much.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

War, People, World, Thinking

“A lot of people ask the question about internet usage, "How much is too much?" Our view is it depends on how that time is spent. One of the things I feel really strongly about is there’s a lot of innovation and there’s a lot of competition, and that’s driving a lot of product improvement and a lot of usefulness and a lot of usage and also a lot of scrutiny.”

Mary Meeker (1959) American venture capitalist and securities analyst

VentureBeat: "Mary Meeker’s annual valentine to Silicon Valley reminds us tech utopianism is alive and well" https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/15/mary-meekers-annual-valentine-to-silicon-valley-reminds-us-tech-utopianism-is-alive-and-well/ (15 June 2018)

People, Feeling, Question, Time

“TQM is focused on everyone's satisfaction. TQM is an unyielding, continuing, improving effort by everyone in the company to understand, meet, and exceed the expectations of customers. TQM is not just a quality control program.”

Shoji Shiba (1930) Japanese academic

Alex d'Arbeloff cited in: Shōji Shiba, New American TQM. Productivity press, 1993. p. 315

Understanding, Effort

“I would like to believe that if we had a freer society, it would take care of blacks and whites and everybody equally because we're all individuals. To me, that is so important. But if we had equal justice under the law, I think it would be a big improvement. If we had probably a repeal of most of the federal laws on drugs and the unfairness on how blacks are treated with these drugs laws, it would be a tremendous improvement.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your Legacy on Race http://www.channels.com/episodes/13077589?page=2, Republican Candidates "All-American Presidential Forum" http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=75913#axzz1hrPWCrSG (2007) 2000s, 2006-2009

Justice, Law, Thinking

“The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment… has no place in the gospel of American progress.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928)

Men

“It would seem that dead hunger strikers, who have extinguished their own lives, are of more use to PIRA than living members. Such is their calculated cynicism. This Government is not prepared to legitimise their cause by word or by deed. And we should be clear what that cause is. It is a dictatorship by force and by fear in Northern Ireland, and in the Republic. These men deny democracy everywhere; they seek power for themselves. Some people argue that the Government could make the problem go away. We can of course maintain and improve an already humane prison regime. But there is no point in pretending that this is what the PIRA want. They have remained inflexible and intransigent in the face of all that we have done because what they want is special treatment, treatment different from that received by other prisoners. They want their violence justified. It isn't, and it will not be.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at Stormont Castle (28 May 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104657 regarding the 1981 Irish hunger strike. First term as Prime Minister

Men, Hunger, People, Fear

“These mighty weapons of explosion and fire are already obsolete, and the improved weapons of today will be dwarfed by the monstrous weapons of tomorrow.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

“It is impossible to build Europe on only deregulation…1992 is much more than the creation of an internal market abolishing barriers to the free movement of goods services and investment…The internal market should be desgined to benefit each and every citizen of the Community. It is therefore necessary to improve workers' living and working conditions, and to provide better protection for their health and safety at work…Europe needs you.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to the British Trades Union Congress (8 September 1988), quoted in The Independent (9 September 1988).

Health, Communication

“Regarding the doll in the Purge, since it's one of my favorite moments in the series: The Custodians are the physical embodiment of a very vaporous notion -- human conscience. Does conscience really exist, or is it just a way of convincing ourselves that a center for moral judgment resides within us, thus lending our judgments a natural authority? As always, Trevor prefers to provide a tangible solution. He can't tolerate uncertainty. Whether it is real or not, Trevor understands the usefulness of the belief in conscience as a tool for practical ends, the improvement of society. In the end, the doll which emerges from the Custodian reveals to us that Trevor's artificial conscience, like the classical notion, is no more than a flimsy gimmick, a parlor trick, a plaything of the mind powered by a circular process. (Advocating the existence of conscience usually involves an appeal to our conscience). Notice that Trevor himself winds up the toy while in the train earlier in the episode.”

Peter Chung (1961) Korean-American animator

Response on LUSENET http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003FAq

Way, Understanding, Nature, Training

“Object-oriented programming languages support encapsulation, thereby improving the ability of software to be reused, refined, tested, maintained, and extended. The full benefit of this support can only be realized if encapsulation is maximized during the design process.
We argue that design practices which take a data-driven approach fail to maximize encapsulation because they focus too quickly on the implementation of objects. We propose an alternative object-oriented design method which takes a responsibility-driven approach. We show how such an approach can increase the encapsulation by deferring implementation issues until a later stage.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: a responsibility-driven approach (1989), p. 71: Abstract

Support

“The more snuff Frederick took, the more memoirs he wrote. He loved literature, but not enough to let it alone and stop trying to improve it.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Frederick the Great

Love, Literature

“The world was created by God and we are always to remember as we deal with the world, what was God’s purpose here, in creating this? But at the same time, while the world was created essentially good, it is fallen and not normative. Thus, perfectionism with regard to nature is anti Christian. Everything has a purpose in creation, but God created man and set him in the garden of Eden with a purpose to use and to develop nature. Thus, while hybridization is forbidden, the improvement of various species is definitely a part of our responsibility. Thus, we do not look back to Eden, we look forward to the kingdom of God. Those who hold to a perfectionism with regard to nature are anti Christian. The logic of this perfectionism with regard to nature, holding nature as normative is to eat raw foods only because you can’t improve on nature, it is to be a nudist because you can’t improve on nature, it is to deny housing because housing is an improvement on nature. This is all very very definitely hostile to scripture because while creation is essentially good, from the biblical perspective, it is to be developed by man. There is to be an improvement in terms of the guidelines laid down by God. Thus, hybridization is not Christian, but improvement is definitely the Christian responsibility. Hybridization and unequal yoking involve a fundamental disrespect for God’s handiwork, and it leads to futile experimentation. But for us as creationists, the fertility and the potentiality of the world rests in his law, in it’s pattern, in it’s fixity.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

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

God, Hostility, World, Law

“For God’s sake, reform and improve the politics of our country.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

At the basic Education Conference in 1940, p. 203.
Quest for Truth (1999)

God, Country

“Rosa Luxemburg is an outstanding example of a type of mind that is often met with in the history of Marxism and appears to be specially attracted by the Marxist outlook. It is characterized by slavish submission to authority, together with a belief that in that submission the values of scientific thought can be preserved. No doctrine was so well suited as Marxism to satisfy both these attitudes, or to provide a mystification combining extreme dogmatism with the cult of "scientific" thinking, in which the disciple could find mental and spiritual peace. Marxism thus played the part of a religion for the intelligentsia, which did not prevent some of them, like Rosa Luxemburg herself, from trying to improve the deposit of faith by reverting to first principles, thus strengthening their own belief that they were independent of dogma.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age, pp. 94-5

Peace, Faith, Religion, History

“Roger: Umm.. I don't know! It's kind of um.. a little more.. it's more in the darks of being really singy songy. It's nothing super blazing fast. There's not any super slow reggae kind of thing that we've done before. It's not like that. It's sort of in the tempo and sort of really poppy and really catchy. There's some really good stuff. There are some songs I'm really excited about. It's always been melody based I think. When we did our last record, we wrote like 32 songs and they ended coming out on two separate CDs. And this time we didn't really do that! We kind of just took 15 ideas and used those as the focal point and then we wrote around those and just improved on those 14 and kept bringing things in and out of those songs as opposed to having a whole bunch of songs. Whether that's better or not, I don't know. It definitely seems a bit more focused. We don't have a bunch of extra songs or anything like that. When is was time to actually record, we have everything pretty well sorted and that was cool. There's definitely some good stuff on there.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Idea, Thinking, Time

“In fact, the Eastern civilization is mostly concerned with the inner and spiritual aspects of living while the Western civilization includes the outer and external features of life. Therefore, the connection of these two, which results in looking up to one another in order to learn and improve, complements each of them in a different way. It is necessary to point out that the Eastern and Western civilizations are just taken as examples to explain the unification of cultures. This fact extends to the Northern, Southern, or any of the current civilization of the world.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations

Life, World, Way, Learning

“We are used to things improving every year; we are used to having a better cell phone next year than this year; a better lap top. We are even used to some basic things, like we expect more from your car in next year’s model than last year’s model. But this is not the case in space; reliability and cost - those are the fundamental parameters of transportation - have not improved.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Cars

“What is missing to our civilisation, is the soul, the spiritual unity, the basis. That is why everything in it is pretence and contrivance ("façade et artifice", Fr.); why also, in spite of the progress and marvellous improvement they have accomplished in the external realm ("domaine extérieur", Fr.) men have, in general, become themselves neither better, nor happier. They have neglected too much the essential; their own perfecting”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

or improvement - "perfectionnement", Fr.
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 36 -First thought of the book, - the translator.

Men, Soul, Perfection

“The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to ev'ry creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakspearo, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having. this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God.”

Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) American author and Unitarian clergyman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 150.

Life, God, World, Thinking

“Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole”

Jane Jacobs book Dark Age Ahead

Source: Dark Age Ahead (2004), Chapter Eight, Dark Age Patterns, p. 175

“So-called racial differences in IQ scores are more a consequence of disparities in socioeconomic status and the quality of education than of any genetic differences between ethnic groups. Efforts to improve educational quality and opportunity can increase the economic benefits associated with increased educational achievement.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 154–155.

Education, Effort

“Designed as a companion volume to the acclaimed Object-Oriented Analysis, this book focuses on the middle part of the software lifecycle: the activity of design. It shows readers how to apply object-oriented design, and how to tailor and expand the method to suit specific organization and project needs. Readers will explore the major issues in OOD; the role of OOD in the systems lifecycle; how to use graphical notation; strategies for creating design; and hints for evaluating the efficiency of a design created with OOD. For software engineers and other users undertaking real-world systems development projects and designing overall software architecture for systems will find this reference approach to improving systems design indispensable.”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

Abstract.
Object-oriented design (1991)

Books, World, Parting

“All people need to know how AIDS is transmitted, and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens. This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so that they can make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe.”

Laura Bush (1946) First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009

Remarks at UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS (June 2, 2006)

Women, People, Education, Girl

“Instead of enabling humans to improve their lot, science degrades the natural environment in which humans must live. Instead of enabling death to be overcome, it produces ever more powerful technologies of mass destruction. None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 235)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Death, Nature, Knowledge, Science

“The wonderful progress of the present century is, in very great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam-engine.”

Robert Henry Thurston (1839–1903) mechanical engineer

Robert Henry Thurston, " The Growth of the Steam Engine https://books.google.nl/books?id=dywDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17," in: Popular Science, Nov 1877, p. 11

“Good sociology is sociological work that produces meaningful descriptions of organizations and events, valid explanations of how they come about and persist, and realistic proposals for their improvement or removal.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Becker (1972) "'Radical politics and sociological research" cited in: John Peter Sugden, Alan Tomlinson (2002) Power Games: A Critical Sociology of Sport. p. 108.

“I think there’s a lot of coloured players in all the major teams and there are lots of coloured players who are probably the best in the Premier League. If you look at 25 or 30 years ago it was probably in a bad way – not as bad as some of the other nations on the Continent – but certainly there is always, always room for improvement.”

Alan Hansen (1955) Scottish footballer

Daily Mail 23 Dec 2011 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2077457/Alan-Hansen-coloured-race-gaffe-BBC-Match-Day-pundit-apologises.html#ixzz1hNvbqGLW

Way, Thinking

“It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 35

Law

“These Thoughts, my dear Friend, are many of them crude and hasty, and if I were merely ambitious of acquiring some Reputation in Philosophy, I ought to keep them by me, ’till corrected and improved by Time and farther Experience. But since even short Hints, and imperfect Experiments in any new Branch of Science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good Effect, in exciting the attention of the Ingenious to the Subject, and so becoming the Occasion of more exact disquisitions (as I before observed) and more compleat Discoveries, you are at Liberty to communicate this Paper to whom you please; it being of more Importance that Knowledge should increase, than that your Friend should be thought an accurate Philosopher.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, September 1753.
1750s

Communication, Knowledge, Science, Time

“Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

No. 5.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)

Way, Time

“Vieta was the first algebraist after Ferrari to make any noteworthy advance in the solution of the biquadratic. He began with the type x^4 + 2gx^2 + bx = c, wrote it as x^4 + 2gx^2 = c - bx, added gx^2 + \frac{1}{4}y^2 + yx^2 + gy to both sides, and then made the right side a square after the manner of Ferrari. This method… requires the solution of a cubic resolvent.
Descartes (1637) next took up the question and succeeded in effecting a simple solution… a method considerably improved (1649) by his commentator Van Schooten. The method was brought to its final form by Simpson”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

1745
Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, p.469

Question

“Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

On the differences between the present and the time of the space race which existed during the Cold War years, in an interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)

Change

“The free enterprise policies that produce solely for waste and for profit and that promote a consumerist mentality rather than one of need are damaging to the environment. I am in no sense defending the centralised economies of eastern Europe. They have polluted the north sea and rivers just as industries in Britain and North America have destroyed rivers, wasted natural resources and ruined people's lives by their form of pollution. It is not good enough to promote an economic system that produces for waste and to promote environmental controls in western Europe and North America to look after our environment if at the same time we transfer that destruction of the environment to poorer Third-world countries, either by exporting toxic waste and letting those countries get rid of it by whatever means they can, because they are desperate for foreign currency, or by promoting the destruction of the rain forests, through raping those countries to collect debt payments, when they can make them only by destroying all their natural resources. We live in an age when we have an opportunity to improve our environment and save ourselves from mass destruction through climatic change and environmental disasters.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/15/environmental-protection-bill in the House of Commons (15 January 1990). 1990s

People, Age, World, Nature

“[Being vegan] improved my performance off and on the field. Plant-based foods have no cholesterol, so I don’t have a cholesterol issue. My blood pressure is good, and the toxicity level in my body is good. You’re able to take more energy from plant-based sources than animal-based sources. The list goes on, and it translates to the field and how I recover.”

Montell Owens (1984) American football player, running back

"Hey, Arian Foster—Where's the Beef? Going Vegan in the NFL" https://www.si.com/edge/2014/04/24/going-vegan-nfl-0, interview with Sports Illustrated (April 24, 2014).

Food, Animals

“This has been a big incident, hasn't in. In reality, James Anderson was a B-grade bowler who got his arse-whipped by Australia that many times it's not even funny. Frankly I don't care what he has to say but at least he has improved his bowling, thank goodness”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

Quoted on Telegraph.co.uk (October 18, 2012), "Matthew Hayden labels England's James Anderson a 'B-Grade bowler' after dressing-room Ashes fracas" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9617137/Matthew-Hayden-labels-Englands-James-Anderson-a-B-Grade-bowler-after-dressing-room-Ashes-fracas.html

Reality, Time