Quotes about progression
page 11

“Evan after I had replaced my civil-libertarian posture with the rigors of Marxism-Leninism, Chinese style, Clark’s [Foreman] advice about the necessity of maintaining individual freedoms stuck in my mind and often forced me into open conflict with Progressive Labor. In many ways it was the need for independence, which Clark helped to instill in me, that led to my eventual break with Communism.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 29

Way, Communication, Freedom, Help

“The Gospel of Efficiency. Every era, as Carl Becker has reminded us in his Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, has a few words that epitomize its world-view and that are fixed points by which all else can be measured. In the Middle Ages they were such words as faith, grace, and God; in the eighteenth century they were such words as reason, nature, and rights; during the past fifty years in America they have been such words as cause, reaction, scientific, expert, progress and efficient. Efficiency is a natural ideal for a relatively immature and extrovert culture, but presumably its high development and wide acceptance are due to the fact that ours has been, par excellence, a machine civilization. At any event, efficiency grew to be a national catchword in the Progressive era as mechanization became the rule in American life, and it frequently appears in the literature of the period entangled in mechanical metaphor.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 19

Life, God, Age, World

“We want to build a clean and healthy party (People's Justice Party) with noble ethical values and as leaders, we must give reminders and advice to everyone so that the party will progress smoothly.”

Mohamed Azmin Ali (1964) Malaysian politician

Mohamed Azmin Ali (2018) cited in " Mohamed Azmin: Dr M wants more time to look into suitability of ECRL https://www.edgeprop.my/content/1430635/mohamed-azmin-dr-m-wants-more-time-look-suitability-ecrl" on EdgeProp, 5 October 2018

People, Justice

“At this time it is difficult to put one's finger on any single contribution in the decade 1950 - 1960 which is comparable to those above, and yet progress has probably been even greater. From the point of view of an educator, one cannot overlook the wide distribution which has been given to these ideas. There has been remarkable progress from analysis to synthesis, always a sign of maturity in a field of analytic endeavour. There has been consolidation, for example in the establishment of a more rigorous basis for information theory; there has been unification, for example in the demonstration of the formal similarity between game theory and linear programming; there has been application to mathematically more difficult situations, for example nonlinear servo systems and information channels with memory; there has been implementation, as in commercially available computers which by any reasonable measure are hun- dreds of times more powerful than the primitive devices of 1950; there has been de-limitation of the boundaries of many of these fields.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Information and Decision Processes (1960), p. viii

Education, Game, Mathematics, Idea

“My work is a complex product of a personality continuous with all of nature, and one making progressively better-integrated efforts to structure experience on all levels…. My art is the result of a deeply personal, infinitely complex, and still essentially mysterious, exploration of experience. No words will ever touch it.”

George Brecht (1926–2008) American artist and composer

George Brecht, 1957/58, cited in: George Brecht, ‎Alfred M. Fischer (2005). George Brecht: events : eine Heterospektive. p. 224

Art, Nature, Effort, Personality

“Nothing moves except my eyes and my hand occasionally turning a page, and yet something not exactly defined by the word "text" unfurls, progresses, grows and takes root as I read. But how does this process take place?”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Reading Shadows, p. 28.
A History of Reading (1996)

Reading

“[ Monet is].. hard at work for some time now. His paintings has really progressed, I'm sure it will attract a lot of attention. He has sold thousands of franc's worth of paintings in the last few days, and has one or two other small commissions. He's definitely on his way.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

Quote of Bazille in a letter to his brother, December 1865; as cited in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 43
1861 - 1865

Way, Time, Painting

“That Heel. That lousy wart on the nose of progress.”

Theodore Sturgeon book Microcosmic God

Character Hughie McCauley, quoting fictional space-opera hero Captain Jaundess, in "Two Percent Inspiration", first published in Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1941); also published in Microcosmic God : Volume II : The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (1995), edited by Paul Williams, p. 322 ISBN 1556433018

“Improvised music forces situations into play where musicians push each other into bringing different perspectives to their playing. Improvised music is not progressive in itself, but it invites constant experimentation. When players feel too secure about their approaches, the experimentation risks turning into Mannerism. What I would like to explore here are the moments in which players leave behind a safe zone and expose themselves in the face of the internalised structures of judgment that govern our appreciation of music. These I would call fragile moments.”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Page 20.
"Going Fragile" (July 2005)

Music, Feeling

“To ask whether what the American people in the Declaration of Independence had affirmed as truth was in fact truth, was now said to be meaningless. But if History or Progress or 'change' is to be our guide, if the truth of relativism is to replace the truth of the Declaration, then the cause for which the nation fought at its birth, and in the Civil War, was meaningless, too. White power, black power, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, are as justifiable as Jefferson, Lincoln, or the doctrine of the equal natural rights of all human beings. We may understand how the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could so awfully misunderstand the American political tradition, inasmuch as it has been so very misunderstood for so long in circles from whom a better understanding could be expected. But this misunderstanding is a cancer which can in the end prove fatal, not only to a political campaign but to our country.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the American Cause

War, People, Truth, History

“Lucas’s “Mechanics” Lectures caught the profession by surprise. His argument enraged some economists and startled or puzzled others. It was his first word on the subject of growth. It seemed to have come completely out of the blue. And even though his interest in the possibility of market failure seemed curiously in tune with fifty years of the Keynesian tradition, it was unfamiliar enough when expressed in the vernacular of Freshwater economics that the lectures at first caused more consternation than anything else, and in most quarters they were studiously ignored. A few young researchers, however, were galvanized into immediate action.
The notion that trade and migration must be strongly linked to economic growth was hardly new. Nor was the insight that cities must be central to economic progress. Perhaps the real news from Lucas’s lectures was his identification of lock-in as a potentially serious puzzle.”

David Warsh (1944) American journalist

David Warsh, Knowledge and The Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery (2006), Ch. 19 : Recombinations

Failure

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

Men, Money, War, Health

“T. V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Wall and Piece (2005)

Painting

“May we have the courage to face the eventual doom of our civilization as we have the courage to face the certainty of our personal doom. The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belong to acquiescence and hence to weakness.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

II. Progress and Entropy. p. 47
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Faith, Courage, Personality

“My background has been pretty abusive, nothing extreme, mainly psychological. There have been a few times when I have been slapped by partners and I have slapped back. I have enormous sympathy for those affected by violence. We need to progress beyond violence towards women and not cancel it out by saying women are also violent towards men.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Mansfield, Karl. "The 5-Minute Interview: Stella Vine: 'There have been a few times" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n15873617, The Independent, (2005-11-28) On backing the Amnesty International charity.

Women, Men, Time

“"Disaffected, disadvantaged, disenfranchised is how progressives prefer to depict the Muslim murderers in their midst. After all, progressives hail from the school of therapeutic “thought” that considers crime to have been caused, not committed. Misbehavior is either medicalized and outsourced to state-approved experts, or reduced to the fault of the amorphous thing called society."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Camel-ate-my-homework Theory of Culpability” http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/01/30/the-camel-ate-my-homework-theory-of-culpability/, Libertarian Alliance, January 30, 2015. 2010s, 2015

School

“[T]he view that anti-Communism equals Fascism remained obligatory in countries subject to Communist censorship until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost. It was prevalent also in foreign ‘progressive’ circles. Western scholars who had the temerity to link Mussolini or Hitler with Communism in any way or to depict their regimes as genuine mass movements risked verbal or other forms of harassment.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 241

Way, Communication, Country

“It is odd that the last twenty-five years which have witnessed the greatest progress ever made in physical science—the greatest victories ever achieved by mind over matter—should have produced hardly a volume that will be remembered in 1900.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Diary entry (9 March 1850)

Science, Victory

“Of the radical and iconoclastic ideals preached in the early years of the revolution, all were discarded except those which helped the state to exert absolute control over the individual. Hence the idea of collective education and reduction of parental authority to the minimum continued to hold sway, but an end was put to "progressive" educational methods designed to promote initiative and independence. Strict discipline became once more the rule, and in this respect Soviet schools differed from Tsarist ones only in the immensely increased emphasis on indoctrination. In due course, puritanical sexual ethics were restored to favour.”

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

pg. 53
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Education, School, Idea, Parent

“India represents the new world in a unique sense. Traditionally democracies were trying to bring equality to all walks of life, today there is a change. Democracy wants to enable every country to have the equal right to be different; it's a collection of differences, not an attempt to force or impose equality on every country. I think India is the greatest show of how so many differences in language, in sects can coexist facing great suffering and keeping full freedom… Many of the countries in the Middle East should learn from you how to escape poverty. You didn't escape poverty by getting American dollars or Russian Roubles but by introducing your own internal reforms and by understanding that the new call of modernity is science. In between the spiritual wealth of Gandhi and the earthly wisdom of Nehru, you combined a great performance of spirit and practice to escape poverty…I know you still have a long way to go but you do it without compromising freedom. The temptation when you're such a large country to introduce discipline and imposition is great but you tried to do it, to make progress not with force and discipline but in an open way. Many of us were educated on the literature of India when we fell in love we read Rabindranath Tagore and when we matured we tried to understand Gandhi.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

Israeli President Shimon Peres praises India as greatest 'show of co-existence' http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-04/news/35594466_1_greatest-show-mahatma-gandhi-democracies (4 December 2012)

Love, Life, Wisdom, World

“The youth of the country, who are the most potent force in building India to progress and in preserving its unity, have to be shown the right example and given the right lead. A spirit of self-introspection and dedication to national well-being will make us all go along the right path.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, P.84

Youth, Country

“An ordinary mistake is one that leads to a dead end, while a profound mistake is one that leads to progress. Anyone can make an ordinary mistake, but it takes a genius to make a profound mistake.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: The Lightness of Being – Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces (2008), Ch. 1, p. 12.

Dead

“THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section I, p. 309
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Country, Wealth

“On the one hand we look at the progress since the war and see a huge increase in the material wellbeing in the vast majority of Europeans. But on the other we see policies that are pushing and keeping large sections of entire countries in increasingly desperate circumstances, with no apparent vision for how the circumstance might be overcome.”

Justin Welby (1956) British Anglican bishop; the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury

Address to the Catholic Institute of Paris (November 19, 2016)

War, Country

“Obama is neither a socialist, nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet be an excellent president. But what is needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on how to promote justice, equality and freedom in the world. Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev, assisted in the end of an ideology, which once offered hope, and inspired real progress, but resulted in slavery and mass murder. We are still waiting for a new vision, which will lead to progress, but this time, we hope, without tyranny.”

Ian Buruma (1951) Dutch writer and academic

What’s Left After 1989? http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma31

World, Justice, Hope, Idea

“One of the great moral advances of the Enlightenment was abolishing torture. Its interesting to think how far we've come when we think about the fact that 300 years ago in every square of every civilized city, certainly in Europe, torturing people to death was not just that took place, but was something you would've taken your children to go and see on a Saturday afternoon. Right? I mean, that's what was happening. Now, the question is what did people learn, empirically, when they decided, "Oh gosh, drawing and quartering actually causes too much suffering; I think we'll put it out?" I mean, I don't think there's a fact that changed there that somebody had to realize. I think the example, by the way, is particularly important because while it shows that there can be moral progress, it also shows that it's absolutely not necessary, and there can also be moral regression, as in the case of the current administration. But I don't see that what's taking place somehow when Bush decides to legalize torture and thereby cancel one of the major achievements of the Enlightenment (Well he has! Right? I mean many of the achievements of the enlightenment, but that one in particular.) I don't see that what's happened is that there's something that he doesn't know. That he could somehow be tutored on.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

Death, Children, People, Way

“Protocols:
Number 10, paras. 6,7
A scheme of government should come ready made from one brain, because it will never be clinched firmly if it is allowed to split into fractional parts in the minds of many. It is allowable, therefore, for us to have cognizance of the scheme of action but not to discuss it lest we disturb its artfulness, and interdependence of its component parts, the practical force of the secret meaning of each clause. To discuss and make alteration in a labor of this kind by means of numerous votings is to impress upon it the stamp of all ratiocinations and misunderstandings which have failed to penetrate the depth and nexus of its plottings….
These schemes will not turn existing institutions upside down just yet, They will only effect changes in their economy and consequently in the whole combined movement of their progress, which will thus be directed along the paths laid down in our schemes.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret, Art, Change, Parting

“I do love gymnastics, but it's such an intense sport and you have to be so committed. It's such a commitment that it's really hard to do anything else other than gymnastics as people progress.”

AnnaSophia Robb (1993) American actress, singer, and model

Radio Free Entertainment interview (2007)

Love, People, Sport

“For the notion of progress in the arts, (either spiritually or artistically) has been discredited by many respectable intellects (Kierkegaard and Baudelaire above all, both of whom encountered the idea when it first reared itself in its present form in Europe).”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Art, Idea

“Imagination is perhaps the most decisive characteristic of mankind. My dream is the imagination of space – to change the optical impression of the world of objects by a transcendental arithmetic progression of the inner being. That is the precept. In principal any alteration of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Whether such alteration causes excitement or boredom in the spectator is for you to decide.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 16

World, Dreams, Imagination, Decision

“The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Interview with C. L. Sulzberger, The New York Times (November 7, 1964), p. 26.

“I know we can go too far and try to whitewash what is plain sin; to seek to excuse really bad behavior and to account for it in terms of infantile environment, traumatic experiences, psychological complexes and the like. But I regard it as a sign of progress that we are at last doubting the value of the cane and tawse in the schoolroom and the birch and the hangman’s rope in the jails.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.246

Behavior

“The listener with no preconceptions hears massive waves of sound breaking over him and forms from them the image of a passionate soul seeking and finding the path to faith and peace in God through a life of struggle and a vigorous pursuit of ideals. It is impossible not to hear the confessional tone of this musical language; Liszt’s sonata becomes - perhaps involuntarily on the part of the composer - an autobiographical document and one which reveals an artist in the Faustian mold in the person of its author. As in the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, the underlying religious concept which dominates and permeates the whole work demands a special kind of approach. Whereas representations of human passions and conflicts force themselves on our understanding with their powerfully suggestive coloring, this concept only becomes manifest to those souls who are prepared to soar to the same heights. The equilibrium of the sonata’s hymnic chordal motif, the transformation of its defiant battle motif (first theme) into a triumphant fanfare, and its appearance in bright, high notes on the harp, together with the devotional atmosphere of the Andante, represent a particular challenge to the listener; he is, after all, also expected to grasp the wide-spanned arcs of sound which, from the first hesitant descending octaves to the radiant final chords, build up a graphic panorama of the various stages of progress of a human spirit filled with faith and hope. As the reflection of a remarkable artistic personality worthy of deep admiration and, by extension, of the whole Romantic period, Liszt’s B minor Sonata deserves lasting recognition.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

About the Liszt Sonata in B minor

Life, God, Peace, Faith

“You must handle [the House of Lords] a little more firmly, and the time has come for unflinching and resolute action. For my part, I would not remain a member of a Liberal Cabinet one hour unless I knew that the Cabinet had determined not to hold office after the next General Election unless full powers are accorded to it which would enable it to place on the Statute Book of the realm a measure which will ensure that the House of Commons in future can carry, not merely Tory Bills, as it does now, but Liberal and progressive measures in the course of a single Parliament either with or without the sanction of the House of Lords.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 179-180.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Books, Time, Future, Parting

“Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

As quoted in In Quest of the Universe (2007) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0763743879, by Theo Koupelis and Karl F. Kuhn, p. 583

Science

“When will Sweden be full of Muslims? The short answer is never. They've talked themselves into such a tight corner, and so demonised anyone who questions mass immigration that they could no sooner put a limit on it now than they could click their heels and give a Nazi salute. It's out of the question. So on and on it will go, forever. A hundred thousand or more a year, every year, year after year. It will never stop. Not even when there's a mosque on every street corner blaring the call to prayer five times a day through loudspeakers into your face. That's what's coming, Sweden, and nobody deserves it more than you. Oh yes, you're a real shining "progressive" beacon, all right, a real example to us all – like the guy who dives head first into a thimble of water is an example to us all. … You deserve to see your culture destroyed. You're clearly not worthy of it. You deserve what's coming, but your children and grandchildren don't, and they're the ones who will pay the price for your irresponsible stupidity and cowardice. They will curse your memory for what you've done to them, especially the female ones, you nation of traitors, you society of lemmings, you ship of fools.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden — Ship of fools" (13 October 2014) https://youtube.com/watch/?v=RZsvdg1dkJ4 2014

Children, Stupidity, Fools, Guy

“Modern positivism…expresses criticism against the naïve use of certain terms… by the general postulate that the question whether a given sentence has any meaning… should always be thoroughly and critically examined. This… is derived from mathematical logic. The procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain rules… However, a combination of symbols that does not comply with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning.
The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when a sentence should be considered meaningless. A definite decision is possible only when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some case the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to important progress… new connections which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example… sentence: "In which orbit does the electron move around the nucleus?"”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

But generally the positivistic scheme taken from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined.
Physics and Philosophy (1958)

Mathematics, Question, Nature, Decision

“We created something a little closer to perfection than ourselves; maybe that’s the only way to progress. Let them try to do the same. I doubt they can, so they will always be less as well as more than us. It’s all just a sum, a whispered piece of figuring lost in the empty blizzards of white noise howling through the universe, a brief oasis in an infinite desert, a freak bit of working out in which we have transcended ourselves, and they are only the remainder.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Descendant” (pp. 47-48)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Way, Universe, Perfection

“You need to love this with your heart and soul. You need to breathe music. My best advice — perform as much as you can. With every mistake, progress.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Interview with Shelia M. Goss, "Women In Music" at BellaOnline (2009) http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art44926.asp

Love, Music, Soul, Heart

“Be sceptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests. Be daring, show imagination, take risks. Fight against the greatest human rights violation of all: free market capitalism, which has created a world divided into rich and poor, where hundreds of millions of people are malnourished, homeless, without clean drinking water and dying from hunger and preventable diseases. Don’t accept the world as it is. Dream about what the world could be – then help make it happen.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Honorary doctorate acceptance speech, 26 July 2010 http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/07/26/be-sceptical-and-daring-peter-tatchells-honorary-doctorate-acceptance-speech/

Hunger, People, World, Disease

“Whatever the progress of human knowledge, there will always be room for ignorance, hence for chance and probability.”

Émile Borel

Quels que soient les progrès des connaissances humaines, il y aura toujours place pour l'ignorance et par suite pour le hasard et la probabilité.
[Emile Borel, Le hasard, Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914, 12-13]

Knowledge, Chance

“We may make progress only by freeing ourselves from the rut of the past, but without this rut an orderly society would hardly be possible in the first place.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter IV, Part 6, The Inertia of History, p. 195

Past

“There are three kinds of writing in economics: Greek-letter, up-and-down, and airport. Greek-letter writing formal, theoretical, mathematical is how professors communicate. Like any academic field, economics has its fair share of hacks and phonies, who use complicated language to hide the banality of their ideas; it also contains profound thinkers, who use the specialized language of the discipline as an efficient way to express deep insights. […] Up-and-down economics is what one encounters on the business pages of newspapers, or for that matter on TV. It is preoccupied with the latest news and the latest numbers, hence its name. […] Finally, airport economics is the language of economics bestsellers. These books are most prominently displayed at airport bookstores, where the delayed business traveler is likely to buy them. Most of these books predict disaster: a new great depression, the evisceration of our economy by Japanese multinationals, the collapse of our money. A minority have the opposite view, a boundless optimism: new technology or supply-side economics is about to lead us into an era of unprecedented economic progress. Whether pessimistic or optimistic, airport economics is usually fun, rarely well informed, and never serious.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Preface
The Age of Diminished Expectations (1990; 1994; 1997)

Money, Books, Way, Travel

“The time has gone by when a Huxley could believe that while science might indeed remould traditional mythology, traditional morals were impregnable and sacrosanct to it. We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion.
There does not seem to be any particular reason why a religion should not arise with an ethic as fluid as Hindu mythology, but it has not yet arisen. Christianity has probably the most flexible morals of any religion, because Jesus left no code of law behind him like Moses or Muhammad, and his moral precepts are so different from those of ordinary life that no society has ever made any serious attempt to carry them out, such as was possible in the case of Israel and Islam. But every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. This is no doubt an argument for Christianity as against other religions, but not as against none at all, or as against a religion which will frankly admit that its mythology and morals are provisional. That is the only sort of religion that would satisfy the scientific mind, and it is very doubtful whether it could properly be called a religion at all.”

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Daedalus or Science and the Future (1923)

Life, Religion, Law, Learning

“Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, as quoted in Freedom and Union (April 1952)
Variants:
Most people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism.
As quoted in Politics and Policies : The Continuing Issues (1970) by Duane W. Hill, p. 170.
Many people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism.
As quoted in Encarta Book of Quotations (2000) edited by Bill Swainson, p. 969
1950s

People

“And it was from America. Progressive movement in America. Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. …. The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening. So I guess I have to put my name on yes, I hope Barack Obama fails. But I just want his policies to fail; I want America to wake up.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Powers
Ryan
Beck: Stem-cell research will lead directly to the search for a new ‘master race.’
2009-03-09
ThinkProgress
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/09/beck-eugenics/
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-03-09
on President Obama overturning the ban on federally funded stem cell research
2000s, 2009

Hope, Personality, Perfection

“Until every being afflicted by pain
Has reached nirvanas shores,
May I serve only as a condition
That encourages progress and joy.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

Pain, Affliction, Joy

“For decades, the circle of liberty and security and development has been expanding in our world. This progress has brought unity to Europe, self-government to Latin America and Asia, and new hope to Africa. Now we have the historic chance to widen the circle even further, to fight radicalism and terror with justice and dignity, to achieve a true peace, founded on human freedom.”

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

2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)

World, Peace, Justice, Hope

“If you could only imprison a thought, then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it -- if you could only take a good, splendid shining fact and lock it up in some dungeon of ignorance, so that its light would never again enter the mind of man, then you might succeed in stopping human progress. Otherwise, no.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Light, Clothes

“The life force that pulsates in the trees, plants, and animals is the same life force that pulsates within us. The same life energy that gives us the power to speak and to sing, is the power behind the song of the bird and the roar of the lion. The same consciousness that flows in and through every human being, lends its power to the movement of the wind, to the flow of the river, and to the light of the sun. How can there be any sense of difference once this subtle principle is understood? When we evaluate our growth and development in the light of this great Truth, we may wonder whether we human beings have really developed or grown at all. The progress that we see today is divided growth. Only some parts are growing—the world as a whole remains unhealthy. We cannot call this real progress.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Unity is Peace (1995)

Life, Truth, World, Bird

“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

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

from lecture "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy (1964)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

People, World, Search, Question

“It has always been characteristic of American Industry to change products and methods of doing jobs as often as competitive conditions or engineering progress dictates. This makes frequent changes in an individual's work necessary. In addition, the markedly greater turnover and absenteeism of recent years result in unbalanced production lines which again makes for frequent shifting of individuals from one job to another. One of the most serious production problems faced at the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation has been the resistance of production workers to the necessary changes in methods and jobs. This resistance expressed itself in several ways, such as grievances about the piece rates that went with the new methods, high turnover, very low efficiency, restriction of output, and marked aggression against management. Despite these undesirable effects, it was necessary that changes in methods and jobs continue.”

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Source: "Overcoming resistance to change." 1948, p. 512; Lead paragraph

Way, Problem, Change

“My intention is to make in Drenthe so much progress in painting that when I come back I may be qualified for the 'Society of Draughtsmen' [a group of London illustrators]. This stands again in connection with the second plan of going to England”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

to become an illustrator Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands, Summer 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 319) p. 21 1880s, 1883

Painting

“Tragedy springs from outrage; it protests at the conditions of life. It carries in it the possibilities of disorder, for all tragic poets have something of the rebelliousness of Antigone. Goethe, on the contrary, loathed disorder. He once said that he preferred injustice, signifying by that cruel assertion not his support for reactionary political ideals, but his conviction that injustice is temporary and reparable whereas disorder destroys the very possibilities of human progress. Again, this is an anti-tragic view; in tragedy it is the individual instance of injustice that infirms the general pretence of order. One Hamlet is enough to convict a state of rottenness.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. V (p. 167).

Life, Spring, Support

“Democracy is shot through with this delight in the incredible, this banal mysticism. I have alluded to its touching acceptance of the faith that progress is illimitable and ordained of God - that every human problem, in the very nature of things, may be solved.”

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

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

God, Faith, Democracy, Nature

“The great Jewish hoax about millions of God’s Chosen People whom the Germans supposedly exterminated seems to have been devised late in 1942, when it was claimed that in the autumn of that year the Germans had murdered two millions of the Holy Race in various ways. By 1943, the number had been increased to six million, and to keep up the progression, it was later increased to 40,000,000, which was seen to be so preposterous that it was reduced to 12,000,000, and at the end of the Crusade to Save the Soviet, the figure of six million was taken as the largest that could impose on the gullible goyim.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

God, People, Way, Autumn

“[Bryce] expressed his cordial agreement with what Mr. Washington had said as to the importance of basing the progress of the coloured people of the South upon industrial training. Having made two or three visits to the South he had got an impression of the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem which Mr. Washington was so nobly striving to solve. It was no wonder that it should be difficult seeing that the whites had such a long start of the coloured people in civilization. He believed that the general sentiment of white people was one of friendliness and a desire to help the negroes. The exercise of political rights and the attainment to equal citizenship must depend upon the quality of the people who exercised those rights, and the best thing the coloured people could do, therefore, was to endeavour to attain material prosperity by making themselves capable of prosecuting these trades and occupations which they began to learn in the days of slavery, and which now, after waiting for 20 years, they had begun to see were necessary to their well-being.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech at the reception for Booker T. Washington held in Essex Hall, Strand, London (3 July 1899), quoted in The Times (4 July 1899), p. 13.
1890s

People, Exercises, Problem, Learning

“Euclid's manner of exposition, progressing relentlessly from the data to the unknown and from the hypothesis to the conclusion, is perfect for checking the argument in detail but far from being perfect for making understandable the main line of the argument.”

George Pólya book How to Solve It

Source: How to Solve It (1945), p. 70

Understanding, Perfection

“The soul seeks God by faith, not by the reasonings of the mind and labored efforts, but by the drawings of love; to which inclinations God responds, and instructs the soul, which co-operates actively. God then puts the soul in a passive state where He accomplishes all, causing great progress, first by way of enjoyment, then by privation, and finally by pure love.”

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) French mystic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 240.

Love, God, Faith, Way

“A hypothetical theory is necessary, as a preliminary step, to reduce the expression of the phenomena to simplicity and order before it is possible to make any progress in framing an abstractive theory.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

Source: "Outlines of the Science of Energetics," (1855), p. 213

“[I]t is not true that we shall necessarily progress if our political conditions undergo a change, irrespectively of the manner in which it is brought about. If the means employed are impure, the change will not be in the direction of progress but very likely in the opposite.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

As quoted in Gandhi’s Experiments With Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi, Richard L. Johnson (edit), Lexington Books (2006) p. 118. Original source: Forward to volume of Gokhale’s speeches, Gopal Krishna Gokahalenan Vyakhyanao, 1, 1916
1910s

Change

“Growth and progress are related, for there is no resting place for an enterprise in a competitive economy.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 15 (2015 edition)

“The world socialist system, which includes in its fold over 1 billion people with a big economic and military potential continually growing at unprecedented rates, has become today the decisive factor in the development of the world history. It exerts a tremendous influence on the world; it has become a great attractive and revolutionizing force. The world socialist system is showing with every passing day its indisputable superiority over the capitalist system. It has become the shield of all the progressive forces of the world, the impregnable bulwark of freedom and peace, democracy and socialism.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, 20th Party Anniversary Address

People, World, Peace, Democracy

“Modernity invented the future, but that's all over. In the current version 'progressive history' camouflages phylogenetic death-drive tactics, Kali-wave: logistically accelerating condensation of virtual species extinction. Welcome to the matricide laboratory.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"No Future" (1995), in Fanged Noumena, p. 392

Death, History, Future

“We operate on a very narrow slice based on cultural conventions. So the important thing, if synergizing progress is the notion to be maximized (and I think it's the notion to be maximized), is to try and locate the blind spot in the culture -- the place where the culture isn't looking, because it dare not -- because if it were to look there, its previous values would dissolve, you see.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Understanding and Imagination in the Light of Nature http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/UILN.html Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles (17 October 1987)

Thinking

“As the reflections of our pride upon our defects are bitter, disheartening, and vexatious, so the return of the soul towards God is peaceful and sustained by confidence. You will find by experience how much more your progress will be aided by this simple, peaceful turning towards God, than by all your chagrin and spite at the faults that exist in you.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 566.

God, Peace, Soul, Confidence

“Part of your work feels as clear, it gives you a sense of liberation or beauty and you recognize it as necessary pavements. You are thus in a sense ready. In the other part of your work this is not the case. Therein is the hidden development, which is the true essence of art… the higher purpose, the pursuit forward that art automatically calls. The unclear part of your work needs to progress (stopping is no option, is no life, no art) and it is clear when by working with head and heart, the real step forward has been achieved.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Letter to B. Kramers, 1926, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 18 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

Life, Beauty, Art, Feeling

“The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning."”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up." Quoted in "John Gray at the Writers' Festival, part 1," http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2008/2284016.htm The Philosopher's Zone, a discussion with Alan Saunders on ABC Radio National (2008-06-28)

People, World, Way, History

“One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fact that it causes us to undervalue the high blessings we so peculiarly enjoy; to render us ungrateful towards God, and to make us unjust to our fellow men, by throwing obstacles in their progress towards liberty.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

A Letter to His Countrymen (1834)

Men, God

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937). 1937

Love, Children, People, World

“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

“Can civilizations and cultures be considered as systems? It seems, therefore, that a general theory of systems would be a useful tool providing, on the one hand, models that can be used in, and transferred different fields, and safeguarding, on the other hand, from vague analogies which often have marred the progress in these fields.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 34

“Every progress has its bill of costs and only those who pay for it will have that progress.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar in the Bombay Legislature https://archive.org/stream/Ambedkar_CompleteWorks/13A.%20Dr.%20Ambedkar%20in%20the%20Bombay%20Legislature%20PART%20I_djvu.txt

“Either communistic production is superior to free production, or it is not.If it is, then it must be for all things, not just for security.If not, progress requires that it be replaced by free production.Complete communism or complete liberty: that is the alternative!”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 40

Communication

“Yet science is going to tell you that the only things worth describing are those phenomena that can be repeatedly triggered. This is being these are the only phenomena that science can describe and that's the name of the game as far as they are concerned. But we, to claim our freedom, to take advantage of the tiny moment between immense abysses of unknowability, perhaps death, perhaps other reincarnations, perhaps transitions into other life forms, these things we don't know, but in the moment of being human we have the unique opportunity to figure things out. And I have the faith that it is possible, sometime, somewhere, to have a conversation, perhaps no progress will be made until the ninth hour, but to have a conversation in which reality could be literally pulled to pieces, beyond the point of reconstructing.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Psychedelic Society (1984)

Life, Death, Faith, Game

“As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.”

Cherie Blair (1954) British barrister and wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair

Charles Reiss, Hugh Muir, "Cherie suicide bombing gaffe", Evening Standard, 18 June 2002, p. 1
Speech at the launch of Medical Aid for Palestinians charity, 18 June 2002, referring to Palestinian suicide bombers; she later apologised for any offence caused.

People, Hope, Feeling

“I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of human kind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context… I can see such a use for the future as representing the really progressive character of the idea of understanding art when it is related to the life of humankind within the social body in the future.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Beuys, in Studio International Vol. 195, (1981), p. 46
1980's

Life, Art, Idea, Understanding

“The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which has been preached from this text; almost all other sermons that I have heard, or heard of, have been but poor imitations of this.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Life, Books, School, Thinking

“To make a law final, so as not to be reached by Congress, is, by mere legislation, to fasten a new provision on the Constitution. Nay, more; it gives to the law a character which the very Constitution docs not possess. The wise fathers did not treat the country as a Chinese foot, never to grow after infancy; but, anticipating Progress, they declared expressly that their great Act is not final. According to the Constitution itself, there is not one of its existing provisions — not even that with regard to fugitives from labor — which may not at all times be reached by amendment, and thus be drawn into debate. This is rational and just. Sir, nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852)

Truth, Law, Time, Country

“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

“As Prince Bismarck, in the ’60s, wanted to move the “Acheron” of socialism, … it was of course not love for socialism or knowledge of socialism that led Prince Bismarck to do this. He understood nothing about socialism at that time, and never did understand anything about it down to his death; in fact, he never had any conception of the moving forces of political and social life at all. There probably never lived at any time in any country a “statesman” who was less scientific, who had less knowledge, and who relied so purely on experience and a sort of half-gambler, half-peddler cunning, as Bismarck. Those offers to socialists place in the clearest light the untruthfulness of Prince Bismarck’s claim that he always regarded the social democracy as incompatible with the existence of the state. Bismarck wanted to use socialism for the purpose of breaking up and dissolving the bourgeois liberal opposition, especially the Progressive party. This, in itself, is the most conclusive proof that he had no conception of the real nature of socialism. Of course the fate of the boy magician was repeated. The elemental force which was conjured up grew over the head of the dabbler, and he did not get the best of socialism; socialism got the best of him.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Love, Life, Death, Fate

“Mahmood Shah’s next effort was against the port of Jugut, with a view of making converts of the infidels, an object from which he had been hitherto deterred by the reports he received of the approaches to it…”“The King, after an arduous march, at length arrived before the fort of Jugut a place filled with infidels, misled by the infernal minded bramins… The army was employed in destroying the temple at Jugut, and in building a mosque in its stead; while measures, which occupied three or four months in completing, were in progress for equipping a fleet to attack the island of Bete…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511) Dwarka (Gujarat)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Effort

“On the question of the "origin of species" Mr. Haughton enlarges considerably; but his chief arguments are reduced to the setting-up of "three unwarrantable assumptions," which he imputes to the Lamarckians and Darwinians, and then, to use his own words, "brings to the ground like a child's house of cards." The first of these is "the indefinite variation of species continuously in the one direction." Now this is certainly never assumed by Mr. Darwin, whose argument is mainly grounded on the fact that variations occur in every direction. This is so obvious that it hardly needs insisting on. In every large family there is almost always one child taller, one darker, one thinner than the rest; one will have a larger nose, another a larger eye: they vary morally as well; some are more poetical, others more morose; one has a genius for numbers, another for painting. It is the same in animals: the puppies, or kittens, or rabbits of one litter differ in many ways from each other - in colour, in size, in disposition; so that, though they do not "vary continuously in one direction," they do vary continuously in many directions; and thus there is always material for natural selection to act upon in some direction that may be advantageous. […] I will only, in conclusion, quote from it a short paragraph which contains an important truth, but which may very fairly be applied in other quarters than those for which the author intended it: - "No progress in natural science is possible as long as men will take their rude guesses at truth for facts, and substitute the fancies of their imagination for the sober rules of reasoning."”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

"Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species" (1863).

Men, Truth, Family, Way

“Islamism immediately revived the lost cause of Urdu behind the smoke-screen of this Communist campaign against Hindi. It lauded loudly when progressive Urdu poets like Firaq Gorakhpuri lampooned Hindi in a language which was largely unprintable. Simultaneously, Islamism started parading Urdu as the great language of culture and refinement which will be lost to India for good if Urdu was allowed to go under. No Communist came forward to examine this “culture and refinement as a legacy of decadent Muslim courts and a frivolous Muslim aristocracy. No Communist questioned the heavy Persianisation and Arabicisation of Urdu which made it incomprehensible even to educated people, leave alone the man in Chandni Chowk. The recognition of Urdu as a second language has today become a sine qua non of Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992)

People, Education, Question

“The vast majority of the members of all religions, I believe and would argue, don't want to kill anybody. They want to love and care for their families, find decent work that sustains life and comfort, live in peace and get along with their neighbors. It is a deviant streak in some humans, I suspect, that drives them toward self-righteous violence, and uses religion as a convenient alibi… I am trying as hard as I can to imagine the audience for this movie. Every time I make any progress, it scares me.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/september-dawn-2007 of September Dawn (24 August 2007) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Love, Life, Family, Peace

“Apart from the greatness of Bizos for his role in the dismantling of apartheid, defending Mandela etc, he also manifested a genius in his role as a leading member of the conservative South African Greek community, by drawing historical parallels between the 400 years of slavery that Greece had suffered under the Ottoman Turks and the 300 years or so of repression and cruelty suffered by the Southern African black tribes and mixed race people under the British and then under the Nationalist Afrikaner rule. By using this strategy Bizos was able to balance his fight for justice in South Africa, and synchronously lead the very conservative Greek community in a more progressive direction.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On George Bizos
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

People, Justice, Communication, Suffering

“Prokofiev had a lifelong love of the sonata form. Ever since learning the basic rules during his childhood years, he strove to master them; … In 1941, describing his Sonatinas op. 54 (1931), he remarked, “I liked the idea of writing a simple work in such a superior form as sonata.” One can learn a lot about the composer’s growth by tracing his progress from the early sonatas, which cautiously dare to bend the textbook rules, to the masterful treatment of the form in his late works.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Preface

Love, Idea, Learning, Childhood

“Phenomenology is one name for the path back from the object to the thing, the counterbalance to the objectification or 'progress'. Poetry is another.”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

'Paradoxides' 2012
Other quotes

“Our goal is to build a broad-based model of key components of the economy: households, firms, banks and government… The failure to embrace things like simulation has inhibited progress in economics.”

J. Doyne Farmer (1952) American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

As quoted by Stephen Foley, " Physicists and the financial markets http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8461f5e6-35f5-11e3-952b-00144feab7de.html#axzz2j7a3dBoP" Financial Times Magazine (Oct18, 2013) ref: the CRISIS Project http://www.crisis-economics.eu/.

Failure

“The whole result of continued labour is not often consumed and enjoyed in a moment; the result generally lasts for a certain length of time. We must then conceive the capital as being progressively uninvested.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 191.

Time

“So who makes the choice then for you, Homer? Once again, progressives know better than you, and you are now paying to have Cass Sunstein, a guy who I say is the most dangerous man in America, because first it's nudge, then it's shove, then it becomes shoot. Some will argue, "Aw come on, it's only about school lunches, what's the big deal, it's school lunches." Really? I don't know about you, but I don't want the federal government in my schools- in my kid's lunch bag.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

on program to encourage schoolchildren to pick fruits and vegetables in their school lunches. Cass Sunstein co-authored the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
2010s, 2010

School, Guy

“What I am trying to do is to present a unified scientific view of life; that is, a view integrating life's biological, cognitive, and social dimensions. I have had many discussions with social scientists, cognitive scientists, physicists and biologist who question that task, who said that this would not be possible. They ask, why do I believe that I can do that? My belief is based largely on our knowledge of evolution. When you study evolution, you see that there was, first of all, evolution before the appearance of life, there was a molecular type of evolution where structures of greater and greater complexity evolved out of simple molecules. Biochemist who study that have made tremendous progress in understanding that process of molecular evolution. Then we had the appearance of the first cell which was a bacterium. Bacteria evolved for about 2 billion years and in doing so invented, if you want to use the term, or created most of the life processes that we know today. Biochemical processes like fermentation, oxygen breathing, photosynthesis, also rapid motion, were developed by bacteria in evolution. And what happened then was that bacteria combined with one another to produce larger cells — the so-called eukaryotic cells, which have a nucleus, chromosomes, organelles, and so on. This symbiosis that led to new forms is called symbiogenesis.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Capra (2007) in: Francis Pisani " An Interview with Fritjof Capra http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/69/25" in: International Journal of Communication Vol 1 (2007).

Life, Understanding, Question, Knowledge

“They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion.
All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation.
A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery.
The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de Suif also was silent.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

Women, Hostility, Time, Victory

“Imam warned that disunity undermines Islam and causes to interrupt Divine blessings. He always reminded that only through unity can the Muslim Ummah achieve progress.”

Abbas Ka'bi (1962) Iranian ayatollah

http://ikna.ir/en/news_detail.php?ProdID=129980 Imam Khomeini Regarded Disunity as a Deadly Poison for Islam June 2, 2007.

“The British Parliament is now in the hands of the worst kind of terror-appeasing moonbats… We’re about to witness what happens when a country is governed by the “progressive” Kos mentality. And it’s going to be ugly.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

August 13, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26637&only

Country

“When we look over the rest of the world, in spite of all its devastation there is encouragement to believe it is on a firmer moral foundation than it was in 1914. Much of the old despotism has been swept away, While some of it comes creeping back disguised under new names, no one can doubt that the general admission of the right of the people to self-government has made tremendous progress in nearly every quarter of the globe. In spite of the staggering losses and the grievous burden of taxation, there is a new note of hope for the individual to be more secure in his rights, which is unmistakably clearer than ever before. With all the troubles that beset the Old World, the former cloud of fear is evidently not now so appalling. It is impossible to believe that any nation now feels that it could better itself by war, and it is apparent to me that there has been a very distinct advance in the policy of peaceful and honorable adjustment of international differences. War has become less probable; peace has become more secure. The price which has been paid to bring about this new condition is utterly beyond comprehension. We can not see why it should not have come in orderly and peaceful methods without the attendant shock of fire and sword and carnage. We only know that it is here. We believe that on the ruins of the old order a better civilization is being constructed.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War, People, World, Fear

“The entrapment of black voters in the Democratic party has been a disaster, and it’s one of the reasons that progress on.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

“I believe that the situation has now gone so far that it is impossible to conceive of an effective long-term solution in which the agenda at least does not include consideration of, and which is not in some way directed to finding a means of achieving, the aspirations envisaged half a century ago, of progress towards a united Ireland…A substantial term of years will be required before any concept of unification could become a reality, but the dream must be there. If men of moderation have nothing to hope for, men of violence will have something to shoot for.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1971/nov/25/northern-ireland-1 in the House of Commons (25 November 1971) Leader of the Opposition

Men, Dreams, Hope, Way

“What comes after is not always progress.”

Alessandro Manzoni Del romanzo storico

Non sempre ciò che vien dopo è progresso.
"Del romanzo storico" (1850), in Andrea Tagliapietra (ed.) La storia e l'invenzione (Milano: Gallone, 1997) p. 64; Sandra Bermann (trans.) On the Historical Novel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) p. 113

Quotes about progression page 11

Quotes about progression
page 11