Quotes about progression
page 13

“The one-sided funding creates one-sided images that reinforce the press defining as progress an examination of only women’s issues. Thus, a quarter century’s-worth of studies showing domestic violence against men to be more than equal to domestic violence against women receive so little publicity as to barely make a dent on the public’s consciousness.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Women, Men, Study

“The first fallacy of Communism is its attempt to over-simplify history. Marx and Engels attempted to change history from a fluid stream, fed by human activities from millions of tributaries, into a fixed, undeviating, pre-determined course of progress which could be charted in the past and predicted for the future on the basis of a single, simple criterion - economics. Obviously economics have played a vital and powerful role in human history but so have climate, topography, access to oceans and inland waterways, mechanical inventions, scientific discoveries, national and racial affinities, filial affection, religion, desire for explanatory adventure, sentiments of loyalty, patriotism and a multitude of other factors.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Religion, History, Communication, Change

“This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly bound in our suffering Latin American lands. A struggle of masses and of ideas. AN epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and and corned by imperialism; our peoples, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of tat flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers.”

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

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

People, Idea, Suffering

“THE prejudice which is commonly entertained against metaphysical speculations seems to arise chiefly from two causes: First, from an apprehension that the subjects about which they are employed, are placed beyond the reach of the human faculties; and, secondly, from a belief that these subjects have no relation to the business of life.
The frivolous and absurd discussions which abound in the writings of most metaphysical authors, afford but too many arguments in justification of these opinions; and if such discussions were to be admitted as a fair specimen of what the human mind is able to accomplish in this department of science, the contempt, into which it has fallen of late, might with justice be regarded, as no inconsiderable evidence of the progress, which true philosophy has made in the present age.”

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) Scottish philosopher and mathematician

Source: Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1792, p. 9; Lead paragraph (I)

Life, Age, Justice, Business

“A sketch of the progress of Geology is the history of a constant and violent struggle between new opinions and ancient doctrines sanctioned by the implicit faith of many generations and supposed to rest on scriptural authority. The inquiry, therefore, although highly interesting to one who studies the philosophy of the human mind, is singularly barren of instruction to him who searches for truths in physical science.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 34
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Truth, Faith, History, Search

“Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

Democracy

“I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world. The best it can do is substitute one kind of war for another. You said, no killing of humans by other humans. So I dreamed up the Aliens. Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you're trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it's easier to conceive of than the motives of war. But you're handling something outside reason. You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn't suited to the job. Who has humanitarian dreams?”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6 (Orr)

War, World, Dreams, Imagination

“I have to speak candidly to be of value, but I do not want to offend the Muslim community… I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came, and if you asked me for my observations, the other communities have easier integration – friends, inter-marriages and so on – than Muslims… I would say, today, we can integrate all religions and races, except Islam.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

from his book 'Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going' (Asia One, March 08 2011 http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20110308-267055.html) 2010s

Marriage, Religion, Communication, Thinking

“The line of march of all spirits is always progressive, never retrograde. They raise themselves gradually In the hierarchy of existence they never descend from the rank at which they have once arrived. In the course of their different corporeal existences they may descend in rank as men, but not as spirits. Thus the soul of one who has been at the pinnacle of earthly power may, in a subsequent incarnation, animate the humblest day-labourer, and vice versa; for the elevation of ranks among men is often In the inverse ratio of that of the moral sentiments. Herod was a king, and Jesus, a carpenter.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 128.

Men, Soul, Animals

“I define sustainable history as a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times and under all circumstances.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p. 13

Life, History, Time

“Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. the idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 1.

Imagination, History, Idea, Nature

“President Obama must be defeated in the coming election … He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices. … He has delivered the politics of democracy to the rule of money…. Unless he is defeated, there cannot be a contest for the reorientation of the Democratic Party as the vehicle of a progressive alternative in the country … Only a political reversal can allow the voice of Democratic prophesy to speak once again in American life.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Quoted in Meena Hart Duerson, "Obama’s former Harvard professor: ‘He must be defeated’ː Roberto Unger called for Obama’s defeat in a recent YouTube video," New York Daily News, Monday, June 18, 2012
On Barack Obama
Source: Accessed at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-harvard-professor-defeated-article-1.1097944 on December 4, 2015

Life, Money, Democracy, Country

“…nothing in Nature stands still; everything strives and moves forward. If we could only view the first stages of creation, how the kingdoms of nature were built one upon the other, a progression of forward-striving forces would reveal itself in all evolution.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Book 5, as cited in Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice), "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Nature

““Why did I never understand…”
“That it was vanity?” I said.
“Mm, but so much worse… Delusion. Because, the thing is—human progress begins, not with one lone man with a weapon, however heroic. Nor with subtle governments, be they never so altruistic. It begins with a man and his wife in bed… and… how could I ever hope to govern humanity, without having been even that human?”

Kage Baker book The Sons of Heaven

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 12, Section 1 “Three Months: Extract from the Journal of the Botanist Mendoza: Monsters and Ice Cream” (p. 156)

Hope, Understanding

“Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. […] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Shields of Expectation—and Actuality", p. 425
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Search, Understanding, Knowledge

“Mankind has advanced. Human progress is ceaseless. We can look at Bosnia or Zaire or Rwanda and conclude that building just societies is a fool's errand. We are always, despite our advances, only one sin away from slipping into the abyss of terror and ignorance.
But that is not so. Generations upon generations have driven the human race farther and farther from darkness. Past episodes of abominable human cruelty are kept vivid in the memories of succeeding generations. "Never again," is the admonition passed from the survivors of the Holocaust to their descendants and to us all. And although such an important reminder will not always prevent the occurrence of cruelty and violence even at levels approaching genocide, the civilized world is more inclined to organize opposition to such tragedies if not as early as we should, at least sooner than we once would have.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)

World, Fools, Memory, Past

“Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Contrary to generations of western progressives, it was not Russian backwardness or mistakes in applying Marxian theory that produced the society that Lyons observed. Similar regimes came into being wherever the communist project was attempted. Lenin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Ceausescu’s Romania and many more were variants of a single dictatorial model. From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. If 1984 is such a powerful myth, one reason is that it captures this truth. Yet there is a flaw in Orwell’s story, which emerges in his picture of the all-powerful interrogator. The dystopia of perpetual power is a fantasy, and so is O’Brien. Soviet torturers were sweating functionaries living in constant fear. Like their victims, they knew that they were resources that would be used up in the service of power. There was no inner-party elite safe from the contingencies of history.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Two Times Two Equals Five (p. 52)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Truth, Fear, History, Communication

“Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

On Mr. Justice Story (September 12, 1845); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), page 300

Happiness, Justice

“The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright.”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

"Tales of a Feathered Tail", p. 331
I Have Landed (2002)

Life, World, Understanding, Nature

“Of all the principles, gentlemen, of foreign policy which I attach the greatest value is the principle of the equality of nations; because, without recognising that principle, there is no such thing as public right, and without public international right there is no instrument available for settling the transactions of mankind except material force. Consequently, the principle of equality among nations lies, in my opinion, at the very basis and root of a Christian civilisation, and when that principle is compromised or abandoned, with it must depart our hopes of tranquillity and of progress for mankind.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 123.
1870s

Hope

“Western social Darwinists, who include modernisation and development theorists and their kindred spirits (UN agencies, human rights organisations and activists, NGOs, the IMF, the World Bank, the US State Department, etc) would see the possible "advance" of the Arab world (as well as the rest of the "underdeveloped" world) toward a western-defined and sponsored modernity as part of a historical teleology wherein non-Europeans who are still at the stage of European childhood will eventually replicate European "progress" toward modern forms of organisation, sociality, economics, politics and sexual desires. What is emerging in the Arab (and the rest of the third) world is not some universal schema of the march of history but rather the imposition of these western modes by different forceful means and their adoption by third world elites, thus foreclosing and repressing myriad ways of movement and change and ensuring that only one way for transformation is made possible.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 49-50.
Desiring Arabs

World, Way, History, Universe

“The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge — not even in the long run.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary," from Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (2004)

War, Knowledge, Freedom, Suffering

“Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

A falsified quote invented during the 2010 financial crisis. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Isoc.+7+20&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0144 Isocrates' actual, more nuanced, quote runs as follows: Those who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which … trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness, but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser. Areopagiticus, 7.20 (Norlin) Misattributed

Democracy, Freedom

“The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. I mean, they're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much, they all behave the same, they all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party. Again, the Democrats abduct everybody you can think of. So, as this gentleman was talking about, it's a coalition, a lot of it independent. The problem is, we gotta make sure that turns into a party, which means this: I've gotta spend time in the communities, and our folks gotta spend time in the communities. I think, we're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things, particularly on jobs, and housing, and business opportunities and college opportunities, and so fourth. I think, there has been a lot of progress in the last 20-40 years, but the stakes keep changing. I think there's a lot of folks who vote, maybe right now, in the Asian-American communities, who don't wanna vote Democrats, but they're angry with the President on his immigration policy, the Patriot Act. But, what we need to do while this is going on, is develop a really close relationship with the Asian-American community, so later on there's gonna be a benefit, you know, more equal division. There'll be some party loyalty, as people would rememeber that we were there when it really made a difference. That's really what I'm trying to do. If I come in here 8 weeks before the elections, we're not getting anywhere. Asking if you would vote, you're still mad at the lesser of two evils. So that's why I'm here 3.5 years before the elections. We want different kind of people to run for office, too. We want a very diverse group of people running for office, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos. I think Villaraigosa's election in Los Angeles is incredibly important for the Democratic Party. Bush can go out and talk all he wants about "this is the party of opportunity", you know, he can make his appointments, Condi Rice, or, what's this guy's name, Commerce Secretary, Gutierrez. But you can't succeed electorally if you're a person of color in then Republican Party, there're very few people who have succeeded. You can pick some out, JC Watts, I'm trying to think of an Asian-American who's been a success who's a Republican, I can't think of one off the top of my head. You know, there's always a few, but not many. Because this is the party of opportunity for people of color, and for communities of color. And we're hoping to cement that relationship so that'll always be that way. [Q: You've been very tough on the Republicans, some Democrats criticized you over the weeked for doing that, Joe Biden…] I just got off the phone with John Edwards. What happened was, John Edwards was, in a sense, set up by the reporter, "well you know, Governor Dean said this". Well what I said was, the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people. That's essentially the gist of the quote, and, you know, the RNC put out a press release. I don't think there's a lot of difference between me and John Edwards right now, I haven't spoken to Senator Biden, but I'm sure that I will. Today, it's all over the wires that Durbin and Sheila Jackson Lee and all of these folks are coming to my defense. Look, we have to be tough on the Republicans; the Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to have to go out and try to make ends meet. You know, the context of what I was talking about was these long lines that you have to wait in to vote. How could you design a system that sometimes causes people to vote, to stand in line for 6 or 8 hours, if you had any understanding what their lives are like: they gotta pick up the kids, they gotta work, sometimes they have two jobs. So that was the context of the remarks. [crosstalk/laughter] This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough, but I think we all wanna be tougher on the Republicans.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Discussion with reporters Portia Li and Carla Marinucci, in San Francisco http://web.archive.org/web/20060427191647/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/07/MNdean07.TMP&o=1, June 6, 2005

People, Hope, Angels, Color

“Nothing progresses more rapidly in a heart set upon doing good than an ability to be useful. They who at first are timid, shy, awkward, in such efforts, soon acquire courage, expertness, and efficiency.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 121.

Courage, Effort, Heart

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us…. And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?

It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Men, Faith, Way, Soul

“If Black people had simply accepted a status of economic and political inferiority, the mob murders would probably have subsided. But because vast numbers of ex-slaves refused to discard their dreams of progress, more than ten thousand lynchings occurred during the three decades following the war.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Women, Race and Class (1983)

War, People, Dreams

“The people of South Dakota are taking the lead in the preparation of this memorial out of their meager resources, because the American spirit is strong among them. Their effort and courage entitles them to the sympathy and support of private beneficence and the national government. They realize fully that they have no means of succeeding in the development of their state except a strong reliance upon American institutions. They do not fail to appreciate their value. There is no power that can stay the progress of such a people. They are predestined to success. Our Country is fortunate in having the advantage of their citizenship. They have been pioneers in the development of their State. They will continue to be pioneers in the defense and development of American institutions.”

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

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

People, Courage, Support, Effort

“It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Letter to Alexander Pope; compare: "Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God", Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 331.

God, Truth, Nature

“Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

What Elon Musk Taught Me About Growing A Business https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-elon-musk-taught-me-growing-business-dharmesh-shah/ (16 October 2017)

Personality

“I think people recognize that I'm not a partisan Republican—that I'm someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Campaign appearance in Worcester, Massachusetts, quoted in * 2011-12-13
Corn
David
w:David Corn
Romney in 2002: I'm 'Moderate,' 'Progressive,' and 'Not a Partisan Republican' <nowiki>[Video]</nowiki>
Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/12/romney-2002-moderate-progressive-not-partisan-Worcester
2011-12-18
2002 gubernatorial campaign

People, Thinking

“The fact that we do not have a demonstrable gun problem disturbs our “progressives” in a terrible manner. For years they have been dying for something like Jokela to happen. So that they can yell triumphantly: “We told you, didn’t we!” This is their great moment. Like vultures they are feeding on the corpses of those who died at Jokela. As a gunowner I find that annoying. As a human being I find it repulsive.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2007), published in the blog Gates of Vienna Inter Arma http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/11/inter-arma.html, November 30, 2007 2005-09

Problem

“In the late eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth centuries appeared the first marked cultural shift in the attitude taken toward change. Under the names of indefinite perfectibility, progress, and evolution, the movement of things in the universe itself and of the universe as a whole began to take on a beneficent instead of hateful aspect.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Hate, Universe, Appearance, Change

“Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is different from any other ideological and social system, and is the most complete, progressive revolutionary and rational system in human history. The ideological and social system of feudalism has a place only in the museum of history. The ideological and social system of capitalism has also resembles "a dying person who is sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills", and will soon be relegated to the museum. The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On New Democracy (1940)

Youth, World, History, Communication

“Consider the honey-bee. Its treasure is nectar, obtained even from the chilly plant. It is not at the cost of the flower. In fact, its act of extracting honey contributes to the progress of the flowers. You need not learn from Kahlil Gibran, Marx or Gorbachev, not even from Gandhiji. Choose instead to learn your lesson from the honey bees as your silent partners: they will show you how to develop without destroying.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On Community living
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

Flowers, Learning, Bee

“These new green laws, organizations and personal styles show understanding that, no matter how super our computers, we will never invent substitutes for food, water and air, that our nation will progress or erode with its soil, that ultimately the land is the law of the land.”

Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician

http://www.paulglover.org/8702.html (“Where Does Ithaca’s Food Come From?”), The Grapevine, cover story 1987-02-20

Law, Food, Understanding, Water

“For if we may compare infinities, it would seem to require a greater infinity of power to cause the causes of effects, than to cause the effects themselves. This idea is analogous to the improving excellence observable in every part of the creation; such as in the progressive increase of the solid or habitable parts of the earth from water; and in the progressive increase of the wisdom and happiness of its inhabitants; and is consonant to the idea of our present situation being a state of probation, which by our exertion we may improve, and are consequently responsible for our actions.”

Erasmus Darwin book Zoonomia

Zoönomia, vol. 1 (1794).

Wisdom, Happiness, Idea, Water

“I want to cry out to these young girls: Stop! Think!... For heaven's sake, don't fall down the rabbit hole of the lesbian scene. You will never escape, and your talent will wither on the vine. Your energy will be wasted and absorbed in repetition without progression. Women alone are Spenser's Bower of Bliss, enclosed, comfortable, and dangerous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 82

Women, Girl, Thinking, Cry

“Agreeable men are those who are interested in everything; men who accomplish things, who finish their tasks, are those who, during a given period of time, interest themselves in one thing only. In America these men are said to possess "single-track minds"' their tenacity and their obsession are sometimes boring, but they succeed, by repeated attacks, in demolishing the obstacles that hinder their progress.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Men, Time

“Gentleman, I am a republican, a radical republican, a Black republican, a republican dyed in the wool, and for one I want the republican party to live as long as I do… It is the party of law and order, of liberty and progress, of honor and honesty, as against disloyalty, moral stagnation, dishonest voting, and repudiation.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech: “I Speak to You as an American Citizen” speech, Oct. 1, 1870, Douglas Papers, ser. I, 4:275
1870s

Law

“The third element alone remains — the institution itself, acting in such a way as to make social acts a state of habit and instinct. This element — history proves it — has never missed its aim, never has it acted as a double-bladed sword; and its influence has only been weakened when custom strove to become immovable, crystallized, to become in its turn a religion not to be questioned when it endeavored to absorb the individual, taking all freedom of action from him and compelling him to revolt against that which had become, through its crystallization, an enemy to progress.”

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

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Religion, Way, History, Question

“How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis? The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality — the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. (Weltsturm). For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

The Magyar Struggle http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm in ' (13 January 1849).

People, World, History, Parting

“The movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.”

Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888) British comparative jurist and historian

‘Ancient Law’ (1861) ch. 5.

“An Unsatisfied Appetite for Knowledge Means Progress and Is the State of a Normal Mind”

David O. McKay (1873–1970) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Title of Valedictorian address (1897)

Knowledge

“It is supposed that there has been progress in the science of textual criticism, and the most frivolous pretender has learned to talk superciliously about "the old unscientific days". The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again, and the mind which meanwhile is empty of reflexion and stuffed with self-complacency.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

Learning, Science

“If we are to put interrogators to work in defence of liberal values, their role in the community must receive proper recognition. They will require intensive counselling to overcome the inevitable traumas that this difficult work involves. They must be enabled to see themselves as dedicated workers in the cause of progress. Psychotherapy must be available to help them avoid the negative self-image from which some torturers have suffered in the past.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

A Modest Proposal (2003)

Communication, Suffering, Past, Help

“Throughout history, there have been many scientists who believed the universe was “created” in the same sense that Christian proponents of natural sciences still believe today. But those men who believed in God and made historic contributions to science still relied on necessarily natural methodology because that is the only way science can progress. In many cases, they found natural explanations for things previously believed to be miraculous, and they only succeeded when they did not allow religious convictions to subvert or inhibit their inquiry. None of them were able to vindicate the Bible stories, and their efforts to do so only ever indicated another origin. Thus these men wouldn’t have supported creationism as we know it today, and many of them wouldn’t have been creationists if they’d understood evolution.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, God, Way, History

“As the natural sciences have developed to encompass increasingly complex systems, scientific rationality has become ever more statistical, or probabilistic. The deterministic classical mechanics of the enlightenment was revolutionized by the near-equilibrium statistical mechanics of late 19th century atomists, by quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, and by the far-from-equilibrium complexity theorists of the later 20th century. Mathematical neo-Darwinism, information theory, and quantitative social sciences compounded the trend. Forces, objects, and natural types were progressively dissolved into statistical distributions: heterogeneous clouds, entropy deviations, wave functions, gene frequencies, noise-signal ratios and redundancies, dissipative structures, and complex systems at the edge of chaos.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Statistical Mentality" https://web.archive.org/web/20110718052233/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/index.php/article/detail/522/statistical-mentality (2011)

Mathematics, Nature, Science

“Hamilton doubted the cohesive force of the Constitution to make a nation. He was so far right, for no constitution can make a nation. That is a growth, and the vigor and intensity of our national growth transcended our own suspicions. It was typified by our material progress. General Hamilton died in 1804. In 1812, during the last war with England, the largest gun used was a thirty-six pounder. In the war just ended it was a two-thousand pounder. The largest gun then weighed two thousand pounds. The largest shot now weighs two thousand pounds. Twenty years after Hamilton died the traveler toiled painfully from the Hudson to Niagara on canal-boats and in wagons, and thence on horseback to Kentucky. Now he whirls from the Hudson to the Mississippi upon thousands of miles of various railroads, the profits of which would pay the interest of the national debt. So by a myriad influences, as subtle as the forces of the air and earth about a growing tree, has our nationality grown and strengthened, striking its roots to the centre and defying the tempest. Could the musing statesman who feared that Virginia or New York or Carolina or Massachusetts might rend the Union have heard the voice of sixty years later, it would have said to him, 'The babe you held in your arms has grown to be a man, who walks and runs and leaps and works and defends himself. I am no more a vapor, I am condensed. I am no more a germ, I am a life. I am no more a confederation, I am a nation.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Life, War, Fear, Travel

“The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always must be… The history of the people of Europe has not ended -- it never will. Ethnogenesis is a process of the present and future as much as it is the past. No efforts of romantics, politicians, or social scientists can preserve once and for all some essential soul of a people or nation. Nor can any effort ensure that nations, ethnic groups, and communities of today will not vanish utterly in the future. The past may have set the parameters within which one can build the future, but it cannot determine what that future must be.”

Patrick J. Geary (1948) historian

Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton University Press, 2003

People, Soul, History, Communication

“There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.”

I. F. Stone (1907–1989) American investigative journalist and author

I.F. Stone's Weekly (1954-03-15)

War, Peace, Way, Idea

“My skepticism concerning all notions of reconquista is skepticism toward the view that history is restorative. I get older but I do not grow wiser. It is only by shedding skin, by turning pages, by ordering stronger spectacles, by having my hair cut, that I seem to be restoring myself to a circular pattern, that I seem to progress toward youth and capability, though my progress is actually a decline.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Youth, History

“The basic insight of the finance conception was that such a firm could be more tightly controlled by strict accounting. This progression does not imply, however, that one conception of control caused the emergence of its successor. New conceptions of control evolved out of key interactions among firms and between firms and the state.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 16

“Labour has always been a coalition between workerist and progressive elements, liberals and conservatives, mediated by socialism. It was held together by the belief that we are social beings who resist the domination of capital through democracy; and by the refusal to accept that human beings are a commodity or that our inheritance is exclusively monetary.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

New Statesman article, 3 November 2016 http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/11/things-dont-only-get-better-why-working-class-fell-out-love-labour

Democracy

“Austerity is necessary in the military – not in the progressive achievement of economic, social and cultural rights.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order exploring the adverse impacts of military expenditures on the realization of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx. 2015, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

“Long after the theories on which they were based had been debunked, Galen's concepts of sickness and its treatment continued to have a pervasive influence on the daily practice of medicine. Indeed, it is a measure of medicine's progress over the past fifty years that a goodly number of his remedies were still being used until well into the twentieth century.”

Sherwin B. Nuland (1930–2014) American surgeon

[Doctors: the biography of medicine, Random House, 1995, 53, https://books.google.com/books?id=22hNffrgFCkC&pg=PA53]
Doctors (1988)

Past

“I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers.
I believe that every answer to these contradictions can really satisfy the condition of helping man to overcome the sense of separation and to achieve a sense of agreement, of unity, and of belonging.
I believe that in every answer to these contradictions, man has the possibility of choosing only between going forward or going back; these choices, which are translated into specific actions, are means toward the regressing or toward the progressing of the humanity that is in us.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Credo (1965)

Search, Nature, Sense, Help

“Science has been the absolute bedrock of technological and economic progress in the United States.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

Branscomb (2012) in: " Scientist Lewis M. Branscomb Gives $1 Million Gift to Found New Center for Science and Democracy at UCS http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/scientist-lewis-branscomb-center-science-democracy-ucs-1385.html" at ucsusa.org/news, April 30, 2012

Science

“Our difficulty comes, of course, in deciding where ethical coercion ends and unethical violence begins. The only person who is able to escape from this dilemma is the complete anarchist who repudiates every form of restraint and compassion—and such a man has no solution to offer for the imminently menacing problems of the hour. All other persons are obliged to draw the line somewhere, and orderly progress depends upon intellectual keenness and ethical sensitiveness with which the situation is confronted.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

The Personality of Jesus (1932)

Problem, Drawing, Dependency, Personality

“It is as if a really secure nationalism, already in possession of its nation-state, can fail to see itself as 'nationalist' at all. Its own distinctive bonding is perceived as natural and obvious by contrast with the mere projections of any nationalism which is still in active progress and thus incomplete. At this point radicals and minority nationalists emphasize the artificialities of the settled 'common sense' nation-state and to their own satisfaction shoot them to pieces from history and from social theory.”

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) philosopher

Who Speaks For Wales?: Nation, Culture, Identity (published posthumously in 2003), p. 193

History, Nature, Sense

“It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off now than we would have been without it, and have made more rapid progress than we otherwise should have made… But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Conclusion
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

War, Fear, Future

“No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion. If we seek to force, we but tear apart that which united, is invincible. There is no way whereby our labor movement may be assured sustained progress in determining its policies and its plans other than sincere democratic deliberation until a unanimous decision is reached. This may seem a cumbrous, slow method to the impatient, but the impatient are more concerned for immediate triumph than for the education of constructive development.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the United States: The T.U.E.L. to the End of the Gompers Era. New york: International Publishers Co, 1991, p. 361-362.

Education, Way, Decision, Tear

“Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (1948), p. 110.
Date unknown

Failure

“I was watching the news reports from Baltimore and hearing all the condemnations from some about being kept down and the lack of jobs, opportunity, good schools — then why do these blacks keep voting for the same people? And this isn't a phenomenon isolated to Baltimore. Every single major urban center in America is run by Democrats — more specifically, liberal progressives, black or white. The morass that became Detroit. The killing fields of Chicago. The depravity of Washington, D. C. The shame of South Dallas. And yes, even the place that was once my home, Atlanta, even with all the successful black entertainers. Now, I remember the first black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson. That guy was a leader and even spoke at my high school Baccalaureate. But today, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has done such a bang-up job that the Atlanta Braves are moving to Cobb County! Just do the assessment yourselves, who are the elected officials heading up the urban centers? And where does one find the most dire socio-economic statistics?”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore (2015)

People, School, Guy, Home

“We are men and women from many lands, representing a rich variety of cultures. And we have been brought together to work in a great common cause: the survival and progress of mankind. The concept of unity in diversity … underlies our various pursuits at the United Nations.”

Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007) 4th Secretary-General of the United Nations, President of Austria

World-service speech http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/stsg-8, 1978

Women, Men

“If you want something different, DO something different. Without change progress is impossible.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 132

Change

“I think there are things of which I and the people who have worked with me can feel deservedly proud. They include restoring Russia's territorial integrity, strengthening the state, progress towards establishing a multiparty system, strengthening the parliamentary system, restoring the Armed Forces' potential and, of course, developing the economy. As you know, our economy has been growing by 6.9 percent a year on average over this time, and our GDP has increased by 7.7 percent over the first four months of this year alone.
When I began my work in the year 2000, 30 percent of our population was living below the poverty line. There has been a two-fold drop in the number of people living below the poverty line since then and the figure today is around 15 percent. By 2009-2010, we will bring this figure down to 10 percent, and this will bring us in line with the European average.
We had enormous debts, simply catastrophic for our economy, but we have paid them off in full now. Not only have we paid our debts, but we now have the best foreign debt to GDP ratio in Europe. Our gold and currency reserve figures are well known: in 2000, they stood at just $12 billion and we had a debt of more than 100 percent of GDP, but now we have the third-biggest gold and currency reserves in the world and they have increased by $90 billion over the first four months of this year alone.
During the 1990s and even in 2000-2001, we had massive capital flight from Russia with $15 billion, $20 billion or $25 billion leaving the country every year. Last year we reversed this situation for the first time and had capital inflow of $41 billion. We have already had capital inflow of $40 billion over the first four months of this year. Russia's stock market capitalisation showed immense growth last year and increased by more than 50 percent. This is one of the best results in the world, perhaps even the best. Our economy was near the bottom of the list of world economies in terms of size but today it has climbed to ninth place and in some areas has even overtaken some of the other G8 countries' economies. This means that today we are able to tackle social problems. Real incomes are growing by around 12 percent a year. Real income growth over the first four months of this year came to just over 18 percent, while wages rose by 11-12 percent.
Looking at the problems we have yet to resolve, one of the biggest is the huge income gap between the people at the top and the bottom of the scale. Combating poverty is obviously one of our top priorities in the immediate term and we still have to do a lot to improve our pension system too because the correlation between pensions and the average wage is still lower here than in Europe. The gap between incomes at the top and bottom end of the scale is still high here – a 15.6-15.7-fold difference. This is less than in the United States today (they have a figure of 15.9) but more than in the UK or Italy (where they have 13.6-13.7). But this remains a big gap for us and fighting poverty is one of our biggest priorities.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

When asked in June 2007 at the interview with G8 journalists about main achievements of his presidency http://web.archive.org/web/20070607221025/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/06/04/2149_type82916_132772.shtml.

People, World, Feeling, Problem

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

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

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

World, Sense

“Liberalism supplies at once the higher impulse and the practicable path; it appeals to persons by sentiments of generosity and humanity; it proceeds by courses of moderation. By gradual steps, by steady effort from day to day, from year to year, Liberalism enlists hundreds of thousands upon the side of progress and popular democratic reform whom militant Socialism would drive into violent Tory reaction … The cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the left-out millions.”

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

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 152-153
Early career years (1898–1929)

Effort, Personality

“Gaskell… had to keep his stately soldiers upright and uniformly oriented… by crafting the brain and spinal cord from an arthropod digestive tube, while forming a completely new gut below. …Gaskell thought that his move would rescue the theory of linear progress, with its necessary transition of arthropod into vertebrate, from the absurdities of the old inversion theory.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“[I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"

Men, Science, Success, Parting

“He knew that there was death—that there must be death if there were evolution, that death was one of the mechanisms that biologically spelled progress and advancement for evolutionary species.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 10 (p. 75)

Death

“Finger-pointing can derail progress and incite revenge.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Revenge

““Violence and materialism will become so widespread that from them will come weariness and disgust: and from the execution block a passionate yearning will rise to withdraw one’s spirit from any collaboration with that error, and to at once initiate, starting with ourselves (which is the first progress), a new way to relate to life: the feeling that the world is alien to us if we have to stay in it without love, without an infinite opening of one towards the other, without a unity above so many differences and so much suffering…This is the present threshold of history.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Love, Life, World, Way

“I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.. [a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

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

Letter to http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s32.html James Madison (28 October 1785) 1780s

“We've deployed thousands of National Guard members to assist the Border Patrol. We've upgraded technology at our borders. We've added infrastructure, including new fencing and vehicle barriers. We're adding thousands of new beds in our detention facilities so we can continue working to end catch and release] at our southern border. During the course of my administration we have apprehended and sent home more 6 million people entering our country illegally. And I thank the Border Patrol for their hard work. The Secure Fence Act builds on this progress. The bill authorizes the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along our southern border.”

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

2000s, 2004, Signing of Secure Fence Act of 2006

People, Home, Country

“In art progress does not consist in extension, but in the knowledge of limits.
Limitation of means determines style, engenders new form, and give impulses to creation.
Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.
New means, new subjects.
The subject is not the object; it is a new unity, a lyricism which grows completely from the means.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 423 - short quotes by Georges Braque on 'Means' - Paris, 1917

Art, Knowledge, Painting

“I consider it extremely doubtful whether the happiness of the human race has been enhanced by the technical and industrial developments that followed in the wake of rapidly progressing natural science.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Science and Humanism (1951)

Happiness, Nature, Science

“Outlaw of war. Much interest has of late been manifested in this country in the discussion of various proposals to outlaw aggressive war. I look with great sympathy upon the examination of this subject. It is in harmony with the traditional policy of our country, which is against aggressive war and for the maintenance of permanent and honorable peace. While, as I have said, we must safeguard our liberty to deal according to our own judgment with our domestic policies, we can not fail to view with sympathetic interest all progress to this desired end or carefully to study the measures that may be proposed to attain it.”

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

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

War, Peace, Study, Country

“The passing-place for trains is fixed and determined, with orders positive and defined that neither shall proceed beyond that point until after the arrival of the other; whereas, in the absence of the telegraph, conductors are governed by general rules, and their individual understanding of the same,—which rules are generally to the effect, that, in case of detention, the train arriving first at the regular passing-place shall, after waiting a few moments, proceed cautiously (expecting to meet the other train, which is generally running as much faster, to make up lost time, as the cautious train is slower) until they have met and passed; the one failing to reach the half-way point between stations being required to back,—a dangerous expedient always,—an example of which operation was furnished at the disaster on the Camden and Amboy Railroad near Burlington; the delayed train further being subjected to the same rule in regard to all other trains of the same class it may meet, thus pursuing its hazardous and uncertain progress during the entire trip.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 49: Cited in: "Railway Engineering in the United States" in The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858. p. 651-2

Way, Understanding, Time, Waiting

“Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) p. 366.

Knowledge

“I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit. I do not think that Liberalism in any circumstances can cut itself off from this fertile field of social effort, and I would recommend you not to be scared in discussing any of these proposals, just because some old woman comes along and tells you they are Socialistic.”

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

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 154
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, Thinking, Effort, Universe

“The Insubordinate Ritual:
The Candidate hands a previously prepared necklace to the person who will be the Recipient of the insubordination.
The Recipient places the necklace about his or her neck and kneeling before the candidate asks:
R: Will you test me as my Fool, so that all may understand?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Jester, if none else will criticize?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Chaplain, that no fault lie unremedied?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Confessor, lest I neglect my own progress?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Inquisitor. if I exceed my authority?
C: I will.
R: Then how ill you be known?
C: As your ______ ______
R: Then take this necklace my ______ ______, to remind us of your duties.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

The Recipient then give the necklace to the Candidate. The Ritual is concluded by a brief barrage of insulting noises directed by all at the recipient.
p 212-213
Liber Kaos (1992)

Lie, Fools, Understanding, Personality

“A pattern is a fully realized form original, or model accepted or proposed for imitation. With patterns, small piecework is standardized into a larger chunk or unit. Patterns become the building blocks for design and construction. Finding and applying patterns indicates progress in a field of human endeavor.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 158

“To me the greatest value of the Commonwealth of Nations to which we belong is not necessarily an area in which to make money, but it is space in the world for the spreading and the increase of our own race, because I believe our own race to be the best in the world, and I believe that the progress of the world, morally and spiritually as well as economically, is bound up in the spread of our people with their ideas and with their ideals.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1924/jun/18/imperial-preference in the House of Commons (18 June 1924). 1924

Money, People, World, Idea

“The most egregious and demeaning aspect of the Fair Tax, however, is that it puts every American man, woman and child on welfare. Here again proponents turn common sense, the meaning of words, and basic economic principles upside down. They call making all citizens wards of the state a good thing. Every household graciously receives a monthly check from the beneficent federal government. This dole is supposed to make sure all Americans can consume “their necessities of life free of tax,” according to FairTax. org. This is not an “entitlement,” they explain, but merely a “rebate (in advance)” of what they would pay in taxes. And it is “progressive,” say the Fair Tax folks, because everyone gets the same, whether they make poverty-level wage or a million dollars a year.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The Fair Tax Isn't Fair, It's a Farce http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7101"

Life, Sense

“To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant.”

Heinrich Rohrer (1933–2013) Swiss physicist

Heinrich Rohrer, in Science - A Part of Our Future, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Vol. 19, 193, 1994.

Idea, Knowledge, Science

“Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 56 (p. 276).

Dead

“1. Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.
2. Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.
3. Laughter is the bark of delight of a gregarious animal at the proximity of its kind.
4. Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion.
5. Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.
6. Laughter is the emotion of tragic delight.
7. Laughter is the female of Tragedy.
8. Laughter is the strong elastic fish, caught in Styx, springing and flapping about until it dies.
9. Laughter is the sudden handshake of mystic violence and the anarchist.
10. Laughter is the mind sneezing.
11. Laughter is the one obvious commotion that is not complex, or in expression dynamic.
12. Laughter does not progress. It is primitive, hard and unchangeable.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

"Inferior Religions" (1917), cited from Lawrence Rainey (ed.) Modernism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) pp. 208-9.

Spring, Fish, Laughter, Strong

“A genuine, enlightened patriot discerns, that the welfare of his own country is involved in the general progress of society; and, in the character of a patriot, as well as of a Christian, he rejoices in the liberty and prosperity of other communities, and is anxious to maintain with them the relations of peace and amity.”

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

War (1816)

Peace, Communication, Country

“pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

XIV : pity this busy monster, manunkind
1 x 1 (1944)

Life, Death, Disease, Business

“The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like heathcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007) Probably derived from older version:
2000s

Way, Idea, Change, Madness

“I am basically a Clinton Democrat - perhaps more along the lines of how Clinton would have done things as benevolent dictator, or at least with a Dem Congress at his disposal, than how things were run in the 90s, but no flaming progressive.”

Atrios

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2002_05_12_atrios_archive.html

“And now I am obliged to tell you what it is that clearly distinguishes Futurism from anarchism.
The latter, denying the infinite principle of human evolution, brings its forward-looking viewpoint to a halt in the ideal of universal peace, a stupid paradise of people caressing in open fields or beneath billowing palm trees.
We, instead, affirm that one of Futurism’s absolute principles is the continuous development and unending progress, both bodily and intellectual, of man.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, War, the Only Hygiene of the World' (1911)
Source: Poggi, Christine, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. Yale University Press, 2009. p. 84

People, Stupidity, Peace, Tree

“Thus we must carefully distinguish between two kinds of reality, one which has an individual character, and one which has a universal appearance... It is, however, wrong to think that the non-figurative artist finds impressions and emotions received from the outside useless, and regards it even as necessary to fight against them... It is equally wrong to think that the non-figurative artist creates through 'the pure intention of his mechanical process', that he makes 'calculated abstractions' and that he wish to 'suppress sentiment not only in himself but in the spectator'... It is thus clear that he has not become a mechanic, but that the progress of science, of technique, of machinery, of life as a whole, has only made him into a living machine, capable of realizing in a pure manner the essence of art.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art', Piet Mondrian (1937); in 'Documents of modern Art' ed. Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn, Schulz, New York 1945
1930's

Life, Art, Thinking, Reality