Quotes about progression
page 24

“We must see that regional imbalances in the growth of various parties of the country are removed and all the states progress evenly. We shall ensure that all citizens of the country get full opportunity to contribute their might towards India’s progress.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

Independence Day speech on 15 August 1985, in p. 30
Quote, Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi

Country

“There are many other evidences of Swathi’s efforts to promote education and modern science…. Many of his reforms were progressive and many put an end to superstitions. One instance would be enough to mention in this regard – abolishing the practice of Sucheendram Kaimukku where accused persons were to dip their fingers in boiling oil to prove their innocence.”

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) Maharajah of Travencore

Dr Achuthsankar S Nair, in "An enlightened and princely patron of true science".
About Swathi Thirunal

Education, Effort, Science, Personality

“The record of progress of your State since my last visit eleven years ago is certainly remarkable. Those years have not been happy ones in the histories of the nations and they have closed in an economic crisis of the first magnitude. It was impossible that Mysore should escape altogether the worldwide depression. That she should have been able, despite it, to continue to develop her industries and provide for the welfare of her people in the way she has done must compel the admiration of all observers. Of the varied and interesting programme that you have prepared for me, there is no item that I look forward to with greater anticipation than my visit to the Krishnarajasagara.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

From Modern Mysore

Happiness, People, Way, History

“For many years we have watched and admired the maintenance of those high standards of administration; we have not forgotten the noble services you have rendered to the British Government when the need for service was the greatest, and we are not blind to what Your Highness has done to set an example of the fashion in which the government of a great State should be conducted Mysore has perhaps a longer tradition of progressive government than any other State in India, and the Government of India can feel assured that any relief which they may feel it in their power to give will inure to the benefit of the people of your State.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

From Modern Mysore

People, Feeling, Fashion

“The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the formation of bodies in space is still and at present in progress.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

We live at a time when many have been formed and many are still forming.
Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 20

Idea

“We should be committed to ending this spate of gun violence and criminality. We should stop allowing the progressive, socialist left to manipulate us for the sake of their insidious ideological agenda. The problem is simple — doing that takes courage, and the left tends to define courage with examples such as Bradley Manning or Bowe Bergdahl. Real courage, however, is shown by those who don’t merely follow the trend or status quo, but who stand up for that which is right and truly just — and don’t kneel.”

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

2010s, I'd like to see MORE football player protests — NOT less (27 September 2017)

Courage, Problem

“Romain Rolland: His journey to England was a triumphal progress… During his six months’ stay he addressed seventy meetings of 40,000 persons and fascinated his audiences by the simplicity of his English and his musical voice.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

The Life of Ramakrishna by Romain Rolland, translated by E.F. Malcolm-Smith, Advaita Ashrama.

Music, Personality

“Zidane is probably the best player there has been in the past 20 years … France have recovered the best Zidane and they have progressively grown throughout this tournament.”

Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager

Marcello Lippi, manager of the World Cup-winning Italian team, 3 July 2006

Past

“To give here an elaborate account of Pappus would be to create a false impression. His work is only the last convulsive effort of Greek geometry which was now nearly dead and was never effectually revived. It is not so with Ptolemy or Diophantus. The trigonometry of the former is the foundation of a new study which was handed on to other nations indeed but which has thenceforth a continuous history of progress.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

James Gow, A Short History of Greek Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=9d8DAAAAMAAJ (1884) p.308.

History, Effort, Study, Falseness

“He left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. …This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired… A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order… As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

Carl B. Boyer, in The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959)

Quotes, Confidence, Mathematics, Sense

“In other words, Alan Keyes was an ideal opponent; all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and start planning my swearing-in ceremony. And yet, as the campaign progressed, I found him getting under my skin in a way that few people ever have. When our paths crossed during the campaign, I often had to suppress the rather uncharitable urge to either taunt him or wring his neck.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Barack Obama. Quoted in The Audacity of Hope - Page 211 - by Barack Obama.

People, Way

“Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the progress of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetic to geometric progressive seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Two Years Later: Mexico City Return
Queer: A Novel (1985)

Time, Whore, Cooking

“Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book; it impedes progress; it justifies crazy people.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.
I'm Swiss (2005)

People, Books, Religion, Thinking

“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?”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

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.
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, Search, Question, Learning

“This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in — a trial and error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Men, People, Age, Error

“In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Making love, Beauty, Nature, Thinking

“It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom. Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/185/mode/1up p. 185

Wisdom, Age, Making love, Law

“I wasn’t really shocked or anything. Because of what I saw after the incident after the NFC championship game. You’ve got a lot of racial backlash, and a lot of racist comments that were uncalled for – I can never see a time where racism is called for. So it didn’t shock me as much as it would have had I not experienced that personally, had I not seen those things. Because it showed me that America still had some progress to make. On equality, and understanding that it doesn’t matter what color you are, you treat people as people. And whether a good person or a bad person, you don’t judge them off the color of their skin. You can know a person is a good person or a bad person by who they are, not by what they look like. In that situation, it just seems like a lot of people gave him a lot of flack, well deserved, but you know – I feel like a lot more people were surprised then they should have been.”

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

About Donald Sterling's racist remarks.
The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

Bad luck, People, Making love, Color

“It is interesting to notice that the extreme pessimist and the extreme optimist agree on at least one point. They both feel that we must sit down and do nothing in the area of race relations. The extreme optimist says do nothing because integration is inevitable. The extreme pessimist says do nothing because integration is impossible. But there is a third attitude that can be taken, namely the realistic position. The realist in this area seeks to combine the truths of two opposites, while avoiding the extremes of both, and so the realist would agree with the optimist that we have come a long, long way in grappling with this problem, but he would balance that by agreeing with the pessimist that we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved in the United States. And it is this realistic position that I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together as we think of progress and as we think of the future of integration.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Truth, Way, Feeling, Problem

“Time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively, and I’m convinced that in many points the people of ill will in the United States have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Something must come to remind us that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; evolution may be true in the biological realm — at that point Darwin is right; but when a Herbert Spencer seeks to apply it to the whole of society, there is very little evidence for it. Human progress comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes the ally of the primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. And so we must help time, and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

God, Bad luck, People, Effort

“The Republican party is a party of progress and of liberality toward its opponents. It encourages the poor to strive to better their children, to enable them to compete successfully with their more fortunate associates, and, in fine, it secures an entire equality before the law of every citizen, no matter what his race, nationality, or previous condition. It tolerates no privileged class. Every one has the opportunity to make himself all he is capable of.”

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

Ulysses S. Grant, as quoted in Words of Our Hero, Ulysses S. Grant https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22the+one+thing+i+never+wanted+to+see+again+was+a+military+parade%22&source=bl&ots=zH525oYpJn&sig=ACfU3U0GLPNgij-FmXIDwgWp_Kg8zDskWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4uc7PzKniAhUq1lkKHWhlBfQQ6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20one%20thing%20i%20never%20wanted%20to%20see%20again%20was%20a%20military%20parade%22&f=false, by Jeremiah Chaplin, p. 59 <br class="br">1880s, Speech at Warren, Ohio (1880)

Children, Making love, Law

“It appears that mankind in this life are not agents of trial for eternity, but that they will eternally remain agents of trial. To suppose that our eternal circumstances will be unalterably fixed in happiness or misery, in consequence of the agency or transactions of this temporary life, is inconsistent with the moral government of God, and the progressive and retrospective knowledge of the human mind. God has not put it into our power to plunge ourselves into eternal woe and perdition; human liberty is not so extensive, for the term of human life bears no proportion to eternity succeeding it; so that there could be no proportion between a momentary agency, (which is liberty of action,) or probation, and any supposed eternal consequences of happiness or misery resulting from it.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. III Section III - Human Liberty, Agency and Accountability, cannot be attended with Eternal Consequences, either Good or Evil

Life, God, Happiness, Knowledge

“The psychology of the times following the publication of Darwin's works was so strong that most thinking men could not then be brought to admit that there were any alternative explanations of the phenomena of progressive development in life — human, animal, or plant life — to the scheme of transformism which he set forth.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 3
Man in Evolution (1941)

Life, Men, Thinking, Strong

“Sometimes the changes that are generated in a revolutionary period are rather trivial and do not last past the cycle. But sometimes, from a strong crisis, a revolution forges something new that lasts for centuries and represents progress toward values that are more rational and empathetic. In seeing this historical pattern, we must recognize what seems to be an overall human spirit that transcends any particular time and that keeps us evolving. If for any reason the cycle stopped, we would be doomed.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 17 : Seize the Historical Moment
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Strong, Change, Time, Past

“Simply put, anger feels better than powerlessness. That is why it benefits people to get angry. And independence feels better than powerless victimhood. That is why it benefits people to get independent. But if our progression stops there, we will never achieve true happiness and our civilization will never achieve true alignment.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Happiness, People, Feeling, Anger

“Under the chilling effects generated by Beijing and Hong Kong governments, we are strongly aware how they arrest activists no matter whether they behave progressively or moderately...All we ask for is just to urge Beijing and Hong Kong governments to withdraw the bill, stop police brutality and respond to our calls for a free election.”

Joshua Wong (1996) Hong Kong activist, Secretary-general of Demosistō

August 30, 2019 Hong Kong activists arrested including Joshua Wong in crackdown on protests https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests/hong-kong-activists-arrested-including-joshua-wong-in-crackdown-on-protests-idUSKCN1VK02X?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29

“I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology. We all know that religion has been historically, and still is today, a cause of great evil as well as great good in human affairs. We have seen terrible wars and terrible persecutions conducted in the name of religion. We have also seen large numbers of people inspired by religion to lives of heroic virtue, bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery and spread peace among nations. Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls. Religion will always remain a powerful force in the history of our species. To me, the meaning of progress in religion is simply this, that as we move from the past to the future the good works inspired by religion should more and more prevail over the evil.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

War, People, Education, Peace

“If it should be shown further that this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the classification of mental types.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 151
about Handwriting

“In any case it is evident that there is a psychology as well as a sociology of handwriting. Tremendously complicated as the problem of diagnosis of individual traits from those tiny strokes of the pen appears, it is yet a legitimate problem of science; for the more progress psychology makes, the more evident it becomes that there is not a mode of expression which is not rooted to its finest detail in the complex psycho-physical organism. Meanwhile, it is fortunate that the task of identifying graphic signs should not be left wholly to the intuitions of the graphologist. Experimental work that seeks to induce variation in writing through a control of outer conditions must in time correlate certain definite variations in conditions with variation in such aspects of writing as size, speed, accuracy in alignment, inequality of control and the like.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 150-151
about Handwriting

Making love, Problem, Appearance, Science

“The North wants unification under its own flag, while South Korean progressives want the two states to coalesce over decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)

“Wisdom's first progress is to take a view
What's decent or indecent, false or true.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 1

Wisdom, Falseness

“The United States is the only country where these revolutions are simultaneously in progress and organically linked in such a way as to constitute a single revolution.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun https://archive.org/details/withoutmarxorjes00reverich (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson (1980) <br class="br">1970s

Way, Country

“My hope is that... I will open Democrats' and other progressives' eyes to the many values shared by the Left and Right... like the desire to end corporate welfare and convert to a renewable energy (solar) economy. ...the way to defeat Trump... is to embrace (not marginalize) issues such as raising the minimum wage. ...It is a question of do or just further fade away.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

To the Ramparts (2018)

Hope, Way, Question

“What if your enemy were your enemy because of poor communication and misunderstanding? What if your enemy were your enemy because of the instigative nature of the ego? What if your enemy were a necessary obstacle put in your life by fate to overcome in order to progress to the higher version of self? I wonder about that because what if your enemy is in fact your hero? Make sure the snake in your life isn't just your pride and ego.”

Scarlet Jei Saoirse (1984) American singer and actress

Life, Fate, Making love, Communication

“Instead of rescuing the dirty industries of the last century, we should be boosting the clean ones that will lead us into safety in the coming century (Green New Deal). If there is one thing history teaches us, it's that moments of shock are profoundly volatile. We either lose a whole lot of ground, get fleeced by elites, and pay the price for decades, or we win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to lose our nerve.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Quoted in 'We Know This Script': Naomi Klein Warns of 'Coronavirus Capitalism' in New Video Detailing Battle Before Us https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/we-know-script-naomi-klein-warns-coronavirus-capitalism-new-video-detailing-battle, by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, (17 March 2020)

History, Time, Victory

“If we see each other as obstacles to progress, our assumption is the first and greatest obstacle. Mistrust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our old-paradigm consciousness has guaranteed its own dark expectations; it is our collective negative self-image.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

Self-confidence

“[W]henever there have been periods when enough of the country organizes and resists, we see movements of people and communities breaking through power. Progress is made. Rights are won. Education and literacy increase. Oppression is diminished.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Breaking Through Power (2016)

People, Education, Communication, Country

“In the last few days the progress of the (COVID-19) virus, especially in some countries, especially human-to-human transmission, worries us (WHO). Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

Tedros Adhanom (2020) cited in "Coronavirus: Death toll rises as virus spreads to every Chinese region" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51305526, BBC News, 30 January 2020.

Country

“It was a hard thing to contemplate, even harder to accept, the inevitable tide of technological progress, which even as it created careers for some, also destroyed careers for others.”

K. A. Bedford (1963) Australian writer

Source: Paradox Resolution (2012), Chapter 5 (pp. 34-35)

“[W]hen you get to Rome you have two other rules to learn: never assume that what you see is what is; never believe that what you're told is the whole truth. It's only when you've grasped that — and the Romans know you've grasped it — that you begin to win respect and make progress.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Cardinal Francis Spellman in Book 1. London: Mandarin, 1993, p. 67
The Lovers (1993)

Truth, Making love, Learning

“The progress of the human mind, the revolutions which occur in the development of knowledge, give each century its special character.”

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) French early socialist theorist

Preface
The Reorganization of the European Community (1814)

Knowledge

“As we progress further into the 21st century, I anticipate that natural theology will be an increasingly relevant and vital preparation for people to receive the gospel.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

God Is Not Dead Yet: How current philosophers argue for his existence.

03 July 2008

Christianity Today

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html

People, Nature

“This premise -- that technology only came to promote progress -- puts us in great danger since there is no questioning of its functionality, problem-solving, advantages and disadvantages. Without consciousness of the use of digital technologies, we end up being cast in a way that is imposed on us. Having a critical approach is necessary to shape the technologies to respect our culture, customs and needs.”

David Nemer

(p. 48)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Way, Question, Problem

“So to change inequality in our nation, we must change the organization of the workplace. Until you do that, you’re not serious. You won’t solve any problems by redistributing: Even if you have progressive income tax, the rich will always figure out a way to hide their fortune in overseas tax shelters. So the solution is to equitably distribute profits in the first place.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

Global Capitalism Monthly Update (12 March 2014)

Way, Problem, Change

“Not only boxing, but wrestling, quarter-staff, single-stick, bull-baiting, every exercise of the common people, that supposes the possible risk of life or limb, and, of course, that tends to prepare them for deeds of bravery of a higher order, and, by the means of those deeds and of the character and consequence naturally growing out of them, to preserve the independence and the liberties of their country; every such exercise seems to be doomed to extirpation. ... Every thing calculated to keep alive the admiration, and even the idea, of hardihood, seems to have become offensive and odious in the sight of but too many of those, whose duty it is to endeavour to arrest, and not to accelerate, the fatal progress of effeminacy. ... That cuttings and stabbings are more fatal than boxing, to say nothing of the disgrace, every one must agree; and, it cannot be denied, that the former have increased in proportion as the latter has been driven from amongst the people.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 200
1800s

Life, People, Exercises, Idea

“Commerce, Opulence, Luxury, Effeminacy, Cowardice, Slavery: these are the stages of national degradation. We are in the fourth; and, I beg the reader to consider, to look into history, to trace states in their fall, and then say how rapid is the latter part of the progress! Of the symptoms of effeminacy none is so certain as a change from athletic and hardy sports, or exercises, to those requiring less bodily strength, and exposing the persons engaged in them to less bodily suffering; and when this change takes place, be assured that national cowardice is at no great distance, the general admiration of deeds of hardihood having already been considerably lessened.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 197
1800s

Exercises, History, Sport, Suffering

“It is time the nation should be roused from its philanthropic dream; that it should see this matter in the true light; and that some means should be taken to put a stop to the increase of Blacks in this country, at any rate, where they have made no little progress in changing the colour of the inhabitants. It is truly shocking to see the number of English women, who are married to Negroes: our streets and public walks are continually disgraced by the disgusting spectacle; and whom are we to blame but ourselves for foolishly yielding to the importunities of those who have the address to make us pay for the genteel education of these sable intruders?”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (5 June 1802), p. 702
1800s

Women, Education, Making love, Dreams

“Progress is impossible without the ability to admit mistakes.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

“Progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with existing situations.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

“Aristotle thought that men were naturally superior to women and Greeks naturally superior to other races; Victorians thought white men had to shoulder the burden of being superior to savages; and Nazis thought Aryans were a master race. We have come to reject these and many other supposedly natural hierarchies; the history of what we consider moral progress can be viewed as, in large part, the replacement of hierarchical worldviews with a presumption in favor of forms of egalitarianism. This substitution places the burden of proof on those who would deny equal consideration to the interests of all concerned, rather than on those who seek such consideration. Consequently, some reason is needed to justify the fairness of maintaining a hierarchical worldview when we are dealing with animals.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Source: Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987), p. 107

Women, Men, History, Nature

“Caste is real. The working class is real. Being a Naga is real. But ‘India is just a geographical expression!’ Similarly, being a Muslim of course is real – Islam must be seen and talked of as one block of granite – ... But Hinduism? Why, there is no such thing: it is just an aggregation, a pile of assorted beliefs and practices – ... And anyone who maintains anything to the contrary is a fascist out to insinuate a unity, indeed to impose a uniformity, where there has been none. That is what our progressive ideologues declaim, as we have seen. In a word, the parts alone are real. The whole is just a construct. India has never been one, these ideologues insist – disparate peoples and regions were knocked together by the Aryans, by the Mughals, by the British for purposes of empire. Anyone who wants to use that construct – India – as the benchmark for determining the sort of structure under which we should live has a secret agenda – of enforcing Hindu hegemony.
This is the continuance of, in a sense the culmination of, the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it. Hence the doggedness with which they set about to undermine the faith and regard of the people for five entities: the gods and goddesses the Hindus revered; the temples and idols in which they were enshrined; the texts they held sacred; the language in which those texts and everything sacred in that tradition was enshrined and which was even in mid-nineteenth-century the lingua franca – that is, Sanskrit; and the group whose special duty it had been over aeons to preserve that way of life – the Brahmins. The other component of the same exercise was to prop up the parts – the non-Hindus, the regional languages, the castes and groups which they calculated would be the most accessible to the missionaries and the empire – the innocent tribals, the untouchables.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Life, God, People, Secret

“The strongest of all the obstacles to progress, the reign of the dead.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 60, n. 1
Undated

Dead

“I propose hermeneutic communism: non-dogmatic communism, weak communism. Only this can save us. [Is is] without essences, without absolutes to be realized at all costs. It is only an ideal of equitable society, a society that progressively weakens violence like dialectics.”

Gianni Vattimo (1936–2023) Italian philosopher, politician

"Only Weak Communism Can Save Us" (2013)

Communication

“The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her.”

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

Fortnightly Review (September 1870), p. 371
1870s

People, History, Intelligence, Idea

“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty; and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”

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

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s

War, Bad luck, Truth, Lie

“Marxist socialism also had dark nooks and crannies where Jews were regarded as money-mad capitalists or as an ‘obsolete’ people who refused to join the onward march of secular progress towards a moneyless society. Anarchists also suffered from this contagion,…”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p. 94

Money, People, Suffering, Madness

“The spirit of the Right is dominated by scepticism towards the possibility of profound change in society and above all towards the idea that man can achieve progress over himself. On the Left, on the other hand, there exists a belief in human and social progress.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

L'Unité d'un Homme (November 1994), quoted in The Times (21 November 1994), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Idea, Change

“I have a passion for reform, for the progress of man and society. I cannot stand the feeling of being useless.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

L'Unité d'un Homme (November 1994), quoted in The Times (21 November 1994), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Feeling, Passion

“I have been looking for spontaneous generation for twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible. But what allows you to make it the origin of life? You place matter before life and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years, one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? You move from matter to life because your current intelligence, so limited compared to what will be the future intelligence of the naturalist, tells you that things cannot be understood otherwise. If you want to be among the scientific minds, what only counts is that you will have to get rid of a priori reasoning and ideas, and you will have to do necessary deductions not giving more confidence than we should to deductions from wild speculation.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Original: (fr) La génération spontanée, je la cherche sans la découvrir depuis vingt ans. Non, je ne la juge pas impossible. Mais quoi donc vous autorise à vouloir qu'elle ait été l'origine de la vie? Vous placez la matière avant la vie et vous faites la matière existante de toute éternité. Qui vous dit que, le progrès incessant de la science n'obligera pas les savants, qui vivront dans un siècle, dans mille ans, dans dix mille ans... à affirmer que la vie a été de toute éternité et non la matière.? Vous passez de la matière à la vie parce que votre intelligence actuelle, si bornée par rapport à ce que sera l'intelligence des naturalistes futurs, vous dit qu'elle ne peut comprendre autrement les choses. Qui m'assure que dans dix mille ans on ne considérera pas que c'est de la vie qu'on croira impossible de ne pas passer à la matière? Si vous voulez être au nombre des esprits scientifiques, s, qui seuls comptent, il faut vous débarrasser des idées et des raisonnements a priori et vous en tenir aux déductions nécessaires des faits établis et ne pas accorder plus de confiance qu'il ne faut aux déductions de pures hypothèses."

As quoted in Pasteur et la philosophie (2004), by Patrice Pinet, p. 63

Partially quoted in Louis Pasteur : Free Lance of Science (1950) by René Dubos, p 396

Life, Making love, Confidence, Intelligence

“We, the Androgynes of the world, have formed this responsible corporate body to demonstrate by our efforts that our physiological and psychological handicaps need be no deterrent in integrating 10% of the world's population towards the constructive social progress of mankind.”

Harry Hay (1912–2002) American gay rights activist

"We, the Androgynes of the World" (July 7th, 1950)

Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the words of its Founder (1996)

World, Effort

“The rapid accumulation of change is not always progress, and forward motion is not always an advance.”

Jonathan Weiner (1953) American nonfiction writer

Source: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), Chapter 20, The Metaphysical Crossbeak (p. 289)

Change

“If there is to be support for trade globalization in the developed world, we must make sure that the benefits and costs are more evenly shared, which will entail more progressive income taxation.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Making Globalization Work

§3, p. 100
Making globalization work (2006)

World, Making love, Support

“Human beings face ever more complex and urgent problems, and their effectiveness in dealing with these problems is a matter that is critical to the stability and continued progress of society”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: Program On Human Effectiveness, 1996, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/Archive/Post68/PrHumanEffectiveness.html

Problem

“Attacking the new slave economy as it does, the animal liberation movement is a significant threat to global capital. Animal liberation challenges large sectors of the capitalist economy by assailing corporate agriculture and pharmaceutical giants and their suppliers. Far from being irrelevant to social movements, animal rights can form the basis for a broad coalition of progressive social groups and drive changes that strike at the heart of capitalist exploitation of animals, people, and the earth.”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Source: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014), Chapter 4 "Rethinking Revolution: Veganism, Animal Liberation, Ecology, and the Left" (p. 103)

People, Change, Heart, Animals

“This ability... to organize, to breathe into others that fire of enthusiasm, that quality of judgment, that spirit of progress, has long been considered by thinking men of commerce as the final and greatest of all qualities, the test of supreme commercial genius.”

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

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

Men, Thinking

“Where one Jacob Fugger, Cosimo de Medici, de la Pole or Gresham strove for success we have now literally thousands of keen, clever men as fearless, as progressive and as determined as they. Money not only for the few but for the many is the prize which is sought, and for this prize is the race now perhaps swifter, the battle keener, the game bigger than has been any race, battle, or game since the world began; and commerce in its broader sense is the medium through which this prize is won.”

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

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

Men, Money, World, Game

“The Phoenicians a thousand years before the Christian era were fearless, progressive and splendid, but... [t]hey traded individually as did the Venetians and even the great Fuggers of Augsburg, leaving no trace of that ability which selects and teaches others to assist in any remarkable enterprise.”

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

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

“The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that the Poles are une nation foutue [a fucked nation] who can only continue to serve a purpose until such time as Russia herself becomes caught up into the agrarian revolution. From that moment Poland will have absolutely no raison d'étre any more. The Poles' sole contribution to history has been to indulge in foolish pranks at once valiant and provocative. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland, even if only by comparison with Russia, has successfully represented progress or done anything of historical significance.”

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

Letter https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1851/letters/51_05_23.htm to Karl Marx (23 May 1851)

History, Thinking, Time

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

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

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

Evil

“In the end, the “model” that came into existence in the USSR was not socialist but totalitarian. This is a serious matter to be reflected on by all who seriously aspire to progress for the benefit of the human race.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

“If we cannot make significant progress on racial equity, this country is doomed. It's doomed not just because of African Americans, but because by 2040, this country is going to be minority white European. You hear me? ... And you guys are going to have to starting [sic] working more with Hispanics.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2020, December

Making love, Guy, Country

“The rise of liberalism was accompanied by immense technological progress; by the industrial revolution; by the division of labor which ensued, and which suddenly, and prodigiously, accelerated the efficiency of production; and by the conception of economic life governed by the market. In other words, of economic life governed by the buyer, not the seller. This was a brand-new and wholly revolutionary idea.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 65-66

Life, Idea

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Life, War, Happiness, People

“The fabric of our prosperity is so artificial, we have raised such a vast edifice of industry and manufacture and wealth within so narrow an area, that the progress of a hostile army through our country would shatter our prosperity with a ruin which centuries would not repair. (Hear, hear.) In proportion to the danger must be our precaution. (Cheers.) We have to protect ourselves.”

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

Source: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Bristol (22 April 1889), quoted in The Times (24 April 1889), p. 6

Hostility, Country, Wealth

“The main burden of local defense against local attack, subversion, insurrection or guerrilla warfare must of necessity rest with local forces. Where these forces have the necessary will and capacity to cope with such threats, our intervention is rarely necessary or helpful. Where the will is present and only capacity is lacking, our Military Assistance Program can be of help. But this program, like economic assistance, needs a new emphasis. It cannot be extended without regard to the social, political and military reforms essential to internal respect and stability. The equipment and training provided must be tailored to legitimate local needs and to our own foreign and military policies, not to our supply of military stocks or a local leader's desire for military display. And military assistance can, in addition to its military purposes, make a contribution to economic progress, as do our own Army Engineers.”

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

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Making love, Help, Training

“See, in general, as systems designers, you’re forced with necessity to make decisions about how you’re going to do things, and in general, the way you’d like to retain flexibility is to never make up your mind about anything until you’re forced to do it. The problem is, there’s a very, very narrow line between deferring decisions and outright procrastination. So you’d like to make progress, but also at the same time, never be bound by the consequences of your decisions.”

Hal Abelson (1947) computer scientist

Source: Lecture on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrFkf-T-6Co

Making love, Way, Problem, Decision

“When a man has sufficiently distinguished himself by service, and by acquiring and accepting the theoretical views that were glanced at in 'Seeking the Master' then he finds his Master — or rather his Master finds him. During all the time of his struggle those gracious eyes have been upon him watching him progress; in many lives in the past he has come under the same influence which now is to become the dominant influence in his life. He has reached a point where the Master can reveal Himself, can place him definitely on probation, can help to prepare him for Initiation. That is the first stage: a particular Master chooses a particular aspirant and takes charge of him, in order to prepare him for Initiation; for you must remember that Initiation is a quite definite thing, that only Those who have already attained can enable others to enter on the Path which They Themselves have trodden.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 61

Life, Time, Past, Help

“Sunshine does not cease to warm you because you may not know anything of the constitution of the sun. Fire does not cease to burn you, because, unknowing its fierceness, you thrust your hand into the flame. It is the security of human life and human progress that the laws of nature are ever working and carrying us on with them, whether we know of them or not. But if we know them, we gain a great advantage.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Life, Law, Nature, Sun

“History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other, not as adversaries, but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you, we will not fail. We have never, ever, ever, ever failed in America when we′ve acted together.And so today, at this time, in this place, let′s start afresh, all of us. Let′s begin to listen to one another again.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Peace, Faith, Way, History

“Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Address at the Cow Palace on Accepting the Nomination of the Republican National Convention (August 23, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on Janunary 25, 2021. <br class="br">1950s

Change

“We simply don’t do optimism or pessimism, we do logistics. That is our calling and duty, neither to stir up false hope nor dash incipient possibility. To work with what we have to achieve what we can, neither over nor understating it. So stating it straight, I don’t know what the outcome of the election will be with the single exception I guess that we will not be talking of a National Government after it. There is still the enormous extent to which the Irish people “trust” the devil they know, and there are as yet insurmountable difficulties for a new party to make revolutionary progress through a corrupted structure.”

Justin Barrett (1971) Irish activist

New Year Message 2020 https://nationalparty.ie/new-year-message-2020/ (January 1, 2020)

People, Making love, Hope, Optimism

“If the soul, through attentiveness, reduces the blindness caused by the love of this world, it will consider its slightest faults to be very grave and will continually shed tears. ... But if the soul persists in its worldly disposition, even though it commits a murder or some other act deserving severe punishment, it takes little notice; and it is quite unable to discern its other faults, often considering them to be signs of progress, and in its wretchedness it is not ashamed to defend them heatedly.”

Diadochos of Photiki (400–486) Byzantine saint

§ 27
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)

Love, World, Making love, Soul

“Flesh foods are coming to be recognised more and more by physicians, teachers, writers, and progressive and scientific people generally, as being not only unnecessary and immoral, but as actually inhibitory of the highest efficiency and well-being in man himself. The meat fetish is nothing but an idol, a delusion pure and simple, which has been foisted upon us, like so many other delusions, by tradition, and the time is not far distant when it will be recognised as such by all who really think.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, p. 132

People, Food, Thinking, Teachers

“Another force driving progressive evolution is the so-called "arms-race."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Prey animals evolve faster running speeds because predators do. Consequently predators have to evolve even faster running speeds, and so on, in an escalating spiral. Such arms races probably account for the spectacularly advanced engineering of eyes, ears, brains, bat "radar" and all the other high-tech weaponry that animals display.
The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)

“Push enough to make progress, but not so much that it is unsustainable.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting

Making love

“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."”

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

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

Learning, Science

“These men are the enemies of science—of intellectual progress. They ridicule and calumniate the great thinkers. They deny everything that conflicts with the “sacred Scriptures.””

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

They still believe in the astronomy of Joshua and the geology of Moses. They believe in the miracles of the past, and deny the demonstrations of the present. They are the foes of facts—the enemies of knowledge. A desire to be happy here, they regard as wicked and worldly—but a desire to be happy in another world, as virtuous and spiritual.
The Truth (1896)

Men, Science

“We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress by the human race. By our actions we should make it clear that such a democracy is a means to a better way of life, together with a better understanding among nations.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Essentials to Peace (1953)

Life, Making love, Way, Democracy

“Today I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we've made. In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Address to UN General Assembly, quoted in * 2018-09-26
Trump's U.N. speech pitting globalism against patriotism proves the president has no idea what patriotism means
Daniel Shapiro
NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-u-n-speech-pitting-globalism-against-patriotism-proves-ncna913141
2018, September 2018

History, Country

“Spiritual evolution is the progressive advance of mankind toward a state of things in which the light of ethical perfection shall be reflected from the face of human society; that is, in which all men shall live and move and have their being in mutually promoting the highest life of each and all. It means that the object of social reformation shall not be a mere change in the conditions under which men live, but a change in human nature itself. It means that we shall look forward consciously to the breaking forth of new powers in ourselves, to the release, through our own efforts, of capacities dimly latent in us.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Some Characteristics of the American Ethical Movement (1925)

Life, Men, Nature, Effort

“There may be, and there ought to be, progress in the moral sphere. The moral truths which we have inherited from the past need to be expanded and restated. In times of misfortune we require for our support something of which the truth is beyond all question, in which we can put an implicit trust, " though the heavens should fall."”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Truth, Question, Support, Time

“The condition of all progress is experience. We go wrong a thousand times before we find the right path. We struggle, and grope, and hurt ourselves until we learn the use of things, and this is true of things spiritual as well as of material things. Pain is unavoidable, but it acquires a new and higher meaning when we perceive that it is the price humanity must pay for an invaluable good.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Life and Destiny (1913)

Pain, Learning, Time, Hurt

“As technology progresses and globalization grows more pervasive, the world-system becomes ever more complex and more tightly coupled, so that a catastrophic breakdown has to be expected sooner or later.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015), p. 49

World

“The essence of all religions is the recognition of an Authority higher, more comprehensive, more permanent than the human being. The characteristic of Christian teaching, however, is the faith that this Supreme Authority is beneficent as well as powerful. The Christian believes that the Creative Force is a moral force, of more comprehensive morality than the human being that it creates. Under the symbol of a wise and loving parent—the most just, efficient, and attractive image that we know of—we are encouraged to regard this unseen Authority as being in direct relation with every atom of creation, and as desirous of drawing each atom into progressively higher forms of existence.”

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

[Elizabeth Blackwell, Essays in Medical Sociology, https://books.google.com/books?id=7VlHAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=religions&f=false, 1, 1899, Library Reprints, Incorporated, 978-0-7222-1823-5]
Essays in Medical Sociology (1899)

Love, Making love, Faith, Religion

“We are either progressing or retrograding all the while. There is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Life

“Life is a progress, and not a station.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

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

Success, Motivational, Success, Inspirational

“The ideal country does not exist, as progress would discontinue. A life without ideals would be individually miserable and politically useless.”

Egils Levits (1955) Latvian judge, jurist and politician

Source: Address given Assuming the Office / at the Saeima, https://www.president.lv/en/article/address-he-president-latvia-mr-egils-levits-assuming-office-saeima

Life, Country

“Acknowledging progress isn’t saying ‘we’re done’ or ‘we don’t need more’, and being gloomy doesn’t make you a better person.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

New Rule: ‘Progressophobia’, (2021)

Personality

“Let us specify that the possible gaps in the human mind are due, not to fortuitous causes, but to the very conditions of the "dark age", the kali-yuga, which has as an effect − among other modes of decadence − a progressive weakening of pure intellection and of the ascending tendencies of soul; whence the necessity of the religious revelations, and whence also the problematical phenomenon of gratuitous and divergent philosophies.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[1995, Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy, Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies, 1, 1, 8]
Miscellaneous, Revelation

Age, Soul

Quotes about progression page 24

Quotes about progression
page 24