Quotes about progression
page 8

“One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries — Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

"A Knight of the Woeful Countenance" in The World of George Orwell (1972) edited by Miriam Gross, p. 167

Truth, Fear, History, Intelligence

“Government is doing the exact opposite of what really needs to be done. George Bush and Barack Obama have pumped trillions more in counterfeit currency and credit into an economy already deathly ill from such treatment. If it goes on, we stand to suffer hyperinflation (all inflation consists of, no matter what they told you in Economics 101, is government generation of phony money) followed by another, very possibly terminal depression. Before it's over, the country — if not the whole world — will be locked down under brutal military rule, and our species likely will never again know freedom, progress, or prosperity.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Unnecessary Depression," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle504-20090201-02.html 1 February 2009.

Money, World, Freedom, Suffering

“I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of the progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor.”

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

Modern Review (October, 1935) p. 412. Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose (9/10 November 1934)
1930s

Men, Fear

“The military has always been a very introspective organization… One of the reasons why the army is so progressive is its always examining itself. The army is always looking for better ways to do its job.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, In Depth with Tom Clancy (2002)

Way

“History and experience tells us that moral progress cannot come in comfortable and in complacent times, but out of trial and out of confusion.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Quoted variant: History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.
1970s, State of the Union Address (1975)

History, Time

“I have often thought, with reference to the late War…that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923). 1923

Men, War, People, World

“Science has only existed for a few hundred years, and its most spectacular achievements have occurred within the last century. Viewed from a historical perspective, the modern era of rapid scientific and technological progress appears to be not a permanent feature of reality, but an abberation, a fluke, a product of a singular convergence of social, intellectual, and political factors.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 14

Reality, Appearance, Science

“Educational facilities will be extended and better standards of morality will be established. Political institutions, too, will be improved. In this way a backward nation can develop into a progressive state.”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The Natural System of Political Economy (1837), p. 44

Education, Way

“The…philosophical reason for which we are against nationalisation and for private enterprise is because we believe that economic progress comes from the inventiveness, ability, determination and the pioneering spirit of extraordinary men and women. If they cannot exercise that spirit here, they will go away to another free enterprise country which will then make more economic progress than we do. We ought, in fact, to be encouraging small firms and small companies, because the extent to which innovation comes through these companies is tremendous.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (20 October 1967) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101586 Backbench MP

Women, Men, Exercises, Country

“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Democracy

“India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom…. The old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go,'it is to be hoped by a slackening of tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace and concord, by the constant necessity of common and concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form'the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, the division must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not be.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 15, 1947 (A passage from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's independence. August 15 is also Sri Aurobindo's own birthday.)
India's Rebirth

Peace, Hope, Way, Communication

“I was sometimes brought to a standstill, and at times almost despaired of making further progress… I knew no one of whom I could ask a question or receive any kind of instruction, and the subject was therefore at times very painful.”

Francis Place (1771–1854) English social reformer

Source: The life of Francis Place, 1771-1854, 1898, p. 18, as cited in: Ernest Green, Harold Shearman. Education For A New Society (RLE Edu L Sociology of Education), 2012, p. 85

Pain, Question, Time, Despair

“That the human mind has a certain order of possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an order which governments and public instructors can modify to some, but not to an unlimited extent: That all questions of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought to have, different institutions: That government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on it: That any general theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy of history.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/162/mode/1up p. 162

History, Question, Dependency

“A temporary evolution of ignorance, a period when our insistence on looking in certain directions leaves us unable to see what is right under our noses, may be the price of progress, an inevitable part of what happens when we try to make sense of the world's complexity.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (1995), Ch. 3. Models and Metaphors

World, Sense, Parting

“Error is the price we pay for progress.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Error

“Homunculi are bogeymen only if they duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain. If one can get a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to produce the intelligent behaviour of the whole, this is progress.”

Daniel Dennett book Brainstorms

Source: Brainstorms (1978), p. 173

Intelligence

“Self-conceit is the enemy of progress.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, iv. 50.

“This is what aesthetics, development and progress depend upon: that we go out on thin ice.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

On the task of modern artists (1959), as quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 169
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Dependency

“Recently there has been a falling off in ideological and political work among students and intellectuals, and some unhealthy tendencies have appeared. Some people seem to think that there is no longer any need to concern oneself with politics or with the future of the motherland and the ideals of mankind. It seems as if Marxism was once all the rage but is currently not so much in fashion. To counter these tendencies, we must strengthen our ideological and political work. Both students and intellectuals should study hard. In addition to the study of their specialized subjects, they must make progress both ideologically and politically, which means that they should study Marxism, current events and politics. Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul […] All departments and organizations should shoulder their responsibilities in ideological and political work. This applies to the Communist Party, the Youth League, government departments in charge of this work, and especially to heads of educational institutions and teachers.”

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

Chapter 12 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch12.htm; originally published in "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People" (27 February 1957), 1st pocket ed., pp. 43-44 Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)

People, Youth, Education, Soul

“Progress in every country depends mainly on the education of its people. Without education, we are a nation of children. The difference between one man and another, apart from birth and social position, consists in the extent of knowledge, general and practical, acquired by him. We may safely assume that man in all countries within certain limits start with the same degree of intelligence. A civilised nation is distinguished from an uncivilised one by the extent of its acquired intelligence and skill.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

Quoted in The Most Celebrated Indian Engineer:Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, 22 November 2013, Official web site of Government of India: Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/dream/feb2000/article1.htm,

Children, People, Education, Intelligence

“So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn't have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.”

Max Tegmark (1967) Swedish-American cosmologist

Interview http://www.templeton.org/features/grant/fqx/hp-sub01.html with the Co-Founders of the Foundational Questions Institute, Dr.Max Tegmark and Dr. Anthony Aguirre.

History, Understanding, Question, Thinking

“As the Genesis story teaches, knowledge cannot save us from ourselves. If we know more than before, it means only that we have greater scope to enact our fantasies. But – as the Genesis myth also teaches – there is no way we can rid ourselves of what we know. If we try to regain a state of innocence, the result can only be a worse madness. The message of Genesis is that in the most vital areas of human life there can be no progress, only an unending struggle with our own nature.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (pp. 79-80)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Life, Way, Nature, Knowledge

“We need to fund relationship language in our schools so that future parents will know how to communicate about whether they want children; to communicate with the children they have, and teach their children how to communicate with the world. Technical progress without social skills is a Tower of Babel.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 243.

Children, World, School, Communication

“The whirling gears of progress have put the gear makers out of work.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 7, On The Teeth Of Wheels, p. 139

“Liberalism is fundamentally an ideology of liberation that has throughout history risen in protest against the totalitarian and anti-human movements of various kinds, such as communism and nazism. It is therefore natural that the Progress Party with its liberal base once again stands first in the line and takes up the fight when a new fascist ideology as Islamism is spreading throughout the world.”

Carl I. Hagen (1944) Norwegian politician

In Dagbladet (6 October 2004) http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2004/10/06/410404.html

World, History, Communication, Nature

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 4, "Morality and Psychoanalysis"
Mere Christianity (1952)

Life, God, War, Peace

“My analysis of the judicial process comes then to this, and little more: logic, and history, and custom, and utility, and the accepted standards of right conduct, are the forces which singly or in combination shape the progress of the law. Which of these forces dominate depends largely upon the comparative importance or value of the social interests that will be thereby promoted or impaired. … The most fundamental social interest is that law shall be uniform and impartial. … Uniformity ceases to be a good when it becomes uniformity of oppression.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 112
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Law, History, Dependency

“The prosperity, and social vitality and technological progress of a people are directly determined by the extent of their liberty. Freedom honors and unleashes human creativity — and creativity determines the strength and wealth of nations. Liberty is both the plan of Heaven for humanity, and the best hope for progress here on Earth.”

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

2000s, 2003, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (November 2003)

People, Hope, Freedom, Wealth

“Generally speaking, an Indian university must regard itself as one of the living organs of national reconstruction. It must discover the best means of blending together both the spiritual and the material aspects of life. It must equip its alumni irrespective of caste, creed or sex, with individual fitness, not for its own sake, not for merely adorning varied occupations and professions, but in order to teach them how to merge their individuality in the common cause of advancing the progress and prosperity of their motherland and upholding the highest traditions of human civilisation.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Nagpur University Convocation on 5th December 1936.

Life, Sex, Universe

“Thus was born the civil rights movement, an epic struggle that has required much sacrifice and pain, but which has enabled the United States to progress, in just three decades, from being a nation where blacks were forced to ride in the back of the bus, to being a nation where, due to federal cutbacks, there is no bus.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), p. 138

Pain

“Ah thought that every cunt over twenty was a toss an no worth speakin tae, until ah hit twenty. The mair ah see, the mair ah think ah wis right. After that it's aw ugly compromise, aw timid surrender, progressively until death.”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Renton, "Blowing It: Bang to Rites" (Chapter 4, Story 6).
Trainspotting (1993)

Death, Thinking

“Nowadays, the phenomenon (of division of labor) has developed so generally it is obvious to all. We need have no further illusions about the tendencies of modern industry; it advances steadily towards powerful machines, towards great concentrations of forces and capital, and consequently to the extreme division of labor. Occupations are infinitely separated and specialized, not only inside the factories, but each product is itself a specialty dependent upon others. Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill still hoped that agriculture, at least, would be an exception to the rule, and they saw it as the last resort of small-scale industry. Although one must be careful not to generalize unduly in such matters, nevertheless it is hard to deny today that the principal branches of the agricultural industry are steadily being drawn into the general movement. Finally, business itself is ingeniously following and reflecting in all its shadings the infinite diversity of industrial enterprises; and, while this evolution is realizing itself with unpremeditated spontaneity, the economists, examining its causes and appreciating its results, far from condemning or opposing it, uphold it as necessary. They see in it the supreme law of human societies and the condition of their progress.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 39; Second paragraph

Law, Hope, Business, Dependency

“They [universities] may be said to resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everything ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young, and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanity of human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, become cisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. … they can only be of service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career of innovation. … The unavoidable aim of all corporate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others wisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seeming wiser than themselves.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Corporate Bodies" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Wisdom, Age, Fashion, Knowledge

“The statement of ideas in a poem may have to do with logic. More profoundly, it may be identified with the emotional progression of the poem, in terms of the music and images, so that the poem is alive throughout.
Another, more fundamental statement in poetry, is made through the images themselves — those declarations, evocative, exact, and musical, which move through time and are the actions of a poem.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), p. 31

Music, Idea, Time

“The simple organization of a people into a national body, composite or otherwise, is of itself an impressive fact. As an original proceeding, it marks the point of departure of a people, from the darkness and chaos of unbridled barbarism, to the wholesome restraints of public law and society. It implies a willing surrender and subjection of individual aims and ends, often narrow and selfish, to the broader and better ones that arise out of society as a whole. It is both a sign and a result of civilization. A knowledge of the character, resources and proceedings of other nations, affords us the means of comparison and criticism, without which progress would be feeble, tardy, and perhaps, impossible. It is by comparing one nation with another, and one learning from another, each competing with all, and all competing with each, that hurtful errors are exposed, great social truths discovered, and the wheels of civilization whirled onward.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People, Truth, Law, Error

“You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost —- he becomes a unit in unreason.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

Men, World, Fools, Time

“Scientific achievements seem evanescent, because the very progress of science causes their supersedure; yet some of them are of so fundamental a nature that they are immortal in a deeper way.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)

Way, Nature, Science

“The powers, and faculties, and principles that are necessary fully to comprehend all that we see and all that surrounds us, exist and have been bestowed on man by his beneficent Creator. Still, it is only by slow degrees that he is to become their master, acquiring knowledge, step by step, as he has need of its services, and learns how to use it. Such seems to be the design of Providence, which is gradually opening to our inquiries the arcana of nature, in order that we may convert their possession into such uses as will advance its own wise intentions. Happy are they who feel this truth in their character of individuals! Thrice happy the nations which can be made to understand, that the surest progress is that which is made on the clearest principles, and with the greatest caution! The notion of setting up anything new in morals, is as fallacious in theory as it will be found to be dangerous in practice.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XXI

Happiness, Truth, Feeling, Understanding

“Expect not… that efforts for the moral regeneration of man can be immediately crowned with success; operations upon masses are ever slow in progress, and their effects distant.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Effort, Distant, Success

“Progress is personal; it comes from individuals demanding more of themselves and everyone else.”

Richard Koch (1950) German medical historian and internist

Koch (2012) in: " Interview: Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle http://boingboing.net/2011/05/12/8020.html" on boingboing.net May 12, 2012.

Personality

“The progress of science, of good science, depends on novel ideas and on intellectual freedom: science has very often been advanced by outsiders (remember that Bohr and Einstein regarded themselves as outsiders).”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Idea, Freedom, Science, Dependency

“Hegel's argument—and it is still the argument of those who entertain the old reluctance to confer the title "philosopher" upon the immortal thinkers of India and China—is that something is missing from the Oriental systems. When they are compared with Western philosophy, as developed in antiquity and in modern times, what is obviously lacking is the ever-renewed, fructifying close contact with the progressive natural sciences—their improving critical methods and their increasingly secular, nontheological, practically anti-religious, outlook on man and the world. This is enough, we are asked to agree, to justify the Western restriction of the classic term.”

Heinrich Robert Zimmer (1890–1943) German historian

Source: Philosophies of India (1951), p. 30

World, Nature, Science, Time

“We must remember that we have not only the present but the future to safeguard; our obligations extend even to generations yet unborn. The unassimilated alien child menaces our children, as the alien industrial worker, who has destruction rather than production in mind, menaces our industry. It is only when the alien adds vigor to our stock that he is wanted. The dead weight of an alien accretion stifles national progress. But we have a hope that can not be crushed; we have a background that we will not allow to be obliterated. The only acceptable immigrant is the one who can justify our faith in man by a constant revelation of the divine purpose of the Creator.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Children, Faith, Hope, Future

“Hymns should have unity, graduation and mutual dependence in the thoughts, a conscious progress, a sense of completeness.. and be easily understood.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

Introductory Essay-Christian Psalmist,or Hymns Selected & Original (1825).
Other

Sense, Dependency

“Who are the real racists? So far, thanks to a Republican Party that is ignorant of its own history and gave up on the black community, Democrats have fifty of those two hundred years under their belt. The problem with today's Republican Party is that it has forgotten its own history and raison d'etre. Individual liberty. The party must come to realize that GOP also stands for 'Growth, Opportunity, Prosperity' and articulate how it stands, as its history and founding clearly demonstrate, for the individual pursuit of happiness as opposed to the progressive socialist Democrat lie of a collective guarantee of happiness. So, happy 160th birthday to my party, the Republican Party. I am a strong conservative and I hope Republicans recommit to those fundamental principles which established this party, the historical antithesis of the Democrats.”

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

2010s, Voting Democratic for the next 200 years (2014)

Happiness, Lie, Hope, History

“Self-painting is a further development of the art of painting. The surface of an image has lost its function as the sole means of conveying expression. It was taken back to its roots, to the wall, to the object, to the living being, to the human body. By using my body as a means of conveying expression, the result created is a happening captured by a camera as it progresses, and an experience which viewers can share.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 140 (1985)

Art, Painting

“All progress is the work of individuals.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)

“If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate—in short, emancipation of fear—then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Eclipse of Reason (1947)

Fate, Fear, Evil

“The state of affairs in other Countries, which claim to be more highly advanced and progressive, is much worse. There it is stated that no man or woman approaches Marriage as a virgin. This is the direct result of provocative publicity. The case of the male is perhaps worse, for he boasts he cannot even recollect the number or wild oats he has sown and which is considered as a Passport to manhood (sic). Others again have disgraced their humanity in disgusting unnatural offences, which they are now trying to make their Governments legalise, and finally others again are subject to the Oedipus complex.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Promiscuity & Continence

Marriage, Country

“The s and held as property by their husbands, something not exactly in line with progressive Western thinking. In some Muslim countries, women aren’t even allowed to decide what clothes to wear. To reveal even the smallest patch of skin is a crime. Religious freedom is often nonexistent under Islamic rule. In countries like Afghanistan and Iran, people who convert from Islam to another religion face public execution. So why does the American Left hate Christianity yet love Islam?”

Chuck Hustmyre (1963) American journalist

2000s, 2009, The Left's love affair with Islam (2009)

Love, Women, Hate, People

“As in Mathematics in general, the really great advances, embodying new ideas of far-reaching fruitfullness, have been due to an exceedingly small number of great men… there are periods when for a long series of centuries no advance was made; when the results obtained in a more enlightened age have been forgotten. We observe the times of revival, when the older learning has been rediscovered, and when the results of the progress made in distinct countries have been made available as the starting points of new efforts and a fresh period of activity.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), p. 10

Men, Age, Mathematics, Idea

“Dating, as we justly may, a new era in the history of man from the Fourth of July, 1776, it would be well, that is, it would be useful, if on each anniversary we examined the progress made by our species in just knowledge and just practice.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)

History, Knowledge

“On the Scottish Parliament: A total catastrophe. Scotland has now become a kind of communistic backwater. They have unwound hundreds of years of progress in a few years, and we are heading for oblivion as a country.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

2003

Country

“Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separated, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Pages 224-5
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

Death, People, Sadness, Personality

“We can't call Afghanistan minnows. They beat all the teams in the qualifiers and progressed. We are taking them very seriously. They can upset any team. We have to really play well to beat Afghanistan. They're really tough. It (2015 WC) was a very close game. They really fought hard against us. We have to fight well. If we play to our potential, we can beat them.”

Angelo Mathews (1987) Sri Lankan cricketer

On the Afghanistan cricket team, quoted on ‘’indiatoday’’, ICC World Twenty20: Sri Lanka not treating Afghanistan like minnows, says Angelo Mathews http://indiatoday.intoday.in/t20-world-cup-2016/story/icc-world-twenty20-sri-lanka-not-treating-afghanistan-like-minnows-says-angelo-mathews/1/621840.html, no date specified

Game, Fight

“Clearly, the broad effect of economic evolution until about 1920 was to increase the concentration of jobs in the cyclically volatile industries, and this was a major force tending to intensify declines of employment during business contractions. Since then, the continued progress of technology, the very factor which originally was mainly responsible for the concentration in the cyclical industries, has served to arrest this tendency. The upward trend of production in manufacturing and the other highly cyclical industries has remained rapid in recent decades.”

Arthur F. Burns (1904–1987) American economist and diplomat

Source: "Progress Towards Economic Stability", 1969, p. 109-110

Business

“I know it seems strange to say that Progressivism wore a white supremacist face. But the most thorough going Progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, was an unabashed white supremacist. So, it should not be surprising…”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Sara Gabbard (2018)

“The achievement of such a change of register through a sequential progression is a familiar procedure in the music of the "common practice." The significant distinction is that where Berg subdivides the registral span into equal, i. e., cyclic, intervals, his tonal predecessors subdivide it, in changing register through sequential transference, into the unequal intervals of the diatonic scale. As I pointed out in my last lecture, however, the qualitative transformation in the language of music which we have experienced in our century has a long prehistory. Beginning with Schubert, we occasionally find normal diatonic functions questioned in changes of key that progress along the intervals of the whole-tone scale, or the diminished-7th chord, or the augmented triad. An even more radical example of a cyclic progression in a tonal composition is…from Wagner”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Die Walkure, Act III
Page 96
The Listening Composer

Music, Question, Change

“I do not care if people agree or disagree with my particular brand of knowledge or formulation of truth (for we all must have that for ourselves) but they are impossible to help if completely satisfied with their own. To me, the ultimate hell (if there is a hell, which I very much doubt) would be a state of complete satisfaction with one's own viewpoint and therefore such a static condition that all evolution in thought and all progress would be permanently arrested.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter II, Part 1

People, Truth, Hell, Knowledge

“It is from the education of the new generations that we will especially be able to expect a real moral progress. It is important first of all to develop in it (or 'him', the next generations…) self-control, love of truth and solidarity spirit.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 58.

Love, Truth, Education

“Computers are famous for difficulties. A difficulty is just a blockage from progress. You have to try a lot of things. When you finally find what works, it doesn't tell you a thing. It won't be the same tomorrow. Getting the computer to work is so often dealing with difficulties.”

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

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

“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)

Religion, History, Evil, Past

“In our libertarian society, where individual choice is all, ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ have come to mean something very different. Liberals took for granted that freedom depended upon self-discipline. Libertarians decided that all such restraint was repressive. The individual had to be free from all attachments to family, culture, nation, institutions and traditions that might fetter freedom of choice. Since every individual was equally entitled to such free choices, the distinctions that were the basis of morality became eroded.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/2000_01.html

Family, Freedom, Dependency

“I don't support such actions or see this as the solution, but I can very well understand how suicide bombings became a very popular way of fighting - first, because it is quite successful; secondly, because people are ready to risk everything in order to achieve some progress in the national struggle.”

Leah Tsemel (1945) Israeli lawyer

"The Israeli who defends suicide bombers," 2003

People, Way, Understanding, Support

“The progressive development of moral and intellectual man has scarcely occupied their [scientists] attention; nor have they noted how the faculties of his mind are at every age influenced by those of the body, nor how his faculties mutually react.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Age

“The third factor inhibiting inquiries into the influence of Bolshevism on Fascism and National Socialism was the insistence of Moscow on banishing from the vocabulary of ‘progressive’ thought the adjective ‘totalitarian’ in favor of ‘Fascist’ to describe all anti-Communist movements and regimes.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 242

“The fact that we are coming as underdogs releases the pressure. Yes, we didn't do well in the Asia Cup but we're getting better day by day. I'm confident of my team's progress.”

Angelo Mathews (1987) Sri Lankan cricketer

The Sri Lankan cricket team hasn’t been doing very well recently after failing to reach the semi-finals in World Twenty20, and a poor performance in the 2016 Asian Cup, quoted on ‘’indiatoday’’, ICC World Twenty20: Sri Lanka not treating Afghanistan like minnows, says Angelo Mathews http://indiatoday.intoday.in/t20-world-cup-2016/story/icc-world-twenty20-sri-lanka-not-treating-afghanistan-like-minnows-says-angelo-mathews/1/621840.html, no date specified

Confidence

“Why is it that, next to the birth day of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? … Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfilment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before?”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Newburyport Oration (4 July 1837)

World, Birthday, Birth

“The eternally repetitive routine, the imposed anonymity and the rigid atomization of numbers and cages are just a few of the dehumanizing, desocializing mechanisms. As for the relationship of prisoners to life outside, it is supposed to be virtually nonexistent. In this respect, the impenetrable concrete, the barbed wire and the armed keepers, ostensibly there to deter escape-bound captives, also suggest something further: prisoners must be guarded from the ingressions of a moving, developing world outside. Disengaged from normal social life, its revelations and influences, they must finally be robbed of their humanity. Yet human beings cannot be willed and molded into nonexistence. In reality the facts of prison life have begun in recent years to bespeak the irrationality of its goals. Even the most drastic repressive measures have not obstructed the progressive ascent of captive men and women to new heights of social consciousness. This has been especially intense among Black and Brown prisoners”

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

Source: If They Come in The Morning (1971), Chapter 2, "Lessons: From Attica to Soledad"

Life, Women, Men, World

“Unlike Hegel’s progress model of history, which moves by stages, each containing its own logic of growth and decline, the economic model develops as the simple function of one money-variable over time, with a long-term trend which increases monotonically.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 168

Money, History, Time

“[Flying into Baltimore after 9/11] I didn't want to see some pacifist, vegan, whole-wheat, free-range, organic, progressive, gray-ponytail, communist, liberal, draft-dodging, NPR-listening wimp! What are they going to do if somebody tries to hijack the plane? Throw a Birkenstock at him? Offer him some pot?…I was hoping for about twenty-five NRA-loving, gun-nut, serial-killing, psychopathic, Ollie North, Norman Schwarzkopf, right-wing, Agent Orange, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, CIA, FBI, automatic-weapon, smart-bomb, laser-sighting bastards!”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Ten Little Indians (2003)

Love, Hope, Flying

“The usual problem with progressive rock is that the band can get so wrapped up in their own fantasy land that their music becomes completely inaccessible. "Wanky", if you will.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

Music, Problem

“It may seem strange that there can be a structure for breaking all structures and that it can have a precise, limited form, and be built to particular specifications. Yet we have two major examples of such a structure in our experience. One is the mind as imagination. The other is society, progressively recast on the model of the imaginationː organized to shorten the distance between our context-preserving and context-transforming activities and to diminish the dependence of transformation on crisis.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 132

Imagination, Dependency

“My classmates were spinning their fantasies for the future: lawyer, ethnobotanist, Buddhist monk (it was a very progressive high school). Even the dumb, uninteresting ones who were there to provide “balance” looked forward to their marriages and their children. I knew I wasn’t going to have any of this because I knew I didn’t want it. But did that mean I would have nothing? I was the first person in the history of the school not to go to college.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Marriage, Children, School, History

“The nation which is satisfied is lost. The nation which is not progressive is retrograding. "Rest and be thankful" is a motto which spells decay. The new world seems to possess more of this quality in its crude state, at any rate, than the old. In individuals it sometimes seems to be carried to excess. I do not by this mean the revolutions which periodically ravage the Southern and Central American Republics. I think more of the restless enterprise of the United States, with the devouring anxiety to improve existing machinery and existing methods, and the apparent impossibility of accumulating any fortune, however gigantic, which shall satisfy or be sufficient to allow of leisure and repose. There the disdain of finality, the anxiety for improving on the best seems almost a disease; but in Great Britain we can afford to catch the complaint, at any rate in a mitigated form, and give in exchange some of our own self-complacency, for complacency is a fatal gift. "What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Address as President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute (15 October, 1901).
'Lord Rosebery On National Culture', The Times (16 October, 1901), p. 4.

World, Disease, Thinking, Water

“You have referred in your address to what your generosity has termed my ‘sacrifice’. I do not look upon it as such. If destiny had decreed that over the past few centuries the progress and the prosperity of the people of this beloved State, should be in the hands of the Wadeyars of Mysore, then that same destiny now ordains that the time is ripe for the people, now grown to full political stature in a free democratic Republic, to rule themselves …the rule of the Maharajas has indeed fulfilled its purpose, the purpose of making the people fit to rule themselves.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

On his 37th birthday in his reply to an address presented to him by the Chief Minister on 29 July 1956, quoted in "Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar".

People, Time, Past

“Make no mistake, the real power resides not where present authority is exercised but where it is expected that authority will in future be exercised. The magnetic attraction of power is exercised by the prospect long before the reality is achieved; and the trek towards the rising sun, which is already in progress in 1972, would swell to an exodus before long. What do you imagine is the reason why Roy Jenkins is prepared to resign the front bench and divide his party in the endeavour to give a Conservative Prime Minister a majority in the House of Commons? The motive is not ignoble or discreditable—I am not asserting that—but it is a motive which it behoves people in Britain well to understand. It is the ambition to exercise his talents on the stage of Europe and to participate in taking decisions not for Britain here at home but for Europe in Brussels, Paris, Luxembourg or wherever else the imperial pavilions may be pitched. He does not, I assure you, forsee his future triumphs and achievements where his predecessors have seen them in the past – at the despatch box in the House of Commons or in the Cabinet room at Downing St. These are not good enough: the vision splendid beckons elsewhere.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech at Millom, Cumberland (29 April 1972), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), p. 42. Jenkins had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and as deputy leader of the Labour Party due to Labour's opposition to British entry into the EEC. Jenkins wrote to Powell to claim what he said was "totally untrue". Four years later Jenkins would leave front line British politics to become President of the European Commission.
1970s

People, Exercises, Home, Imagination

“I think another impact that it's really important that we all think about, is that contraception when it first became available was a revolution in this country. It allowed women to enter employment and educational opportunities that had previously not been accessible because they were unable to control their reproduction in the same way. And I just can't imagine rolling back the clock on that progress.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

"Sandra Fluke responds to Nationwide Campaign Against Contraceptives", (February 23, 2012).
U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Women, Education, Way, Imagination

“Of course, by 2033 many new professions are likely to appear, for example, virtual-world designers. But such professions will probably require much more creativity and flexibility than current run-of-the-mill jobs, and it is unclear whether forty-year-old cashiers or insurance agents will be able to reinvent themselves as virtual-world designers (try to imagine a virtual world created by an insurance agent!). And even if they do so, the pace of progress is such that within another decade they might have to reinvent themselves yet again. After all, algorithms might well outperform humans in designing virtual worlds too. The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.20”

Yuval Noah Harari book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

World, Imagination, Problem, Appearance

“So much blood has already been shed for the ideals which we cherish, and for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt lived and died, that we dare not permit even a momentary pause in the hard fight for victory.
Today, the entire world is looking to America for enlightened leadership to peace and progress. Such a leadership requires vision, courage and tolerance. It can be provided only by a united nation deeply devoted to the highest ideals.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Address to Congress (1945)

World, Peace, Courage, Victory

“I am a progressive who likes to get things done.”

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

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

“Coming back to Iraq, obviously the situation has been getting worse over time, but I think it is still salvageable. We now have a political process going on, and I think if one looks at the place and what's been happening there, one has to marvel at what has been accomplished. There is an old saying, no news is good news, and the media obviously work on the reverse principle: Good news is no news. Most of the good things that have happened have not been reported, but there has been tremendous progress in many respects. Three elections were held three fair elections in which millions of Iraqis stood in line waiting to vote and knowing they were risking their lives every moment that they did so. And all this wrangling that's going on now is part of the democratic process, the fact that they argue, that they negotiate, that they try to find a compromise. This is part of their democratic education.
So I find all this both annoying and encouraging. I see that more and more people are becoming involved in the political process. And there's one thing in Iraq in particular that I think is encouraging, and that is the role of women. Of all the Arab countries, with the possible exception of Tunisia, Iraq is the one where women have made most progress. I'm not talking about rights, a word that has no meaning in that context. I'm talking about opportunity, access. Women in Iraq had access to education, to higher education, and therefore to the professions, and therefore to the political process to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the Arab world, as I said, with the possible exception of Tunisia. And I think that the participation of women the increasing participation of women is a very encouraging sign for the development of democratic institutions.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Women, People, World, Education

“Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 7 (p. 105)

Country

“The prophecy of Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, that the occupation would corrupt us through and through and turn us into a people of exploiters and secret-service-men, has come awfully true. Nothing has remained of the "beautiful Eretz Israel " but a cloying nostalgia, of which Naomi Shemer was a standard-bearer. A small and gallant state, progressive and (relatively) egalitarian, respected by the world, has become an occupying and looting state, hostage to delirious settlers, full of internal violence and "swinish capitalism" (a phrase coined by Shimon Peres, one of those most responsible for this situation). Throughout the world, the idea of boycotting Israel is gaining ground.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

Death of a Myth (May 12, 2005)

Men, People, Secret, World

“I would be prepared to submit to the Congress of the United States, and with every expectation of approval, any such plan that would, first, encourage world-wide investigation into the most effective peacetime uses of fissionable material, and with the certainty that the investigators had all the material needed for the conducting of all experiments that were appropriate; second, begin to diminish the potential destructive power of the world's atomic stockpiles; third, allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great Powers of the earth, both of the East and of the West, are interested in human aspirations first rather than in building up the armaments of war; fourth, open up a new channel for peaceful discussion and initiative at least a new approach to the many difficult problems that must be solved in both private and public conversations if the world is to shake off the inertia imposed by fear and is to make positive progress towards peace.”

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

1950s, Atoms for Peace (1953)

War, People, Age, World

“There's no redder rag for our modern, progressive Catholics than a certain religious approach to sex and Eros ranging from suspicion to open condemnation and branded accordingly as Manichean, neo-Platonic, Puritan, etc. Quite unacceptable. And yet in these quite obviously heretical speculations there's a barb which, even at first encounter, penetrated to the depths of my mind as the startling confirmation of something always known, and this ferment keeps on working - all the time…the idea which one finds in so many apocryphal trends of thought, i. e. that there's definitely something wrong with sex in its present form, that is, during this terrestrial aeon - something that is not sex in itself, as a whole, but some trait or quality.. Something which does not belong to original human nature, but which owes its actual existence to The Fall; in the same sense unnatural as death is unnatural and yet taken for granted, an inevitable, undeniable factor - in this fallen world.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p15-16 Diaries 1951.

Death, World, Sex, Idea

“it will never be outmoded as long as the systole and diastole of human life survives, and men fluctuate between progress and reaction, growth and decline, hope and illusion.”

Robert Gordis (1908–1992) American rabbi and theologian

"Koheleth - the Man and his World", p. 3

Life, Men, Hope

“Mankind has been mesmerized by the narrative of progress and civilization as codified by the first great agrarian kingdoms. As new and powerful societies, they were determined to distinguish themselves as sharply as possible from the populations from which they sprang and that still beckoned and threatened at their fringes.”

James C. Scott book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Source: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017), p. 7

“We cannot tell our peoples that material benefits in growth and modern progress are not for them. If we do, they will throw us out and seek other leaders who promise more … We have to modernize. Either we shall do so with the interest and support of the West or we shall be compelled to turn elsewhere. This is not a warning or a threat, but a straight statement of political reality.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Quoted in Canadian Institute of International Affairs International Journal, Volumes 13-14 (1957), p. 160.

People, Support, Reality

“No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more "modern," but more ancient than those of our Revolutionary ancestors.”

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

Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.
1920s

People, Truth, Idea, Time

“At a time when all the world is seeking for the adjudication of differences between nations, not by war, but by reason, the suggestion that we should limit the jurisdiction of our domestic courts is reactionary in the highest degree. It would cast aside the progress of generations to begin again the contest for supremacy between executive and legislature. Whichever side has won in that struggle, the people have always lost.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

War, People, World, Time

“No doubt there is much immature talking and hasty writing and will always be where liberty of speech and press prevails. The political, religious, and social views of any age and even of the most radical members of society, were born, long before their time. Those who invented the alphabet and the printing press are indirectly responsible for much of the violence of a changing social state; but in the same way, they are responsible for the progress of the world, for the enlightenment, for the civilization, and for all that makes the present better than the past.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Age, World, Way, Change

“… every nation which makes no forward progress sinks lower and lower, and must ultimately fall”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The National System of Political Economy (1841), p. 8

“In grade school they say you have to pick a profession and stick to it… and people stop looking at their lives as a work in progress. If you don't stay in touch with yourself, you kind of lose focus. If you're going to spend a life in the arts, you need to be infused with a sense of gratitude and a sense of wonder. It's a privilege to do this profession. But there is a payment you have to make for that privilege, which is to do your best all the time.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-hawke7-2010jan07,0,7915056.story (2010-01-07) 2010&ndash;present

Life, People, School, Art

“Idealists, workers of thought, unite to show how inspiration and genius walk in step with the progress of the machine, of aircraft, of industry, of trade, of the sciences, of electricity.”

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

Quote of Filippo Marinetti, in his review 'Poesia' 1905; as cited in Futurism, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 78
1900's

Science

“In the progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest right. There have been centuries in which the light seemed to emanate only from a handful of men, while the rest of the world was enveloped in darkness. Some great man leads the way—he becomes the morning star, the prophet of a coming day. Afterward, many millions accept his views. But there are still heights above and beyond; there are other pioneers, and the old day, in comparison with the new, becomes a night. So, we cannot say that success demonstrates either divine origin or supernatural aid.”

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

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

Men, World, Way, Star

“The running up of this queer flag caused much fear to the families of the Californians established in the neighborhood of Sonoma, Petaluma, and San Rafael, for they realized that the instigators of the uprising that had disturbed the tranquility of the frontier had made up their minds to rule, come what might, and, as the rumor had been spread far and wide that Ide and his associates had raised the bear flag in order to enjoy complete liberty and not be obliged to any civilized governments, the ranchers, who would have remained unperturbed should the American flag have been run up in Sonoma and who would have considered it as the harbinger of a period of progress and enlightenment, seized their machetes and guns and fled to the woods, determined to await a propitious moment for getting rid of the disturbers of the peace. Strange to relate, the first victim that the ranchers sacrificed was the painter of the "Bear Flag," young Thomas Cowie…”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

As quoted in The Literature of California: Native American beginnings to 1945 (2000) ed., Jack Hicks
Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California (1875)

Fear, Family, Peace