The study of history reveals that human progress has not been continuous and regular, but intermittent and spasmodic, often depending upon apparently accidental causes. It is difficult to get a cross-section view of society at any given stage.
Interpretation
Human progress is uneven and often influenced by random events rather than a steady trajectory.
Charles A. Beard's quote highlights the complexity of human progress throughout history, emphasizing how it is not a smooth or predictable journey. Instead, it is characterized by periods of advancement interspersed with setbacks, often influenced by unforeseen circumstances. This perspective encourages a nuanced understanding of history and society, recognizing that multiple factors, including chance events, have shaped our progression over time.
In practice
During a lecture on the unpredictability of social change.
The functions of the president are prescribed by the Constitution, but his real achievements are not set by the letter of the law. They are determined rather by his personality, the weight of his influence, his capacity for managing men, and the strength and effectiveness of the party forces behind him.
All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life.
Education from the lowest to the highest form must have for its object the training of the individual so that, in seeking the fullest satisfaction of his own nature, he will harmoniously perform his function as a member of a corporate society.
Well-behaved women seldom make history.
Thousand got away to other countries; thousands returned to Spain tempted by false promises of kindness. By the tens of thousands, these Spaniards died of neglect in the concentration camps.
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
The British government had not engaged in any serious actual oppression of the colonies before 1774, but it had claimed powers not granted by the governed, powers that made oppression possible, powers that it began to exercise in 1774 in response to colonial denial of them. The Revolution came about not to overthrow tyranny, but to prevent it.
The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.
Slavery is nothing to joke about. The history of this nation's involvement with slavery is nothing to pass off in a joke.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.