The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
Interpretation
Progress is measured by how well we care for the less fortunate rather than by how much we accumulate for the wealthy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote emphasizes that true progress in society should be assessed not by the wealth and abundance accumulated by the privileged, but by the extent to which we ensure that those in need have their basic requirements met. It challenges common notions of success, urging a focus on equitable distribution and societal welfare, highlighting that helping those with less is a true measure of a communityβs advancement.
In practice
This quote can be used in a charity event speech to emphasize the importance of helping those in need.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
Environmental history was . . . born out of a moral purpose, with strong political commitments behind it, but also became, as it matured, a scholarly enterprise that had neither any simple, nor any single, moral or political agenda to promote. Its principal goal became one of deepening our understanding of how humans have been affected by their natural environment through time and, conversely, how they have affected that environment and with what results.
Stereotypes should never influence policy or public opinion.
Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again. But this having been once, although only once, to have been of the earth, seems irrevocable.
The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.
One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.
Angels speak. They appear and reappear. They feel with apt sense of emotion. While Angels may become visible by choice, our eyes are not conducted to see them ordinarily any more than we can see the dimensions of a nuclear field, the structure of atoms, or the electricity that flows through copper wiring.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.