Quotes on Progress

Truth should be the very breath of our life. When once this state in the pilgrim's progress is reached, all other rules of correct living will come without any effort, and obedience to them will be instinctive.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.

Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.

A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.

There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

Doubt can only be removed by action.

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.

I wonder, sometimes, whether men and women in fact are capable of learning from history--whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and decline.

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions

The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution - Revolution is but thought carried into action. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." Translation by Sharon Lebell