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Progress Quotes

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Progress Quotes

“All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.”

Men Humans Has Beens Values Moral Progress Society Currents Skeptic Doubted Human Progress Moral Values Uncivilized

Book:Minority Report

Source: Minority Report

“No great, inspiring culture of the future can be built upon the moral principle of relativism. For at its bottom such a culture holds that nothing is better than anything else, and that all things are in themselves equally meaningless. Except for the fragments of faith (in progress, in compassion, in conscience, in hope) to which it still clings, illegitimately, such a culture teaches every one of its children that life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.”

Children Stills Life Is Culture Compassion Moral Principles Teach Progress Conscience Built All Things Bottom Tales Idiot Meaningless Fragments Relativism Moral Principles Signifying

Author:Michael Novak

“Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of phenomenological adequacy, inner consistency, and practical-moral consequences. Reason may err, but it can be moral. If we must err, let it be on the side of our creativity, our freedom, our betterment.”

Ifs May Ideas Reason Problem Sides Ability Moral Creativity Progress Conflict Consequence Tests Practicals Handle Consistency Betterment Adequacy

Author:Rudolph Rummel

“The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.”

People Government Nations Moral Progress Objects Materials Citizens Prosperity Welfare Desirable Good Citizen

Book:The New Nationalism

Source: The New Nationalism

“Self-discover is not as someone would have us think, a heavy, awesome, moral process where everyone sits around and frowns. As you progress towards enlightenment, you become funny.”

Thinking Self Process Moral Progress Enlightenment Heavy

Author:Frederick Lenz

“The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.”

Source: Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848

“[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.”

Source: Why I Am Not a Christian

“A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.”

Humans Kind States Culture Social Moral Progress Conditions Population Improvement All Kinds Scope Social Progress Stationary

Author:John Stuart Mill

“The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.”

“We all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have "arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.”

Ifs Thinking Knows May Use Reality Moral Progress Failing Generations Judging Achievement Standards Tests Currents Vigorous Forward Thinking

Book:Democracy and Social Ethics

Source: Democracy and Social Ethics

“This is what evolution means--ordered progress; development from poorer to richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater--progress. In the material universe, progress to higher forms; in the moral universe, progress to higher life.”

Mean Form Universe Moral Greater Progress Materials Development Evolution Higher

Book:The Life that Really is

Source: The Life that Really is

“We must seek support in the moral values that have ensured the progress of our civilization. Honesty and hard work, responsibility and faith in our strength are bound to bring us success. There should be no place for despondency. The crisis can and must be fought by uniting our intellectual, spiritual and material resources.”

“There may or may not be a Supreme Ruler of the universe-but we are certain that man exists, and we believe that freedom is the condition of progress; that it is the sunshine of the mental and moral world, and that without it man will go back to the den of savagery, and wll become the fit associate of wild and ferocious beasts.”

Men World Believe May Certain Universe Moral Progress Conditions Fit Independence Supreme Beast Sunshine Rulers Associates Savagery Dens

Book:Miscellany

Source: Miscellany

“Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and--there you have it: Holocaust”

“Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.”

Humans Moral Progress Protest Customs

Book:Authority and the Individual

Source: Authority and the Individual

“There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.”

Art Real Philosophy Individual Moral History Progress

Author:Charles Baudelaire

“You are inhuman brutes determined to rob us of our spiritual consolations and sweep away the moral foundations of our civilization, and on the other: You are obscurantist ignoramuses who'd like to shut down progress and drag us all back to the 16th century, with kings and priests telling us what to think.”

Thinking Spiritual Moral Progress Century Evolution Kings Civilization Foundation Determined Priests Drag Consolation Brutes Inhuman

Author:John Derbyshire

“Mankind never loses any good thing, physical, intellectual, or moral, till it finds a better, and then the loss is a gain. No steps backward is the rule of human history. What is gained by one man is invested in all men, and is a permanent investment for all time.”

Men Humans Loses Loss Moral Steps Progress Mankind Intellectual Gains Good Things Investment All Time Permanent One Man Human History

Book:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Lessons from the world of matter and the world of man

Source: The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Lessons from the world of matter and the world of man

“Moral excellence is the bright consummate flower of all progress.”

Moral Progress Flower Excellence Moral Excellence

Book:The Complete Works of Charles Sumner

Source: The Complete Works of Charles Sumner

“Surely it should be a matter of moral responsibility that we humans, different from other animals mainly by virtue of our more highly developed intellect and, with it, our greater capacity for understanding and compassion, ensure that medical progress slowly detaches its roots from the manure of non-human animal suffering and despair.”

“Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.”

Stills Facts Religion Natural Moral Progress Identity Creeds Dogma Supplies

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

“Philosophers have very justly remarked that the only solid instruction is that which the pupil brings from his own depths; that the true instruction is not that which transmits notions wholly formed, but that which renders him capable of forming for himself good opinions. That which they have said in regard to the intellectual faculties applies equally to the moral faculties. There is for the soul a spontaneous culture, on which depends all the real progress in perfection.”

Said Real Soul Culture Moral Opinion Progress Depends Capable Intellectual Perfection Regard Depth Notion Philosopher Faculty Instruction Spontaneous Pupils Transmit

Author:Joseph Marie, baron de Gerando

“It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the colour of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake, or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.”

Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages

“I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.”

Thinking Humans Made Self Values Half Moral Rights Progress Century Losing Concern Sight Relation Human Rights Self Respect 20th Century Respecting Others Concern For Others

Author:Alexander McCall Smith

“Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.”

Source: Science and Culture: And Other Essays

“... it seems to have been my luck to stumble into various forms of progress, to which I have been of the smallest possible use; yet for whose sake I have suffered the discomfort attending all action in moral improvements, without the happiness of knowing that this was clearly quite worth while.”

Has Beens Use Seems Action Form Moral Knowing Progress Luck Sake Various Improvement Smallest Discomfort Attending

Author:Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

“Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of the ascent, was adjustable on principles of common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality.”

“We recognize that our progress as a species does not have to be defined in terms of wealth or material and physical growth any more than our progress as individuals has to be defined in terms of physical growth. Physical growth of the body reaches a limit, but the character and the soul of the individual continues to grow, or at least has a chance to continue, often to our last breath. It is simple minded to define our well being in material terms, when that well-being has an aesthetic dimension, and intellectual dimension, a moral dimension.”

“God doesn't help. I think that's a knockdown argument. I think that it really shows that whatever moral knowledge we have and whatever moral progress we make in our knowledge or whatever progress we make in our moral knowledge is not coming really from religion. It's coming from the very hard work really of moral philosophy, of trying to ground our moral reasonings.”

Thinking Trying Hard Philosophy Helping Shows Moral Progress Hard Work Argument Reasoning Moral Philosophy Moral Reasoning

Author:Rebecca Goldstein

“If we look at our attitudes consistently and work out the logical implications we're on the road to moral progress, moral understanding.”

Ifs Looks Understanding Attitude Moral Progress Work Out Logical Consistently Implications

Author:Rebecca Goldstein

“Corruption of morals is rapid enough in any country without a bounty from government. And...the Chief Magistrate of the United States should be the last man to accelerate its progress.”

Men Should Country States Enough Government Lasts United Moral United States Progress Corruption Chiefs Rapids Accelerate Bounty Magistrates

Author:Daniel Webster

“Ten years have now passed since many of us first felt the jolt of history-when the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We knew from that moment that things can go terribly wrong in our world-not because life is unfair, or moral progress impossible, but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions of our ignorant ancestors.”

“Ethical religion affirms the continuity of progress toward moral perfection. It affirms that the spiritual development of the human race cannot be prematurely cut off, either gradually or suddenly; that every stone of offence against which we stumble is a stepping-stone to some greater good; that, at the end of days, if we choose to put it so, or, rather, in some sphere beyond the world of space and time, all the rays of progress will be summed and centred in a transcendent focus.”

“I know how irritating it is to have somebody else lay down rules for your moral uplift, but you've got to stand a great deal in order to make progress.”

Knows Order Deals Moral Know How Progress Lays Uplifting Irritating

Author:William Howard Taft

“Anxieties about ourselves endure. If our proper study is indeed the study of humankind, then it has seemed-and still seems-to many that the study is dangerous. Perhaps we shall find out that we were not what we took ourselves to be. But if the historical development of science has indeed sometimes pricked our vanity, it has not plunged us into an abyss of immorality. Arguably, it has liberated us from misconceptions, and thereby aided us in our moral progress.”

Ifs Stills Sometimes Seems Moral Study Progress Dangerous Development Anxiety Historical Endure Vanity Humankind Abyss Liberated Misconception Immorality

Book:Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism

Source: Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism

“Humanity's moral conscience progresses, slowly yet surely.”

Humanity Moral Progress Conscience Moral Conscience

Author:Cheikh Anta Diop

“Mankind's survival is dependent on man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man's squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.”

Men Art War Problem Turns Ability Moral Poverty Progress Mankind Survival Solutions Harmony Injustice Solve Practicals Dependent Art Of Living Scientific Progress

Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions.”

Kind Has Beens Christian Left Church Moral Progress Divine Code Sanctions Christian Church Loopholes

Author:John B. S. Haldane

“The rapid progress of the sciences makes me sorry, at times, that I was born so soon. Imagine the power that man will have over matter, a few hundred years from now. We may learn how to remove gravity from large masses, and float them over great distances. Agriculture will double its produce with less labor. All diseases will surely be cured... even old age. If only the moral sciences could be improved as well. Perhaps men would cease to be wolves to one another... and human beings could learn to be human.”

Ifs Men Years Humans Wells May Matter Age Born Human Beings Moral Imagine Progress Produce Disease Mass Hundred Labor Distance Sorry Cease Old Age Remove Gravity Agriculture Floats Rapids

Author:Benjamin Franklin

“We have a very foolish notion in Western countries that progress delivers freedom. But progress doesn't necessarily bring moral virtue.”

Country Moral Virtue Progress Western Notion Foolish Moral Virtues

Author:Richard Flanagan

“There is nothing - not any religious or secular body of work - that comes close to the Bible in forming the moral bases of Western civilization and therefore of nearly all moral progress in the world.”

World Body Religious Moral Progress Civilization Bases Western Secular Western Civilization

Author:Dennis Prager

“Man's material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress.”

Men Moral Progress Materials Discovery

Author:Clement Attlee

“Animal experimentation is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing... We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings... I abhor [animal] experimentation with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence... The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

“Progress is a farce because man's head and hand have created wonders that stun the imagination, but his heart does not keep step and his morals undo all that his mind has wrought.”

Men Mind Heart Doe Hands Imagination Wonder Moral Steps Progress Farce

Author:Vance Havner

“One can say that the disaffection is still a lingering naiveté about, not the place of poetry in the world, but - how to say this - the moral and intellectual presence of poets in the world. And while this may seem an old conversation to many poets who roll their eyes and say, "Here we go again about the function of poetry," I think that conversation, about poetry as an engaged art in a world that is full of regression or still lacking in progress, is still really not well-developed. It's almost an avoided conversation.”

Thinking World Wells May Art Stills Seems Eye Moral Progress Poet Conversation Intellectual Function Engaged Lacking Avoided Lingering Regression Here We Go Again

Author:Fady Joudah

“The progress of dynamic ideals will not be eternally blocked. Through general, moral and intellectual advancement... shall the latent aspiration of justice for the animal kingdom come out into the open, when the time is ripe.”

Justice Animal Moral Progress Intellectual Ideals Kingdoms Aspiration Animal Rights Advancement Ripe Blocked Latent Animal Kingdom Kingdom Come

Author:Abraham Isaac Kook

“We are now returning to the 18th century empirical approach with the new interest in the evolutionary basis of ethics, with 'experimental' moral philosophy and moral psychology. As a result, we understand better why moral formulas are experienced as ineluctable commands, even if there is no commander and even if the notion of an inescapable obligation is just superstition. So moral philosophy has made huge progress.”

“There is no single test or formula for producing moral progress anymore than there is for generating scientific truths. It is a process involving theoreticians, fact-gatherers, protestors, martyrs for the cause, authors of first- person narratives who change the way we see and evaluate the distribution of harms and benefits.”

Way Firsts Persons Facts Causes Process Moral Progress Benefits Tests Harm Narrative Formulas Distribution Martyr Evaluate Involving First Person Scientific Truth

Author:Catherine Wilson

“Think of US slavery in 1850, or the subjection of women. Both of these injustices could have been - and were! - defended by pointing out, quite correctly, that this situation of slaves and women had been improving throughout the preceding century. Slaves, in particular, were worked less hard, beaten and raped less frequently, better fed, and less often ripped apart from their families. So would a celebration of moral progress have been appropriate in 1850? Surely not. Slavery could have been and should have been abolished - then, if not before.”

“Many people like to think that their moral or political enemies are not just wicked or wrong - as if that were not enough - but stupid or idiotic too. We tend to find this attitude too in the contemporary religion debate. It might console those on each side of the debate to think of their opponents in these terms, but if we want to make real progress in understanding what is going on here, this approach cannot help.”

People Thinking Real Enough Helping Political Understanding Term Attitude Moral Enemy Progress Stupid Debate Wicked Idiotic

Author:Tim Crane