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Progress Quotes

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Progress Quotes

“This world of ours is a new world, in which the unit of knowledge, the nature of human communities, the order of society, the order of ideas, the very notions of society and culture have changed, and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new, not because it has never been there before, but because it has changed in quality.”

“Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our intellectual capacities. It stores up the accumulated experience of the race, connecting Past and Present into a conscious unity; and with this store it feeds successive generations, to be fed in turn by them.”

“Christmas is ... a time to mark our progress through this earthly journey. Every December we can look back and marvel at the designs of God and realize how very little we are in control of the events that shaped the past year. Then, with hearts full, look to the celebration of that silent, holy night, and all its certainty. Because of Christmas, this we know: Christ was born for us. He is love, and the plans he has for us always surpass those of our own.”

“It is for us to discharge the high duties that devolve on us, and carry our race onward. To be no better, no wiser, no greater than the past is to be little and foolish and bad; it is to misapply noble means, to sacrifice glorious opportunities for the performance of sublime deeds, to become cumberers of the ground.”

“The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.”

“We are perhaps too near the age of transition to see clearly the interplay of all that made for progress. Each of us has had his own peculiar training, his own personal contact with the mighty ones of the immediate past; and this forms as it were a telescopic tube determining limits to our field of vision. No doubt we may range the whole horizon; but after all we look from our own point of vantage.”

“The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress!”

“Does anyone believe for one moment that the progress we have made would have been possible under bureaucratic control of any government. This country was founded upon the principle of the regulation of private effort, of making rules for the game, and under that system alone can we look for the same success in the future which has been ours in the past. Our position today is the direct result of the free play among our people of private competitive effort.”

“A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.”

“There is one lesson from the past, in particular, that we cannot afford to ignore: You cannot make progress on gender equality or broader human development, without safeguarding women's reproductive health and rights.”

“Have I said clearly enough that the Community we created is not an end in itself? It is a process of change, continuing in that same process which in an earlier period produced our national forms of life. The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way of the organized world of tomorrow.”

“Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.”

“Every church pretends to have found the exact truth. This is the end of progress. Why pursue that which you have? Why investigate when you know? Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bullying the enlightened Present. The ignorant are not satisfied with what can be demonstrated. Science is too slow for them, and so they invent creeds. They demand completeness. A sublime segment, a grand fragment, are of no value to them. They demand the complete circle... the entire structure.”

“Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles. The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.”

“Even time is a concept. In reality we are always in the eternal present. The past is just a memory, the future just an image or thought. All our stories about past and future are only ideas, arising in the moment. Our modern culture is so tyrannized by goals, plans, and improvement schemes that we constantly live for the future. But as Aldous Huxley reminded us in his writings, "An idolatrous religion is one in which time is substituted for eternity...the idea of endless progress is the devil's work, even today demanding human sacrifice on an enormous scale.”

“It's very easy to attack ourselves. Even comforting in its familiarity, but you must resist this urge at all costs. Dwelling on the past or your perceived flaws will do nothing but keep you under emotional house arrest and hamper your progress. Commit yourself to growth and reward yourself with kindness for choosing to do so!”

“Each and every incomplete thing in your life or work exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood. Every incomplete promise, commitment and agreement saps your strength, because it blocks your momentum, inhibits your ability to move forward, to progress and improve. Incomplete things keep calling you back to the past to take care of them.”

“Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren't permitted to harm (animals, 'infidels'); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps).”

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.”