“As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at homeand we aim to get it.” WantYearsTodayAmericaCausesAcceptingPovertyMorningProgressIgnoranceWillingProudYears AgoPrejudiceAimFellowsIllTyrannyOppressionRevolutionaryBigotryDictatorshipBiasDespotismSaluteIll HealthBias And Prejudice Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966 Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966
“Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.” YearsProblemAgeSpiritProgressMiddleCivilizationThousandYears AgoDifficultyMiddle AgesDisturbedHebrew Author:Isaac Mayer Wise
“Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.” MenYearsHas BeensAgeNextStrongNationsTermNaturalPoorCommonRaceLibertyEnemyProgressCenturyCrimeIgnoranceCivilizationYears AgoFruitDeedsSeedsLustEaseMotiveMatureDelicateSuperstitionsHarvestConquestGood DeedsCravingPoor ManPretextStrong ManAthensSowingNatural Enemies Author:Lord Acton
“The record of the rocks contains very little, other than bacteria and one-celled plants until, about a billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled creatures appeared on earth.” YearsFirstsLittlesEarthThreeRecordsProgressRocksCreaturesMajorsYears AgoPlantBillionsInvisibleBreakthroughBacteria Author:Robert Jastrow
“The liberation of women from exclusive domesticity did not originate in feminist books, or a war, or a big inflation, although they contributed to its progress. The rising enrollment of women in the paid labor force is a straightforward consequence of the industrial revolution of two hundred years ago.” YearsTwoBookWarBigsForceProgressRevolutionHundredConsequenceYears AgoLaborPaidFeministLiberationRisingInflationExclusiveStraightforwardHouseworkIndustrial RevolutionDomesticityLabor ForceEnrollment Author:Barbara Bergmann
“By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites. Eighty percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can't read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago.” WayYearsStillsRealEndsStatesFactsThreeBlackWhiteFiveFourProgressCenturyFiguresSixPercentAdultsYears AgoEducationalDecadesDespite20th CenturyLiteracyAnother WayEightyDisadvantagesSchoolingSurveysAssessmentIlliteracyAll State Author:Vin Suprynowicz
“Satisfying yourself requires challenges because when you come to a certain point, you're not happy anymore. You don't feel happy with the way you played one year ago, you have to always make progress. So that's a challenge.” WayFeelsYearsCertainChallengesProgressYears AgoSatisfyingNot Happy Author:Hiromi
“Should a community... be free to enact legislation to say they don't want blacks? Now that's illegal. Fifty years ago it was legal. Is that progress or is that regress?” WantShouldYearsCommunityProgressYears AgoFiftyIllegalLegislation Author:Noam Chomsky
“I've been studying how quickly we can get energy out to the poor countries - a lot of which are in Africa - and how little progress we've made there. There's no more electricity today in sub-Saharan Africa per person than there was 20 years ago.” YearsLittlesPersonsMadeCountryTodayEnergyPoorStudyProgressYears AgoElectricityPoor CountriesSub Saharan Africa Author:Bill Gates
“It's amazing how much progress there's been in China, and also India. Those are the places that really matter - they're half of the world's population. They're the places where things are enormously better now than they were 50 years ago. And I don't see anything that's going to stop that.” WorldYearsMatterHalfProgressYears AgoIndiaPopulationChinaBetter Now Author:Freeman Dyson
“On both of my major trips to North Korea, the leaders of the country made it plain that they want to make progress towards doing away with nuclear weapons and towards ending the longstanding, official state of war which persists between North Korea and the United States and South Korea, a war which has continued since the ceasefire over fifty years ago. That sort of thing happens quite often when we meet with people who are kind of international outcasts with whom the government of the United States won't meet.” PeopleWantYearsKindMadeWarCountryStatesGovernmentHappensUnitedLeaderUnited StatesProgressMajorsWeaponsYears AgoSouthInternationalNuclearThings HappenMade ItOfficialsFiftyNuclear WeaponsPersistKoreaNorth KoreaOutcastSouth KoreaCeasefire Author:Jimmy Carter
“Today, we have come a distance. We have made a lot of progress. That cannot be denied. You cannot dispute the fact that our country is so different from 50 years ago. But we still have problems. There are too many people that have been left out and left behind, and they are African American, they are White, Latino, Asian American, and Native American.” PeopleYearsHas BeensMadeStillsDifferentCountryFactsProblemTodayLeftWhiteBehindsProgressYears AgoDistanceOur CountryAfrican AmericanNativeDeniedNative AmericanDisputesLeft BehindAsianLatinoLeft OutAsian American Author:John Lewis
“I think it is a must for young people and generations yet to come, to understand, to feel, to touch, to almost smell the drama of what happened a few short years ago [the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s]. So maybe, just maybe, we will never ever repeat this unbelievable time in our history. We have to tell it all, and make it plain, and make it clear, so people will never ever forget the distance we have come, and the progress we have yet to make.” PeopleThinkingFeelsYearsYoungForgetClearRightsProgressGenerationsHappenedMovementDramaYears AgoDistanceSmellCivil RightsRepeatsUnbelievable1960sCivil Rights Movement Author:John Lewis
“There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.” YearsDoeFormProgressYears AgoEssenceTranscendentalism Author:Robert Louis Stevenson
“And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog.” WorldWritingYearsBookWould BeSoundWaterProgressMissingColdYears AgoEightCupsTeaToesBlogsBloggingVicissitudesAmerican GodsCharting Author:Neil Gaiman
“The good news is that by the second year, those cravings were about as half as frequent, and by the third year, half as much again. I'm still a little bent, a little crooked, but all things crooked, I can't complain. After all those years of all kinds of abuse and crashing into trees at eighty miles an hour and jumping off buildings and living through overdoses and liver disease, I feel better now than I did ten years ago. I might have some scar tissue, but that's alright, I'm still making progress.” FeelsYearsKindLittlesStillsI CanMightHoursHalfProgressTreeBuildingTenDiseaseNewsYears AgoAll ThingsThirdsAbuseComplainingMilesAll KindsScarFeel BetterBentGood NewsJumpingCravingEightyAlrightCrookedLiverTissuesBetter NowOverdoseJumping OffScar TissueLiver Disease Author:Anthony Kiedis
“Medicine has made all its progress during the past fifty years. ... How many operations that are now in use were known fifty years ago?-they were not operations, they were executions.” YearsMadeUsePastScienceKnownProgressYears AgoMedicineOperationsFiftyExecution Author:Mark Twain
“We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?” YearsHumansMightScienceUniverseGivenSocialCommunityImaginationMillionsProgressSocietyCenturyThousandYears AgoIntelligentMereBillionsThousand YearsTechnologicalHuman SocietySocial ProgressIntelligent Life Author:Paul Davies