Quotes About Progress

Only time can heal wounds as deep as that—a lot of time—and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory.

I was worried that at this rate our mutual affection might begin to cool, that the special feelings we had for each other would end up as nothing more than close friendship. Male–female relationships are always in transition. If there's no forward progress, things tend to slip backwards.

Development is a treacherous river, as everyone who plunges into its currents knows.

Gradually, the nations living in this cradle of mankind, having created great, monumental civilizations, as if exhausted by the superhuman effort, or perhaps even crushed by the immensity of what they had brought forth and no longer capable of further developing it, handed over the reins to younger peoples, bursting with energy and eager to live. Europe will come on the scene and, later, America.

Here it is different, here the past is as alive as the present, the unpredictable cruel Stone Age coexists with the calculating, cool age of electronics—the two eras live in the same man, who is as much the descendant of Genghis Khan as he is the student of Edison… if, that is, he ever comes into contact with Edison's world.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Whatever the one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing...Thus no generation has learned from another to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the previous generation.

Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. For instance, the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar; perhaps in turn it can forget that it was a butterfly so completely that it can become a fish. The

We live our lives forward and understand them backward.

he who will not pass through this curriculum is helped very little by the fact that he was born in the most enlightened age.

Just as a dog which is compelled to walk on two feet has every instant a tendency to go again on all four, and does so as soon as it sees its chance, waiting only to see its chance, so is Christendom an effort of the human race to go back to walking on all fours, to get rid of Christianity, to do it knavishly under the pretext that this is Christianity, claiming that it is Christianity perfected.

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

Livet forstås baglæns, men må leves forlæns.

Het is allemaal waar wat de filosofie zegt: het leven moet achterwaarts worden begrepen. Maar dan vergeet men de tweede zin: dat het voorwaarts moet worden geleefd.

the genuinely humane no generation learns from the foregoing

Once we overcome our biases about the past, we will realize that the people we see as primitive have a lot to teach us, that looking back can help us to move forward.

Realization comes when we honestly accept the mistakes of the past and that automatically builds the responsibility that will prevent us from repeating those same mistakes.

If learning lessons from history is a mark of enlightenment, so is breaking free from it.

The question of whether history has a goal is one that falls in the domain of philosophy and rides on the back of logic. But the study of history has a definite goal: the search for truth.

We had to become other than we were, or cease to be at all

Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people

I keep on making myself little goals, but every time I achieve one of them. I'm forced to face up to the fact that nothing has changed. The thing that is still wrong and always will be. But that's too difficult to face, so all I can do is to pick another goal and start again.

Make mistakes -- just don't keep making the same goddamn ones.

We are tricked by a phenomenon of time: hours and days pass slowly, but years pass quickly.