Quotes About Progress

Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us.

And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with bloody magic and will end with bloody magic in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest.

The first sign of progress will be noticing how distracted you are. But if you persist in your practice, you will eventually get a taste of real concentration and begin to see thoughts themselves as mere appearances arising in a wider field of consciousness.

The thing you're doing by default is rarely the best possible version of the thing.

I remember him saying over and over again: go in and check our competition. Check everyone who is our competition. And don't look for the bad. Look for the good. If you get one good idea, that's one more than you went into the store with, and we must try to incorporate it into our company. We're really not concerned with what they're doing wrong, we're concerned with what they're doing right, and everyone is doing something right.

Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First, he gets up every day bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I've ever known. And once he sees he's wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction." All

I guess that was the forerunner of our Saturday morning meetings. We wanted everybody to know what was going on and everybody to be aware of the mistakes we made. When somebody made a bad mistake—whether it was myself or anybody else—we talked about it, admitted it, tried to figure out how to correct it, and then moved on to the next days work.

And this is a very important point: without the computer, Sam Walton could not have done what he's done.

The thing is, I am absolutely convinced that the only way we can improve one another's quality of life, which is something very real to those of us who grew up in the Depression, is through what we call free enterprise—practiced correctly and morally.

If evolution exists in every living species, likewise so too does devolution.

Mike Bloomberg

when I chaired meetings in 2009 to consider whether our administration should take a fresh position on something, I often heard one of two entrenched views: We never do that, or We always do that. The past was prologue: those who had conceived of policies in a certain way were ill disposed to try something new.

I know I am sick, I just thought I was better.

I finally feel far enough away from it to gain perspective on everything that's happened to me and everything I've done.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Do not suffer life to stagnate, it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the current of the world.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation.

The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress.

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.