Quotes About Progress

Serving Leaders work hard to get obstacles out of the way so others can make progress.

They's movement now. People moving. We know why, an' we know how. Movin' 'cause they got to. That's why folks always move. Movin' 'cause they want somepin better'n what they got. An' that's the on'y way they'll ever git it.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the town lets wither a time and die.

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.

But why think about what was wrong when you could be thinking about what was right?

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.

The world is work; life is work; growth is work; all things are full of labour, and attain their perfection only by labour.

Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.

It is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

The generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal.

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been... one of the primary sources of progress.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement.

No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.

There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life.

Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements, the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form human character.

T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.

It is true that a great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them. But it is a great mistake to suppose that he will do this better for being ignorant of the traditions.

What the State can usefully do is to make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of tolerating no experiments but its own.