Quotes About Progress

our 'Physick' and 'Anatomy' have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.

According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grapeshot of which one hits something and the rest fall wide.

Look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow.

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.

Felicity, therefore (by which we mean continual delight), consisteth not in having prospered, but in prospering

I have always been goal-oriented. I have a clearly defined set of daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, annual goals, and lifetime goals. I even have goals to go to the bathroom. I always tell our young executives that they must have goals.

set of daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and lifetime goals

until recently…. [She] really enabled him….

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

The dead should not rule the living.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.

As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

as we advance in life these things fall off one by one , and I suspect we are left with only Homer and Virgil , perhaps with only Homer alone.

The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches. We must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.