Quotes About Progress

Reappraise the past, reevaluate where we've been, clarify where we are, and predict or anticipate where we are headed.

Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

Today was once the future from which you expected so much in the past.

Today is yesterday's pupil.

Today is the blocks with which we build.

The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

The changing year's progressive plan Proclaims mortality to man.

Thought is born of failure.

Time is the rider that breaks youth.

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.

One only gets to the top rung of the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you- suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, "Well, I'll have a go, too."

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures.

One step and then another, and the longest walk is ended. One stitch and then another, and the longest rent is mended. One brick upon another, and the tallest wall is made. One flake and then another, and the deepest snow is laid.

The way a chihuahua goes about eating a dead elephant is to take a bite and be very present with that bite. In spiritual growth, the definitive act is to take one step and let tomorrow's step take care of itself!

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that; one stitch at a time taken patiently, and the pattern will come out all right, like embroidery.

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.

The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

Cultural transformation announces itself in sputtering fits and starts, sparked here and there by minor incidents, warmed by new ideas that may smolder for decades. In many different places, at different times, the kindling is laid for the real conflagration-the one that will consume the old landmarks and alter the landscape forever.