Quotes About Progress

All civilisation begins with a theocracy and ends with a democracy. This law of liberty succeeding unity is written in architecture.

He who despairs is wrong. Progress infallibly awakens, and, in short, we might say that it advances even in sleep, for it has grown.

People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

In proportion as architecture degenerated, printing throve and flourished. The capital of forces which human thought had expended in building, it henceforth expended in books.

Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less glory and more liberty. The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word. It is a game in which he who loses wins.

Die Wissenschaft muss mit glatten Wangen begonnen werden und nicht erst mit runzeligen, wenn man in ihr etwas erreichen will.

But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When they say no to progress, it is not the future but themselves that they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are inoculating themselves with the past. There is but one way of rejecting To-morrow, and that is to die.

To understand the nature of the Revolution we must call it progress; and we may define progress by the word tomorrow.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.

To dare; that is the price of progress.

In this age devoted to completing the French Revolution and to beginning the Human Revolution, equality between the sexes being part of equality between men, a great woman was needed. Woman had to prove that she could have all our manly qualities without losing her angelic ones: that she could be strong without ceasing to be gentle: George Sand is that proof. . . . she bequeathes to us the right of woman which draws its proof from woman's genius.. . . Thus the Revolution is fulfilled.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognized: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

Se quereis saber o que é a revolução, chamai-lhe Progresso, se quereis saber o que é o progresso, chamai-lhe Amanhã

Au-dessus de l'absolu révolutionnaire, il y a l'absolu humain.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is recognized,—that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.

Everyday he saw better, and he began to climb slowly, one by one, almost reluctantly at first then, with intoxication and, as though drawn by an irresistible fascination, steps that started off dark, then gradually became dimly illuminated, only to end in the luminous and splendid blaze of enthusiasm.

But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling.

You see this hell from which you have just emerged is the first form of heaven. It was necessary to begin there.

The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level.

Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.

In our nineteenth century the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. Certain things have been unlearnt, and this is good, provided other things are learnt. There must be no void in the human heart.

It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything--artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.

Better than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.