Quotes About Progress

W]hat is ugly and evil is apt to change and grow milder with time.

What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

Her failure was a useful preliminary to success.

the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the steep hill of understanding.

even his small contribution to the new state of things seemed to count, as each brick counts in a well-built wall.

The telephone clicked, and Archer, turning from the photographs, unhooked the transmitter at his elbow. How far they were from the days when the legs of the brass-buttoned messenger boy had been New York's only means of quick communication! "Chicago wants you.

But Archer had found himself held fast by habit, by memories, by a sudden startled shrinking from new things. Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk.

After all there was good in the old ways...there was good in the new order too.

he mused, thinking of his son as the spokesman of the new generation which had swept away all the old landmarks, and with them the sign-posts and the danger-signal.

Because it's against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man's again—I don't mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in THEM.

After all, there was good in the old ways.

Fericirea, la unele firi e ca o alunecare de teren pe munte.

There is nothing like a Revolution for making people conservative.

I read the other day in a book by a fashionable essayist that ghosts went out when electric light came in. What nonsense!

Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins.

A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation.

Untried forms of government may, to unstable minds, recommend themselves even by their novelty.

Time is required to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than our force.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

In history, a great volume is unravelled for our instruction, drawing materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.

I wished to warn the people against the greatest of all evils,—a blind and furious spirit of innovation, under the name of reform.