Quotes About Progress

the party endorsed the "speedy construction" of the transcontinental railroad and a "liberal and just" policy of immigration given that "foreign immigration…has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation.

The work of reformers—long, hard, almost unimaginably difficult work—can lead to progress and a broader understanding of who is included in the phrase "We, the People" that opened the Preamble of the Constitution. And that work unfolds still.

Therein lies a lesson: If sufficiently developed and organized, public sentiment, as manifested in Congress, can prevail over presidential intransigence. Lincoln offered a case study in the leadership of hope and progress; Andrew Johnson's is an unhappier story of willfulness and single-minded service to a favored constituency—in this case, to white Southerners.

Reform is slow work, and it is for neither the fainthearted nor the impatient.

Douglass understood history and the men who made it. Perfection was impossible; greatness was reserved for those who managed to move forward in an imperfect world:

Progress in America does not usually begin at the top and among the few, but from the bottom and among the many.

Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace….The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

The people have often made mistakes, but given time and the facts, they will make the corrections. —HARRY S. TRUMAN

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions Ã¢â'¬Â¦ but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.… We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. He

Lincoln replied, "Yes, I have; and I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Lincoln would come to see democracy as a work in progress, a process in which reason took its chances against prejudice and passion.

In the final analysis, we are one people, one family, one house—not just the house of black and white, but the house of the South, the house of America," Lewis said. "We can move ahead, we can move forward, we can create a multiracial community, a truly democratic society. I think we're on our way there. There may be some setbacks. But we are going to get there. We have to be hopeful. Never give up, never give in, keep moving on.

The saga of race in America is a tragic one—and it unfolds still. In Lincoln's hour upon the stage, many hoped he would go farther along the road toward equality than he did; many feared any step at all. But on he walked.

to Congress for

If the President's theory is carried to its ultimate conclusion," Senator Pat Harrison, Democrat of Mississippi, remarked, "then that means that the black man can strive to become President of the United States.

But when we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a whole people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon's remark that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear, and that will be chiefly to reform the waste of public money, and thus drive away the vultures who prey on it, and improve some little on old routines." Even

The better you did—the more contests you won—the greater the next goal, the greater the next mission.

Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian…black and yellow…how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God….What is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labor and look forward!

while whites built and dreamed, people of color were subjugated and exploited by a rising nation that prided itself on the expansion of liberty. Those twin tragedies shaped us then and ever after.

that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the common sense of all my countrymen.

When we condemn posterity for slavery, or for Native American removal, or for denying women their full role in the life of the nation, we ought to pause and think: What injustices are we perpetuating even now that will one day face the harshest of verdicts by those who come after us?

Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.

For generations Democrats provided many of the most strident segregationists, particularly from the South, a political home, and for the past half century or so, too many Republicans have used coded racial appeals to win votes. Still, they—and we—have also had the ability to rise above their baser impulses.

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions Ã¢â'¬Â¦ but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.…