quotations about progress
But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity -- that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.
IMMANUEL KANT
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.
THOR HEYERDAHL
attributed, Quotable Quotes
It has long been my desire to be a little worm in the fair apple of Progress.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Sherwood Anderson's Notebook
Progress is the stride of God.
VICTOR HUGO
attributed, Day's Collacon
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
ALAN TURING
Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.
HUMPHRY DAVY
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy
Restlessness is discontent -- and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man -- and I will show you a failure.
THOMAS EDISON
The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison
Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.
HERBERT HOOVER
State of the Union Address, December 2, 1930
In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.
JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL
Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural History
Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail", 1963
The march of the human mind is slow.
EDMUND BURKE
speech on conciliation with America, 1775
Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Nation and the Ethics of War and Preparedness: An Address
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil--possibilities that formerly did not exist. We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi, November 30, 2007
The world progresses only through misunderstanding.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
A Treatise on Parents and Children
I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
JOHN STEINBECK
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
ROBERT BROWNING
"De Gustibus"
Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may make advances in morality, but all mankind together are making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older; so that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be considered as one man, who never ceases to live and learn.
BLAISE PASCAL
attributed, Day's Collacon