Quotes about progress

"Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself."

Addams, Jane on progress   

"If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet."

Allen, Charles M. on progress   

"The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know."

Bachelard, Gaston on progress   

"Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison."

Bagehot, Walter on progress   

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"It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you."

Benn, Tony on progress   

"The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better."

Bovee, Christian Nevell on progress   

"All progress is experimental."

Chapman, John Jay on progress   

"The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart."

Chapman, John Jay on progress   

"New roads; new ruts."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on progress   

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."

Chisholm, Shirley Anita on progress   

"We are either progressing or retrograding all the while. There is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life."

Clarke, James Freeman on progress   

"He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still."

Colton, Charles Caleb on progress   

"Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good."

Coolidge, Calvin on progress   

"Nothing recedes like progress."

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.) on progress   

"I was taught that the way of progress I neither swift nor easy."

Curie, Madame Marie on progress   

"The pace of progress will accelerate so that even engineers and technical managers will find it necessary to recycle back through school after no more than ten years. In particular fast-moving technologies skills will become obsolete every five years or so."

Davies, Owen on progress   

"Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."

Edison, Thomas A. on progress   

"My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy."

Eliot, George on progress   

"What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another."

Ellis, Havelock on progress   

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"The walking of Man is falling forwards."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on progress   

"All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on progress   

"With every passing hour, our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress."

Ferm, Ransom K. on progress   

"Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter."

Gordimer, Nadine on progress   

"Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as Chaos."

Grenfell, Joyce on progress   

"A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo."

Grey, Bill on progress   

"The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress."

Harris, Sidney J. on progress   

"This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease."

Hawthorne, Nathaniel on progress   

"Human development is a form of chronological unfairness, since late-comers are able to profit by the labors of their predecessors without paying the same price."

Herzen, Alexander on progress   

"The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage."

Hoover, Herbert Clark on progress   

"The world is moving so fast now-a-days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."

Hubbard, Elbert on progress   

"Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine; it has its pauses, when it rallies the stragglers, its stopping places when it meditates, contemplating some new and splendid promised land that has suddenly appeared on its horizon. It has its nights of slumber; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker to see the human spirit lost in shadow, and to grope in the darkness without being able to awake sleeping progress."

Hugo, Victor on progress   

"Progress is the stride of God."

Hugo, Victor on progress   

"I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am."

Kaiser, Henry J. on progress   

"The United States has to move very fast to even stand still."

Kennedy, John F. on progress   

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

King Jr. Martin Luther on progress
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"Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it."

Kraus, Karl on progress   

"Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools."

Kraus, Karl on progress   

"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?"

Lec, Stanislaw J. on progress   

"Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize... the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished."

Levi-Strauss, Claude on progress   

"I walk slowly, but I never walk backward."

Lincoln, Abraham on progress