Progress quotes
2.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside progress — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought."
"Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic."
"None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress."
"What we want is progress, development, realisation."
"We do not progress from error to truth, but from truth to truth"
"The progress and civilisation of the human race simply mean controlling this nature."
"Society is an organism which obeys the immutable law of progress; and change, judicious and cautious change, is necessary for the well being, and indeed the preservation of the social system."
"It is the duty of every person to contribute in the development and progress of India."
"It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is (not to progress); it is the nature of man to seek good and avoid evil; it is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be God!"
"Repeating easy tasks again and again gets you not very far. Attacking only steep cliffs where no progress is made isn’t particularly effective either. No, the best path is an endless series of difficult (but achievable) hills."
"You might occasionally feel that some people are standing in the way and slowing your progress, but in reality the biggest person standing in your way is you. Others can stop you temporarily -- you are the only one who can do it permanently."
"Nothing lasts. So it's my belief, yes, I know a lot of the things that we liked didn't last, but maybe things we don't like, they're also not going to last. There has been progress in my lifetime. There are certainly things that are better than when I was young, and there are things that are worse. New York City, it's worse. There's no question."
"All progress is due to the unreasonable person."
"[Man] progresses in all things by making a fool of himself."
"The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
"Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress."
"Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source."
"Progress is the mother of all problems."
"This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities."
"But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty."
