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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"In an article on Bunyan lately published in the "Contemporary Review" - the only article on the subject worth reading on the subject I ever saw (yes, thank you, I am familiar with Macaulay's patronizing prattle about "The Pilgrim's Progress") etc."
"A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself."
"Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up."
"Progress, in the sense of acquisition, is something; but progress in the sense of being, is a great deal more. To grow higher, deeper, wider, as the years go on; to conquer difficulties, and acquire more and more power; to feel all one's faculties unfolding, and truth descending into the soul,--this makes life worth living."
"health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress."
"...We now realize as we have never before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take, but we must be willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective."
"The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words."
"... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it."
"We are not to expect perfection in this world; but mankind, in modern times, have apparently made some progress in the science of government."
"Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues."
"None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them."
"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision."
"Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left."
"To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions."
"Progress is the mother of problems."
"While the high-level climate talks pursue their stately progress towards some ill-defined destination, down in the trenches there is an undercurrent of suppressed panic in the conversations. The tipping points seem to be racing towards us a lot faster than people thought."
"Should a community... be free to enact legislation to say they don't want blacks? Now that's illegal. Fifty years ago it was legal. Is that progress or is that regress?"
"If humans are organisms like every other organism - which they are - then we should expect that if there are some domains where real scientific progress is possible, then there are others where it is not."
"Physics and those parts of other fields that grow out of physics - chemistry, the structure of big molecules - in those domains, there is a lot of progress. In many other domains, there is very little progress in developing real scientific understanding."
"There are huge areas where the human mind is apparently incapable of forming sciences, or at least has not done so. There are other areas - so far, in fact, one area only [physics] - in which we have demonstrated the capacity for true scientific progress."
