Progress Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

John F. Kennedy

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

Henry David Thoreau

In our century, science is the soul of the prosperity of nations and the living source of progress. Undoubtedly, the tiring daily discussions of politics seem to be our guide. Empty appearances! - What really leads us forward are a few scientific discoveries and their applications.

Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

G. K. Chesterton

[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

Bertrand Russell

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.

Rudyard Kipling

The founder of any branch must be more ingenious than the common man. However, if his achievement is not carried on by disciples of the same ingenuity, then things will only become formalized and get stuck in a cul-de-sac; whereby breakthrough and progress will be almost impossible.

Several commentators have reflected on the fact that this may be one of the great political victories of all time. In terms of votes that may be true, but in terms of what a victory really is, a huge landslide margin means nothing at all unless it is a victory for America. It will be a victory for America only if, in these next four years, we, all of us, can work together to achieve our common great goals of peace at home and peace for all nations in the world, and for that new progress and prosperity which all Americans deserve.

No matter how far our spiritual culture may continue to progress, no matter how much the natural sciences may grow, becoming ever more profound and more inclusive, no matter how much the human spirit may will to expand, that human spirit will never escape from the majesty and ethical sublimity of Christianity, as it shimmers and shines in the Gospels.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Error is just as important a condition of life's progress as truth

My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.

G. K. Chesterton

We know that progress can always be reversed, and that positive change is achieved not through passion alone, but through patient and persistent effort. But we've seen things change for the better in this region and around the world because of the effort of ordinary people, together — working together.

If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths.

Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves - on God's grace and on our will to be holy.

There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.

John F. Kennedy

History shows that wars are divided into two kinds-just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust.

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress. It's coexistence or no existence.

Bertrand Russell

Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.

Benjamin Franklin

I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and governments to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson

It would conduce to national progress and save a great deal of time and trouble if we cultivated the habit of never supporting the resolutions either by speaking or voting for them if we had not either the intention or the ability to carry them out.

Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality — the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars.… All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm (Weltsturm).

Friedrich Engels

There is a desire for progress in the hearts of all men, and it is the sense of frustration and inability to move forward that brings violent revolution.

Eleanor Roosevelt