The Quote File: Progress

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

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." — Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.'" — H.L. Mencken

"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." — Tony Benn

"The power to question is the basis of all human progress." — Indira Gandhi

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." — Frank Zappa

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something." — Robert Heinlein

"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." —Thomas Carruthers

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." —Will Durant

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." — Martin Luther King, Jr. (N.B.: An interesting contrast and corrective to the much more often quoted and much easier "The arc of the moral universe is long...")

"Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy." — August Strindberg

"The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading." — Norman Rush