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Progress113 quotes
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. — Neil Armstrong · 1969I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. — Theodore Parker · 1853I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Come mothers and fathers,
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand. — Bob Dylan · 1964If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton · 1676Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857All 113 quotes →Political progress23 quotes
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx · 1845Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglass · 1857Come Senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall. — Bob Dylan · 1963Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere. — Cornel West · 2009All 23 quotes →Politics14 quotes
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. — Fidel Castro · 1961I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. — John Adams · 1780Finality, Sir, is not the language of politics. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1859You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. — Cesar Chavez · 1984All 14 quotes →Technological progress12 quotes
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. — Neil Armstrong · 1969The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity, and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end. — Henry L. Ellsworth · 1843Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things. — Willa Cather · 1929The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1961What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind. — Wendell Phillips · 1864Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork? — Stanislaw Lec · 1957All 12 quotes →Social progress9 quotes
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. — Theodore Parker · 1853If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglass · 1857"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. — Barack Obama · 1965Ooh, child, things are gonna get easier
Ooh child, things'll get brighter. — The Five Stairsteps · 1970Believe it or not-and I know that most people do not-violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence. — Steven Pinker · 2011All 9 quotes →Nature of progress7 quotes
There can be no progress (real, that is, moral) except in the individual and by the individual himself. — Charles Baudelaire · 1867The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. — Barack Obama · 1965All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. — John F. Kennedy · 1961Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated. — Isaiah Berlin · 1976It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle-they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward the light? Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night are closing in upon us? — Dwight D. Eisenhower · 1953All 7 quotes →Scientific progress7 quotes
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton · 1676We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size. — Bernard of Chartres · 1159Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. — John Dewey · 1929To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing a new truth or fact. — Charles Darwin · 1879I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. — Max Planck · 1936All 7 quotes →Change6 quotes
Come mothers and fathers,
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand. — Bob Dylan · 1964Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the solution. — Gloria Steinem · 1994Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road. — Stewart Brand · 1987Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better. — Samuel Johnson · 1755Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. — Leo Tolstoy · 1900We are the change that we seek. — Barack Obama · 2008Moral progress6 quotes
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. — Theodore Parker · 1853We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1968The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1961Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork? — Stanislaw Lec · 1957Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. — Derek Parfit · 2017The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. — Omar Bradley · 1948Political theory5 quotes
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788Finality, Sir, is not the language of politics. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1859Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress. — Ronald Reagan · 1985Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1945Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people? — John Adams · 1797Activism4 quotes
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglass · 1857I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2014Do not wait for me to do something for your rights. It's your world and you can change it. — Malala Yousafzai · 2013Once you find the truth you ought to be prepared to stand on the street corner and use all your gifts to right the wrong. — Maya Angelou · 1986Innovation4 quotes
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds. — Mark Twain · 1897Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought. — Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1923I know you're taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always. This is threatening not just a way of doing business, but in their minds, it's threatening the game. Really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs. It's threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it's the government, or a way of doing business, or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins—they have their hands on the switch—they go batshit crazy. — John Henry · 2011Just as every conviction begins as a whim so does every emancipator serve his apprenticeship as a crank. A fanatic is a great leader who is just entering the room. — Heywood Broun · 1928Justice4 quotes
We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1968Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere. — Cornel West · 2009Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. — Pablo Neruda · 1971Capitalism3 quotes
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. — Gordon Gekko · 1987Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress. — Ronald Reagan · 1985A desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope · 1864Changing the world3 quotes
But it’s a resilient place, the world, and its beauty is still astonishing, and as for the mess we’ve made, you can change it, and I believe you’re going to. — Salman Rushdie · 2015Do not wait for me to do something for your rights. It's your world and you can change it. — Malala Yousafzai · 2013Can I do something in my lifetime that can help change the way we are.... Can I help in a little tiny fraction, make it better here? — Maya Lin · 2011Civil rights3 quotes
We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1968"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Maybe you can't override prejudice overnight, but the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, ninety-odd years ago. I believe in gradualism. I also believe that ninety-odd years is pretty gradual. — Thurgood Marshall · 1987Civilization3 quotes
The three great elements of modern civilisation, Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant Religion. — Thomas Carlyle · 1827Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. — Carl Jung · 1933Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911Conservatism3 quotes
Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. — Mark Twain · 1884The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. — Mark Twain · 1897Progress may have been all right once, but it went on too long. — Ogden Nash · 1959Fighting for justice3 quotes
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. — Pablo Neruda · 1971Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin · 1962Human nature3 quotes
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. — Gordon Gekko · 1987Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. — Carl Jung · 1933For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation? — Carl Sagan · 1994Personal growth3 quotes
There can be no progress (real, that is, moral) except in the individual and by the individual himself. — Charles Baudelaire · 1867Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. — Oscar Wilde · 1893Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. — Leo Tolstoy · 1900Revolution3 quotes
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx · 1845A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. — Fidel Castro · 1961Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness. — G.K. Chesterton · 1901The human condition3 quotes
Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things. — Willa Cather · 1929It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way. — Oscar Wilde · 1891The history of man has just begun: in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial. — Learned Hand · 1945Theory of progress3 quotes
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress. — Ronald Reagan · 1985Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1945Truth3 quotes
Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. — Emile Zola · 1897Truths kindle light for truths. — Lucretius · 55 BCOnce you find the truth you ought to be prepared to stand on the street corner and use all your gifts to right the wrong. — Maya Angelou · 1986Advance of civilization2 quotes
Believe it or not-and I know that most people do not-violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence. — Steven Pinker · 2011Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911Courage2 quotes
You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then when you have the chance to do it better refuse to go near it. — Vaclav Havel · 2007Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin · 1962Curiosity2 quotes
Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life-blood of real civilization. — G.M. Trevelyan · 1942The gods did not intimate all things to men straight away, but in time, through seeking, their discoveries improve. — XenophanesGreed2 quotes
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. — Gordon Gekko · 1987A desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope · 1864Hope2 quotes
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme. — Seamus Heaney · 1990Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. — Pablo Neruda · 1971