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Humanity, in the aggregate, is progressing, and philanthropy looks forward hopefully. ~ Hosea Ballou
Progress is the idea of situations become increasingly better with time, especially in terms of science, technology, liberty, democracy, justice and general quality of life.
Quotes[]
- Humanity, in the aggregate, is progressing, and philanthropy looks forward hopefully.
- Hosea Ballou, as quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech (1886) by Maturin M. Ballou, p. 397
- What is art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushed toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art's life—and where we live, we suffer and toil.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IV, line 1150.
- By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.
- Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
- A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Kenelm Chillingly : His Adventures and Opinions (1873), Book I, Ch. 8
- We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.
- James Freeman Clarke, as quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech (1886) by Maturin M. Ballou, p. 397
- The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone. The world, however, are very censorious, and will hardly give a rnan credit for simplicity and singleness of heart, who is not only in the habit of changing his opinions, but also of bettering his fortunes by every change.
- Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon: or, Many things in Few Words (1820) § 102, p. 62
- We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.
- Humphry Davy, as quoted in Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1836) by John Davy, p. 130
- The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, in "First Visit to England" in English Traits (1856)
- Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history.
- Len Deighton, in An Expensive Place to Die, Jonathan Cape (1967) Ch. 39
- "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.
- Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, as quoted in "Voices of the New Time" as translated by C. C. Shackford in The Radical Vol. 7 (1870), p. 329
- Human improvement is from within outwards.
- James Anthony Froude, as quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech (1886) by Maturin M. Ballou, p. 398
- I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil.
- James A. Garfield, as quoted in Garfield's Words : Suggestive Passages from the Public and Private Writings of James Abram Garfield (1882) edited by William Ralston Balch
- Look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, and lend a hand!
- Edward Everett Hale, in Ten Times One is Ten (1870)
- There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
- Aldous Huxley, in Time Must Have a Stop (1944)
- Let us labor for that larger and larger comprehension of truth, that more and more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
- Horace Mann, in Thoughts (1867), p. 240
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations[]
- Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 634-36.
- Westward the star of empire takes its way.
- John Quincy Adams, Oration at Plymouth (1802). Misquoted from Berkeley on inside cover of an early edition of Bancroft's History of United States.
- Laws and institutions are constantly tending to gravitate. Like clocks, they must be occasionally cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time.
- Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts.
- Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.- Bishop Berkeley, Verses, on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.
- Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beast's;
God is, they are,
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.- Robert Browning, A Death in the Desert.
- Progress is
The law of life, man is not
Man as yet.- Robert Browning, Paracelsus, Part V.
- Like plants in mines, which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb, and get to him.- Robert Browning, Paracelsus, last page.
- Hombre apercebido medio combatido.
- A man prepared has half fought the battle.
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 2. 17.
- All things journey: sun and moon,
Morning, noon, and afternoon,
Night and all her stars;
Twixt the east and western bars
Round they journey,
Come and go!
We go with them!- George Eliot, Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III. Song.
- And striving to be Man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mayday.
- So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
- Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Introductory. The Problem.
- Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
- He who moves not forward goes backward!
A capital saying!- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman and Dorothea, Canto III, line 66.
- To look up and not down,
To look forward and not back,
To look out and not in—and
To lend a hand.- Edward Everett Hale, Rule of the "Harry Wadsworth Club", from Ten Times One is Ten (1870), Chapter IV.
- I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger body, more awful, more reverent and more free than he has had before.
- Gerald Stanley Lee, Crowds (1913), Part II, Chapter III.
- From lower to the higher next,
Not to the top, is Nature's text;
And embryo good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the evil in its nature.- James Russell Lowell, Festina Lente. Moral.
- New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.- James Russell Lowell, Present Crisis.
- "Spiral" the memorable Lady terms
Our mind's ascent.- George Meredith, The World's Advance. G. M. Trevelyan in notes to Meredith's Poetical Works says the "memorable Lady" is Mrs. Browning.
- That in our proper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat; descent and fall
To us is adverse.- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 75.
- Quod sequitur, fugio; quod fugit, usque sequor.
- What follows I flee; what flees I ever pursue.
- Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), II. 19, 36.
- Vogue la galère.
- Row on [whatever happens].
- François Rabelais, Gargantua, I. 3.
- Il est un terme de la vie au-delà duquel en rétrograde en avançant.
- There is a period of life when we go back as we advance.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, II.
- The march of intellect.
- Robert Southey, Sir T. More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, Volume II, p. 361. Quoted by Carlyle, Miscel. Essays, Volume I, p. 162. (Ed. 1888).
- L'esprit humain fait progrès toujours, mais c'est progrès en spirale.
- The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.
- Madame de Staël.
- If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin'!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin'!
'Tain't no use to sit and whine
'Cause the fish ain't on your line;
Bait you hook an' keep on tryin',
Keep a-goin'!- Frank L. Stanton, Keep a-goin'.
- When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, 37.
- The stone that is rolling, can gather no moss.
- Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. Huswifely Admonitions. Gosson—Ephemendes of Phialo. Marston—The Faun. Syrus—Maxims. 524. Pierre volage ne queult mousse. De l'hermite qui se désepéra pour le larron que ala en paradis avant que lui. 13th Cent.
- Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son âge,
De son âge a tout le malheur.- He who has not the spirit of his age, has all the misery of it.
- Voltaire, Lettre à Cideville.
- Press on!—"for in the grave there is no work
And no device"—Press on! while yet ye may!- Nathaniel Parker Willis, from a poem delivered at Yale College (1827), line 45.
Unsourced[]
- He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace.
- John Ruskin
- It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- To progress you must go forwards, but not too far or you begin to go backwards.
- Anonymous
- What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
- Havelock Ellis
- Progress is the process whereby the human race is getting rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix, and God.
- H. L. Mencken
- Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.
- George Bernard Shaw
References[]
- Klopsch, Louis, 1852-1910 (1896). Many Thoughts of Many Minds.
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