Progress - Quotes

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. - George Bernard Shaw

A man learns to skate by staggering about making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself. - George Bernard Shaw

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. - Samuel Butler

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. - Martin Luther King Jr.

All progress occurs because people dare to be different. - Harry Millner

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress. - Herbert Hoover

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who had read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made. - Oscar Wilde

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving, but does not make any progress. - Alfred Montapert

Do not feel like you have lost when plans and dreams fall short of your hopes. Anytime you learn something new about yourself or about life, you have progressed. - Unknown

Great steps in human progress are made by things that don’t work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don’t, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress. - Charles Kettering 

Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another. - Romain Rolland

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. - Winston Churchill

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. - Thomas Huxley

Few men progress, except as they are pushed along by events. - Edgar Watson Howe

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. - Mahatma Gandhi

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.

Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps. - Joseph Alexander Leighton

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction. - John Steinbeck 

If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. - Eugene Victor Debs

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. - Frederick Douglass

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress. - Barack Obama

It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking. - Fred Adler

Man’s ‘progress’ is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Man’s restlessness in every sense, physical, mental, and spiritual, has been and still is the largest contributing factor to progress and the development of civilization. - Dr. H Spencer Lewis

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skilful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. - Harry S Truman

Most people are in favor of progress, it’s the changes they don’t like. - Unknown

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. - Plato

Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion. - Josiah Gilbert Holland

One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does the least for progress. - Lewis F. Korns

Our words must be judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction. - Theodore Roosevelt

Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first base. - Frederick Wilcox

Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. - Robert A. Heinlein

Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step. - Samuel Smiles

Progress in every age results only from the fact that there are some men and women who refuse to believe that what they knew to be right cannot be done. - Russell W. Davenport

Progress in life, business, or any project comes through taking initiative and continuing to press on with new strategies, concepts, and plans. The original momentum is not enough to keep you moving forward. Your progress will grind to a halt unless you refill your engine of inspiration with the fuel of fresh ideas. - Unknown

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. - George Bernard Shaw

Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority. - Oscar Wilde

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator and change has its enemies. - Robert Kennedy

Progress is made by trial and failure; the failures are generally a hundred times more numerous than the successes; yet they are usually left unchronicled. - William Ramsay

Progress is obtained only by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. When you solve problems, all you do is guarantee a return to normalcy. - Peter F. Drucker

Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity. - Arnold Glasgow

Progress of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step. - Samuel Smiles

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana  

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. - George Santayana

Progress, that great heresy of degenerates. - Charles Baudelaire

Recognizing our limitations and imperfections is the first requisite of progress. - Dale Turner

Remember that progress is not linear either. Sometimes you make great progress for a while and then you slide back a little. That's OK. Don't give up. - Lee Larbrada

Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders. - George Bernard Shaw

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. - Thomas Edison

Restlessness is discontent – and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man – and I will show you a failure. - Thomas Edison

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man’s power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened. - Madame de Stael

Slow progress is better than no progress. - Unknown

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 contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. - Henry George

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress. - Lisa Randall

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. - Albert Einstein

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. - Don Marquis

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future. - Frank Herbert

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul. - Emma Goldman

The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. - Harold Wilson

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

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

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. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The world progresses only through misunderstanding. - Charles Baudelaire

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. - Alfred North Whitehead

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia. - Elbert Hubbard

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. - Ronald Reagan

There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow. - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time. - Frances E. Willard

Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress. - Henry Ward Beecher

True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice. - Saint Francis De Sales

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. - C. S Lewis

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. - Richard Feynman

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

You don’t make progress by standing on the side-lines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas. - Shirley Chisholm

You will notice that a turtle only makes progress when it sticks out its neck. - Unknown