Quotes about Progress

You must ask, "What do we mean by great results?" Your goals don't have to be quantifiable, but they do have to be describable. Some leaders try to insist, "The only acceptable goals are measurable," but that's actually an undisciplined statement. Lots of goals—beauty, quality, life change, love—are worthy but not quantifiable. But you do have to be able to tell if you're making progress.

On every headstone, on every grave, should be written the word, "Unfinished"

The only measures that count are progress over your own self, and triumph over the vacant abstractions that most people mistake for thinking.

So, this thing called environmentalism is not new and not left-wing whacko. It dates from way back. Though religious conservatives prefer to call it “creation care”, it’s the same thing. It is an apolitical extension of a very long-term progression in the definition of what’s the right thing to do. Progress may occur in fits and starts with occasional setbacks, but the direction in environmental ethics is well established. There is an inevitability that goes hand-in-glove with the maturing of a species – a growing sense of right and wrong, extending to all of creation, including one of humankind’s most pervasive inventions: the industrial system and its built environment.

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules, and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

If "con" is negative, and "pro" is positive, why is the United States run by congress, yet we never progress?

Nothing happens until something moves.

We must enhance the light, not fight the darkness.

"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

       - Theodore Roosevelt

We must recognize that the attempt to set forth the temporal course commonly referred to as the "evolution of mankind" is merely an attempt to structure events for convenient accessibility. Consequently, we must exclude from our discussion as far as possible such misleading notions as "development" and "progress."

Don't let your past decide your future.

Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation...want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible"

Progress may have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. 

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. 

"Sometimes we respond foolishly before we respond sensibly. We've experienced terrorism, negativism and man's inhumanity to one another before, and yet today we're a better people because of how we respond to it. The evolutionary process moves one step foreword, then two back; then three foreword and two back; then three foreword and only one step back, so that in the end there is a positive process."

We had a rule in Tibet that anyone proposing a new invention had to guarentee that it was beneficial, or at least harmless, for seven generations of humans before it could be adopted.

Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind.  Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul.  It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul.  We are being urged from everyside to become efficient rather than intimate.

Man only progresses by slowly elaborating from age to age the essence and the totality of a universe deposited within him.

This begs the question: what view of life is behind modern economics? Is it a skillful or an unskillful one? At the risk of oversimplifying, let us say that the goal of modern life is to find happiness. This view is so pervasive in modern societies that it is rarely even recognized, let alone examined or questioned. The very concept of "progress" -- social, economic, scientific and political -- assumes that society's highest goal is to reach a state where everyone will be happy. The United States Declaration of Independence poetically embodies this ideal by asserting mankind's right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

While certainly a good-hearted aspiration, the view that happiness is the goal of life betrays a fundamental confusion about the truth of life. "Happiness" is never more than an ill-defined, elusive quality. Many people equate happiness with sense pleasure and the satisfaction of their desires. For these people, happiness remains a remote condition, something outside themselves, a future prize that must be pursued and captured. But happiness cannot be obtained through seeking, only through bringing about the causes and conditions which lead to it, and these are personal and mental development.

Like going to the dentist, where you write: "Dental appointment today. All of the dentists in Boulder are 'holistic.' They can't fill a cavity but they're good for your soul. Your teeth rot, but apparently your spirit prospers."

“I think we can do better. That is what Robert Kennedy always said. I think we can do better too. Won't you join me in the effort?”

“If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.”

Progress comes
To those who
Train and train;
Reliance on secret techniques
Will get you nowhere.

In your training, do not be in a hurry, for it takes a minimum of ten years to master the basics and advance to the first rung. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing, perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in the Art of Peace.

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.

There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice.