Progress Quotes

We think with horror now of the days when we burnt witches. I believe the day will come when we will shudder to think that we ever hanged criminals.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.

Teach thy tongue to say ‘I do not know,’ and thou shalt progress.

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

Yet an ugliness often lurked beneath the reformist zeal of Progressivism. Many Progressives – who tended to be middle-class white Protestants – held deep prejudices against immigrants and blacks and were so convinced of their own virtuous authority that they disdained democratic procedures.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.[Was wir für Fortschritte machen! Im Mittelalter hätten sie mich verbrannt, heutzutage begnügen sie sich damit, meine Bücher zu verbrennen, bemerkt Freud dazu.]

We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world.

We live in this world in order always to learn industriously, and to enlighten each other by means of discussion, and to strive vigorously to promote the progress of science and the fine arts.

We can produce in abundance food and materials, and manufacture in mass production all the essentials and luxuries of life. Machinery should be a blessing to mankind and not a curse. Therefore, let us have shorter hours of labor and cheaper money. The purchasing power comes through wages. Then let us raise them to where each man can enjoy the blessings and the glory of science, which were not created for profit alone, but to serve humanity also.

We are convinced, by the study of history, that all principal events tond towards the same end, namely, the civilization of the world.[En étudiant l’histoire, il me semble qu’on acquiert Ja conviction que tous les événements principaux tendent au même but, la civilisation universelle.]

To be wicked does not insure prosperity – for the inn did not succeed well.[Il ne suffit pas d’être méchant pour prospérer. La gargote allait mal.]