“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.”

“Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.”

“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. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”

“In many languages, even the word for human being is “one who goes on migrations.” Progress itself is a word rooted in a seasonal journey. Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.” 

“The past is not what it was.”

“This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.”

“To hurry through one’s leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.”

“The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.”

“I still hold. . .that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.” 

“None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.” 

“A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.” 

“Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.” 

“The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.”

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” 

“Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.

“My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.” 

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”

“Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” 

“In all things social we can be as seperate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

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.

Develop the heart. Too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind instead of the heart.

Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.